Chasco Middle School in Port Richey, Florida did what many presumptuous and foolish k-12 schools around the country are doing: The administration unilaterally decided to sexually integrate the boys’ locker room with no notification to either the boys or their parents. The boys, and shortly thereafter their parents, learned about it when an objectively female student who seeks to pass as a boy humiliated them when she entered the boys’ locker room while they were in their underwear. The boys immediately left the locker room and sought help from two P.E. teachers—Robert Oppedisano and Stephanie Christensen—who according to Liberty Counsel, “were powerless to respond, because administrators had placed a gag order on them, and told them that they could not answer the boys on these questions.”

To be clear, not even student and parental notification would make this unjust and foolish decision right. Providing no notification just made a lousy decision worse.

Liberty Counsel further outlined the outrageous nature of the Chasco administration’s decision:

Robert also objected to administrators’ order that he continue to walk into and supervise the locker room, despite a girl potentially being nude or undressed in that area. The administrators told him that the girl in question had “every right to use the locker room,” including the right to disrobe in the open locker area, and shower in its open showers, where Robert is required to periodically walk in and supervise. Robert will not knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress. Now, Robert has been told by administrators that he will be transferred to another school as discipline for “not doing your job in the locker room.”

Now, as a result of the incoherent “trans” ideology, a male P.E. teacher could be fired for intentionally being in the presence of an undressed objectively female student if she’s satisfied with her biological sex and a male teacher could be fired for refusing to be in the presence of an undressed objectively female student, so long as she is dissatisfied with her biological sex. What if a male teacher is in the presence of a genderfluid objectively female student who, while changing clothes on a day when she’s “identifying” as a boy, suddenly “identifies” as a girl? Yikes.

Some questions for the Chasco Middle School administration:

• Do students have any right not to be seen partially or fully unclothed by students, staff, faculty, or administrators of the opposite sex?

• Should “trans”-identifying coaches be treated as if they were the sex they pretend to be? For example, should the objectively male swim coach who pretends to be a woman be allowed full access to the girls’ locker room? If not, why not?

• Do staff and faculty who believe it is profoundly wrong to see pubescent students of the opposite sex partially or fully unclothed have any rights?

• Why do we have any sex-segregated locker rooms and restrooms in public schools if objective biological sex has no intrinsic connection to feelings of modesty and the desire for and right to privacy when engaged in intimate bodily functions or changing clothes?

Ironically, while violating the physical privacy of children, the Chasco administration is trying to cloak its secret plan to sexually integrate private spaces by appealing to—you guessed it—privacy. But neither privacy policies nor laws prohibit the administration from notifying students and parents that the school has adopted—with no board vote—a new practice of sexually integrating locker rooms and restrooms and that boys and girls can expect that they will be sharing private spaces with persons of the opposite sex. (As an aside, I wonder how female faculty or administrators would feel if they were in their underwear in a women’s faculty locker room when without notification an objectively male colleague walked in.)

The brains behind this “trans”-cultic operation to violate the privacy of and humiliate students is Jackie Jackson-Dean who consulted with every pro-“LGBTQ”-advocacy organization she could find—including the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) government school indoctrination arm, ironically called “Teaching Tolerance.”

The weedy thicket of Dean’s recommendations include encouraging the school to participate in every pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” event sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), encouraging teachers to use incorrect pronouns when referring to students who masquerade as the opposite sex, and publicly praising teachers who affirm pro-“LGBT” orthodoxy (thereby implicitly shaming those who don’t).

Jackson-Dean’s Twitter account reveals she’s a hardcore, far-left pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” activist who loves the SPLC and opposes Brett Kavanaugh.

There’s an odd omission in her rainbow-adorned document. She neglected to mention this which comes right out of a document to which she links:

On the federal side, the Title IX regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Education allow schools to provide separate but comparable bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities on the basis of sex…. While there is no definitive national legal authority on the issue, federal courts in non-school cases have recognized a fundamental right to privacy or acknowledged the legitimacy of safety concerns in cases involving individuals undressing, using the restroom, or showering in an area to which a member of the opposite birth sex has access. Moreover, a federal district court recently asked the question whether a university engages in unlawful discrimination in violation of Title IX or the Constitution when it prohibits a transgender male [i.e., a biological female] student from using restrooms and locker rooms designated for men on campus. The court concluded: “The simple answer is no.”

If adult coaches are required to be in the presence of partially or fully undressed students of the opposite sex who “identify” as “trans,” there remains no rational reason to prohibit adult coaches from being in the presence of partially dressed or fully nude students of the opposite sex who accept their sex. In short, the “trans” ideology has invalidated objective, immutable biological sex and its anatomical manifestation as having any relevance in separating humans in spaces where bodies are exposed.

I’ve tried to warn that the ultimate goal and logical outworking of the “trans” ideology is to eradicate all public recognition and valuation of sex differences. According to the “trans” ideology, all it takes to “identify” as the opposite sex is a declaration. No gender dysphoria diagnosis or experience of gender dysphoria, no surgery, no cross-sex hormone-doping, not even cross-dressing is necessary to identify as the opposite sex. Further, society is obligated to treat “trans”-identifying persons in all ways and in all contexts as the sex they declare they are. Therefore, a girl with intact breasts who identifies as a boy should be free to undress and shower naked with the boys, and a boy with an intact penis and testicles who identifies as a girl should be free to undress and shower with girls. A girl with intact breasts who identifies as a boy should be allowed to swim on the boys’ swim team wearing a boys’ Speedo. Male coaches who enter boys’ locker rooms should treat girls who pretend they’re boys and are changing no differently than boys who are changing.

So, now what would have once been too scandalous to even imagine is being or going to be required.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Chasco.mp3

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Solecism: a grammatical mistake in speech or writing

On March 9, 2017, the Illinois Association of School Boards issued an update to a 2016 guide titled “Transgender Students in Schools Frequently Asked Questions for Public School Boards and Staff,” which is a publication of the National Association of School Boards (NASB). Since so much of what goes in our government schools is barely visible through the noxious bureaucratic fog that envelops them, conservative parents and teachers should peruse this document to get a clearer picture of where the “trans” cult and its sycophants are shoving us.

Let’s take a quick look at just three of the questions, all dealing with pronoun mandates:

Question: If a school administrator has advised school staff that a transgender student wants to be addressed by that student’s preferred name or pronoun, can a school staff member refuse to do so?

Under most circumstances, a school staff member should abide by the parent’s/student’s wishes as to how to address the transgender student. In accepting employment with a school district, administrators and school staff agree to abide by, uphold, and enforce all of their school board’s policies and procedures, as well as federal and state laws, including a wide variety of non-discrimination, harassment, and bullying policies and procedures. Complying with the school administrator’s directive and abiding by the school district’s anti-discrimination policies and procedures likely will not interfere with an employee’s personally held beliefs. Moreover, consistent with the school board’s mission, an employee’s religious or other sincerely held beliefs should not prevent that employee from treating all students with respect and dignity.

To be clear, according to the NSBA (and IASB) all staff members should use incorrect pronouns or newly invented words when referring to  students who masquerade as the opposite sex, or those who “identify” as both male and female (e.g., “pangender,” “bigender,” or “genderfluid”), or those who claim to be “genderless” (e.g., “agender”). Maybe the NSBA will next direct teachers to ask  daily how their “gender fluid” students wish to be addressed.

How many teachers are made aware in job interviews that their prospective administrations are going to compel them to use incorrect grammar in the service of a controversial ideology? How many teachers are made aware in job interviews that a condition of employment is that they must be willing to bear false witness (i.e., lie)?

There are no laws in Illinois that require teachers to use incorrect pronouns for students who have decided that pronouns have no connection to their sex. There are no federal laws that require such a bizarre practice. And yet, school administrators are issuing pronoun diktats to their staff without notifying the public and despite never having created policy mandating the use of solecisms.

How can the NASB possibly know that mandating lying does not “interfere with,” for example, a theologically orthodox Christian “employee’s personally held beliefs”? And what does a willingness to lie say about staff members? What does a teacher’s willingness to lie about biological sex teach students?

“Progressives” seem to believe they have a unilateral right to control language. They establish Orwellian language rules, changing grammar and redefining terms like “safety,” “hate,” and “tolerance.” And now they’re trying to circumscribe what respect and dignity entail. Don’t be bullied. No one has an obligation to defer to Leftist Newspeak. For many people of faith, treating others with respect and dignity includes respect for the truth and meaning of their physical embodiment as male or female. To deny the truth that they are created in the image of God—male or female—is to disrespect them. To facilitate, affirm, or appear to affirm a lie as true is an act of profound disrespect. 

Question: Can an employee be disciplined for insubordination for failure to comply with an administrator’s directives, or the student’s or parent’s expressed name and pronoun preferences?

A school district could pursue disciplinary action against the offending employee for insubordination for failing to comply with the administrator’s directives and/or the student’s/ parent’s wishes…. Where the employee has refused to comply based on her genuine belief that the directive is contrary to her religious convictions, she may claim that the district has violated her First Amendment rights by disciplining her. Whether that claim would be successful in federal court is unclear…. If the employee not only refuses to comply with the directive, but also allows other students to disregard the student’s name and pronoun preference, which creates a harassing or hostile environment for the transgender student, the school board also could pursue disciplinary action against the offending employee for allowing student-on-student harassment.

Pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex. Referring to objectively male students by female pronouns is a lie and disrespects something real and profoundly meaningful about them: their physical embodiment. To the government, a refusal to lie is an act of insubordination for which an employee could be disciplined.

Worse still, it appears that administrators may order teachers to require their students to lie as well. How can any serious Christ-follower be part of such malfeasance and ontological treachery?

Question: How should schools handle objections by non-transgender students or families to sharing locker rooms or restrooms?

Ensure that your schools are places where all students are made to feel welcome, respected, and protected. While remaining sensitive to the rights of all students, a practical way of addressing these concerns is to make spaces available for any student who does not want to share locker rooms or restrooms with other students. Such options can include privacy curtains in locker rooms and separate restrooms. Keep in mind, however, that OCR takes a strong stance on this issue. In at least one recent case, OCR indicated the use of such separate facilities must be voluntary, and contrary policies could result in enforcement action.

To the relief of many conservatives, on February 22, 2017, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to all public schools informing them that the OCR has “decided to withdraw and rescind” the “policy and guidance” issued by the OCR under President Obama, which commanded schools to sexually integrate restrooms, locker rooms, and even hotel accommodations for school-sponsored overnight events. The relief of conservatives may have been premature because on June 6, 2017, the OCR sent out further clarifications that included this:

OCR may assert subject matter jurisdiction over and open for investigation the following allegations…:

failure to assess whether… gender-based harassment (i.e., based on… sex or sex-stereotyping, such as refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred name or pronouns when the school uses preferred names for gender-conforming students…) of a transgender student created a hostile environment.

Schools do not now nor ever have used pronouns in accordance with “gender-conforming” students’ preferences. Schools use pronouns in accordance with the objective, immutable, biological sex of students. All students are, therefore, treated equally. And yet, the OCR may come after Newspeak transgressors.

There are several reasons why the incoherent, deceitful, anti-science “trans” ideology is transforming the country at breakneck speed, two of which  are the ignorance and cowardice of conservatives. Conservatives need to learn about this ideology and resolutely resist the efforts of “trans” cultists to control language and sexually integrate private spaces. Church leaders need to teach about the “trans” ideology. Church leaders need to help their congregations understand the biblical view of maleness and femaleness, and they need to help them understand the fallacious propositions that comprise the “trans” ideology. Conservatives need to expect far more knowledge, wisdom and courage from political and school leaders. And finally, conservatives should think deeply about whether it’s wise and good to have their children trained up by those who don’t understand that the body and soul constitute an inseparable unity.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/TWO_Illinois-Association-of-School-Boards-Disturbing-Document.mp3

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