Gender-Confused Committee Member Vilifies Aurora Faith Community

On Thursday, Nov. 29, at the second meeting of the East Aurora High School ad hoc committee formed to revisit the possibility of establishing policy regarding students who experience gender confusion, over 120 people showed up, including approximately 10 pastors and 15 chaplains.

Most of these community members were Hispanic as were the faith leaders who serve the Aurora community. Almost all of the 120 people opposed such policy. Over 20 people, including a high school student, voiced their opposition to any policy that would permit boys and girls to use the restrooms and locker rooms designated for those of the opposite sex. And they expressed their views with unapologetic, unself-conscious, bold, and impassioned conviction, often with the help of a translator.

In contrast to their respectful tone, the two attendees who spoke in support of such policy—neither of whom live in Aurora and one of whom identifies as “transsexual”—were by multiple accounts condescending and rude.

After the meeting, one of the gender-confused non-community members who serves on the ad hoc committee sent the following offensive email to the entire committee, which he also asked to be shared with the school board. This disturbing email alone should suffice to disqualify him from serving on any school committee (emphasis added):

Dear Fellow Ad Hoc Committee Members,

One of the nice things about being in business for myself is that I enjoy the freedom to speak my mind without fear of having my employment terminated or other negative repercussions. I was invited to serve on the Ad Hoc Committee and have every intention of continuing to do so. But I cannot go through an experience like last Thursday night’s meeting without saying what I need to say about it. I didn’t speak up at the meeting only because I understand and respect Robert’s Rules of Order and the process by which governmental and quasi-governmental bodies operate.

Never have I seen so many people gathered in one place so determined to display their own ignorance, bigotry, and mean-spiritedness. I should not have been surprised because the protest was organized by the Illinois Family Institute, which has been certified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Beacon News had a photograph of David Norck of the Illinois Family Institute assisting the protestors. It would be like having the Ku Klux Klan come to a meeting of a committee whose work was to craft a policy for racial integration.

We had speakers tell us that transgender people have “twisted minds” and are “gender confused”. My favorite part of the evening was when a speaker, who for some reason was allowed to stand behind my chair for the entire meeting in an intimidating posture, pointed his pen at me, and told the assembled throng that I was there to “push my lifestyle” on the children of East Aurora. This same person had never met me before that evening; doesn’t know anything about my “lifestyle”; doesn’t know if I spend my free time with my children, in the library, out clubbing, or at church; and knows nothing about me other than the fact that I am transgender. Because he knows nothing about me other than the fact that I am transgender and feels justified in attacking my “lifestlye”, he is nothing but a hate-filled ignorant bigot. It is no different from making assumptions about a person’s “lifestyle” because they are black or Hispanic.

We heard a lot of talk about putting girls in the boys’ bathroom and boys in the girl’s bathroom. But the only people at the meeting who want to put girls in the boys’ bathroom are the people who want to force transsexual girls into the boys’ bathroom where their identity, comfort, and safety will be compromised.

I was disappointed not to have had an opportunity to speak out at the meeting, and to have to listen to ninety minutes of transphobic diatribes.

We cannot let a certified hate group prevent the Ad Hoc Committee from having its dialogue, proposing policy, and taking a vote. We don’t have mob rule; we have a democracy. And while the First Amendment certainly protects every one, including bigots (the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the American Nazi Party to march in Skokie), reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions may be imposed on the right of public comment so that government bodies and quasi-government bodies can do the work that they are charged to do. It is my suggestion that we, as a Committee, or the School Board, itself, adopt reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on public comment so that the Committee can do its work.

This letter will be an open letter which I post on my blog.

Joanie Rae Wimmer

This remarkable letter calls for some remarks:

It should take Aurora community members aback to learn that someone who is not a community member is being allowed to serve on a non-elected committee that will be developing and voting on policy for their school. The Aurora community should demand to know who invited Wimmer and every other non-community member (e.g., Rick Garcia and Sara Schriber) to serve on the committee.
The community should be outraged that Wimmer seeks to limit the capacity of community members with whom he disagrees to express their opinions.
Adding insult to injury, Mr. Wimmer calls community members and other attendees with whom he disagrees ignorant, mean-spirited, hate-filled bigots who are the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan. Does anyone think a conservative community member—let alone an outsider—who hurls epithets like that would ever be included on this committee?
Wimmer’s anger reveals how self-righteous and presumptuous homosexual and gender-confused activists have become from years of being coddled, wooed, apologized to, and deferred to. When they encounter public dissent from their assumptions about homosexuality and gender dysphoria expressed with the same certitude that they express theirs, they respond with rage and incivility.
Mr. Wimmer attributes “mean-spiritedness” to his ideological opponents. It is appropriate for compassionate people to feel sympathy for those who suffer from gender dysphoria. We should have sympathy for the pain that such obsessive thoughts about one’s sex and the compulsive acts that are impelled by these thoughts create. But compassion does not require people to accept Wimmer’s beliefs about what constitutes gender or about the morality of cross-dressing and elective amputations of healthy body parts.Further, once he brings his non-factual ontological and moral views into the public square, demanding that public policy and laws reflect them, it is ethical and critically important for conservatives to express their dissenting views.No one argues that compassion requires society to affirm the beliefs and desires of those who suffer from a similar disorder: Body Integrity Identity Disorder (i.e., who identify with amputees, desire to have limbs amputated, and often pretend to be amputees). Compassion and kindness do not require conservatives to deny reality or censor their competing views regarding truth and morality. Quite the contrary. Compassion demands that our actions reflect truth, morality, and objective reality.
Homosexual and “transgender” activists have cleverly constructed a rhetorical universe in which only they are permitted to speak. They simply assert that their subjective, non-factual beliefs about homosexuality and gender dysphoria are inarguably true and central to their identity and that all dissenting views are hateful, ignorant, mean-spirited bigotry that make them feel “unsafe.” Therefore, because they feel“unsafe” if they hear views with which they disagree, such views must not be permitted to be spoken or reflected in policy or law.I would argue that if Mr. Wimmer finds it too hurtful to hear dissenting views about gender dysphoria, then perhaps he shouldn’t venture into the public square demanding that public policy reflect his.
Mr. Wimmer is incorrect when he compares conservative views of homosexuality to racism, which he does when he suggests that allowing conservatives to speak at ad hoc committee meetings or serve on the committee is equivalent to having a racist serve on committee to establish policy on racial discrimination. Wimmer went so far as to defame one attendee, David Norck (who is not an employee of IFI), by calling him the equivalent of Ku Klux Klansman. Wimmer’s suggestion is both offensive and wrong.
First, gender dysphoria is utterly different from race. While race, or perhaps more accurately skin-color, is 100% heritable and does not impel any kind of behavior, let alone morally questionable behavior, gender dysphoria is constituted by subjective feelings and impels behavior that many consider profoundly disordered. There are no points of correspondence between these two conditions, and, therefore, his analogy fails.Second, most people who believe that cross-dressing and elective amputations of healthy body parts are unhealthy, perverse responses to disordered thinking do not hate those who suffer from gender dysphoria.
Does Wimmer have any evidence that those who believe differently than he does about gender dysphoria hate those who suffer from it? And does Wimmer have any evidence to justify his implicit comparison of gender dysphoria to race?As discussed earlier, it makes more sense to compare gender dysphoria to Body Integrity Identity Disorder. Should someone who suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder serve on a committee formed to create policy on the use of school elevators intended for use by injured or disabled students?
We have exalted social science to some unjustifiable position as the ultimate arbiter of truth, reality, and morality. Even if the majority of mental health professionals were to conclude that the desire to be the opposite sex constitutes a healthy and normative mental state and that achieving “congruence” between one’s self-perception/desires and one’s “presentation” through elective amputation of healthy body parts and cross-dressing is proper and good doesn’t make those conclusions true. History is littered with the detritus of psychosocial theories once accepted as gospel truth.
Wimmer takes umbrage at one community member’s reference to his “lifestyle,” fulminating that this person knows nothing about Wimmer’s lifestyle. I’m not sure if Wimmer is being deceitful or obtuse, but clearly this person was referring to the only relevant aspect of Wimmer’s lifestyle: his cross-dressing and elective amputation of healthy body parts, both of which Wimmer has made public. In fact, Wimmer is serving on this committee in order to advance his non-factual beliefs about these aspects of his lifestyle.
Wimmer uses the terms “transphobic,” which denotes irrational fear, and “hate-filled” to malign those who disagree with him about gender dysphoria. Does Wimmer believe that all expressions of moral disapproval about volitional behavior constitute fear or hatred , or is it just the expression of beliefs with which he disagrees that are “phobic” and hateful?The most hate-filled language I’ve come across in any reports about the East Aurora controversy appears in Wimmer’s invective.
Wimmer criticizes Aurora community members “who want to force transsexual girls into the boys’ bathroom.” “Transsexual girls” are, in reality, boys. Wimmer treats as indisputable fact his non-factual belief that boys who suffer from gender dsyphoria are actually girls and arrogantly suggests that no one has the right to any other beliefs about gender.
One final and less significant comment: Wimmer twice refers to IFI as a Southern Poverty Law Center-“certified” hate group. If this designation were not so malignant, Wimmer’s comment would be funny. Wimmer, an attorney, might spend some time researching the SPLC’s “certification” process. In short, the SPLC decided which organizations espouse views on sexuality with which the SPLC disagrees, placed those groups on its hate groups list, and then after-the-fact invented criteria that would justify their inclusion. There is no certification process.

The kind of radical sexuality activism that East Aurora High School has encountered will come to every elementary, middle, and high school in the country. Let’s hope that every community has men and women as courageous as the men and women in Aurora—including faith leaders. Right now the picture looks bleak on the courage front, but maybe the actions of these Aurora community members will inspire others to follow their lead.

Stand With Us

Your support of our work and ministry is always much needed and greatly appreciated. Your promotion of our emails on Facebook, Twitter, your own email network, and prayer for financial support is a huge part of our success in being a strong voice for the pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family message here in the Land of Lincoln. Please consider standing with us.

Click here to support Illinois Family Institute (IFI). Contributions to IFI are tax-deductible!

You can also send a gift to P.O. Box 88848, Carol Stream, IL 60188.

East Aurora High School Troubling “Transgender” Policy Update

The East Aurora High School Board of Education recently passed a policy that would have permitted gender-confused students to use the restrooms and locker rooms designated for those of the opposite sex (i.e., of the sex that these students wish they were). The policy also mandated that district employees refer to these students using opposite sex pronouns (i.e., of the sex which these students wish they were), and it would have permitted gender-confused students to cross-dress at school without their parents’ knowledge or permission.

The policy was rescinded four days later and the district administrator, Christie Aird, who proposed it and apparently misrepresented it to the board was temporarily placed on administrative leave. According to news reports, she implied or stated that the Illinois bullying law passed in 2010 required such a policy change.

Here’s what every school district needs to know about the Illinois school bullying law: All it mandates is that schools must have a bullying policy and that they must register their policy with the state every two years. That’s it. The Illinois bullying prevention law does not require that schools have any policy whatsoever regarding restroom, locker room, or pronoun use for those who experience gender-confusion.

Although the 2010 Illinois bullying law did, indeed, add the politically biased Leftist terms “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” and “gender-related expression” to the enumerated list of protected groups, the bullying law does not require that school bullying policy include reference to any enumerated groups (*see below for a sample bullying policy). And the “transgender” policy passed and rescinded at East Aurora High School had nothing whatsoever to do with bullying policy.

East Aurora HS ad hoc committee to study “transgender” policy

It was too much to hope for that the vote to rescind the misguided East Aurora High School policy for gender-confused students would remain unchallenged. Common sense and decency are in short supply in public schools, so almost immediately after the policy was rescinded, the school board formed an ad hoc committee to revisit the rescinded policy. The committee had its first meeting last week. Multiple sources have reported that the chairperson of the committee made it clear that she wants East Aurora High School to be the trailblazer on “transgender” policy for Illinois schools.

As is common at school meetings about controversial issues related to homosexuality or gender confusion, promoters of sexual deviance outnumbered conservatives, both on the committee and in the audience.

Serving on the committee are two adult cross-dressing males who wish they were women. “Joanie Rae” Wimmer is a Downer’s Grove attorney, and “Crystal Ann” Gray, who lives in Woodstock, IL, works as a “transgender” advocate. Click here to watch a video of Gray and “Shari” Miller, another gender-confused man who as of 2008 was Gray’s romantic partner. Aurora parents, church leaders, and other residents should be outraged that this is who is coming into their school to create school policy that would affect their children.

Also in attendance was Sara Schriber, former ACLU attorney and current policy director for the Chicago-based homosexual activist organization, the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance. This is the organization instrumental in getting homosexuality-affirming resources into Beye Elementary School in Oak Park.

Lesbian Shannon Sullivan, another Illinois Safe Schools Alliance staff member, complained to WBEZ that opposition to this policy came from “outside groups,” namely IFI. Ironically, she said that just after admitting that the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, an outside group, had been working behind the scenes for months with Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Programs Christie Aird.

The Aurora community should demand that only Aurora community members may serve on the committee, and at the next election, they should get rid of any school board member who supports any “transgender” policy.

Take Action: The East Aurora community needs help to prevent the school board from passing yet another “transgender” policy. If you live in Aurora, please attend the next meeting which is November 29 at 6:30 p.m. at 417 Fifth Street in Aurora (main office). If you know someone who lives in Aurora, please contact them immediately and ask them to attend this meeting. They do not have to have students attending East Aurora High School. Anyone who is willing to make a statement should call Clayton Muhammad (630 299-5550)by Nov. 22 to ask to be placed on the agenda.

If you have further questions, please contact either IFI or Aurora Pastor Patrick McManus at (630) 966-0724.

Two questions for the ad hoc committee

Those who support this type of policy must answer these two critical questions:

If gender-confused teens should not have to share restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, then why should other teens have to share restrooms and locker rooms with those whose objective biological sex they don’t share?

If there are two distinct phenomenon, biological sex (constituted by objective DNA/anatomy) and “gender identity” (constituted by subjective feelings), why should locker rooms and restrooms be separated according to “gender identity” rather than objective biological sex? What justification is there for subordinating objective biological sex to “gender identity”?

Thoughts about claims made by supporters of “transgender” school policy

Those who promote this type of policy believe that the subjective feelings of teens who wish they had been born the opposite sex trump objective biological and anatomical reality. They believe that what gender-confused teens feel is their true sex is, indeed, their true sex. They also believe that everyone in society must accept their unproven belief that “gender identity” is more objectively real and more important than is objective biological and anatomical reality. But society has no obligation and should feel no compulsion to accept these propositions as true. They are not facts.

This policy would inappropriately mandate that teachers use pronouns that correspond to a student’s “gender identity” as opposed to his or her objective biological sex. The reason teachers should not be compelled to use pronouns that don’t correspond to a student’s biological sex is that requiring them to do so means requiring them to participate in a fiction. Students who suffer from gender dysphoria or Gender Identity Disorder (as opposed to intersex conditions) have an objective biological sex. No student, teacher, or administrator should be compelled to treat objective reality as if it doesn’t exist. The government has no ethical right to compel people to participate in a lie.

The fact that boys or girls don’t choose to experience gender confusion does not mean that such feelings are normal or good. And it certainly does not mean that society must affirm their feelings or accommodate every behavior that such feelings impel. There is another psychological disorder analogous to gender dysphoria called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) in which sufferers identify with amputees and seek to have their bodies correspond to their self-conception through elective amputation of healthy body parts. To be intellectually consistent, would supporters of this gender-confusion policy argue that schools should accommodate the desire of anatomically whole students to use a wheel chair and the elevators intended for disabled students?

Boys should leave a bathroom if a girl enters, and girls should leave a bathroom if a boy enters. How will that make a gender-confused student feel?

Supporters of this policy argue that the majority should not be allowed to deny the rights of the minority, but that statement presumes that gender-confused students have a right to use the restrooms and locker rooms designated for those of the opposite sex. And it ignores the rights of those who don’t want to be compelled to use facilities intended for private acts in the presence of those of the opposite sex. Boys have no right to use girls’ restrooms, and girls have no right to use boys’ restrooms. And no one has a moral right to compel others to lie.

Supporters of this policy argue that it’s needed in order to be “inclusive” of gender-confused students. To be intellectually consistent then, wouldn’t supporters of the policy have to agree that those who are not comfortable sharing a bathroom with someone of the opposite sex because of their beliefs about sexual differentiation, modesty, and privacy would be “excluded” if the school refuses to honor their beliefs, feelings, values, and identity—which, by the way, has a basis in objective reality?

Symbolic and teaching effect of school policy

In this entire mess, no one has talked about the symbolic and teaching effect of school policy. Many community members who do not like this policy will dismiss it as relatively unimportant because so few students suffer from gender confusion. But if it’s unimportant, why does the Left care so much about it? They care about it in part because of its symbolic effect. The Left knows that passing this policy necessarily means that the school has formally embraced the Left’s unproven, non-factual beliefs about sex and gender.

In addition, the Left knows that such a policy teaches.

If this policy were to be restored, the proper, healthy, and normal feelings and beliefs of students who do not feel comfortable sharing locker room and restroom facilities with those of the opposite sex would be ignored. Boys, who should leave a bathroom if a girl enters, and girls, who should leave a bathroom if a boy enters, would be taught either implicitly or explicitly that those natural and good feelings are wrong. They would be taught that their natural and good feelings of modesty are exclusionary, lacking in compassion, ignorant, and biased.

Such a policy would teach students that in order to be kind, compassionate, and inclusive of those who experience gender confusion, they have to affirm those troubled peers’ impulses and ideas. In reality, neither love nor inclusivity requires affirmation and accommodation of every feeling, impulse, belief, or behavioral choice of every student in a school. Real love as well as commitments to morality, objective reality, and public order put limits on what schools can and should affirm and accommodate. And real love depends first on knowing what is true.

Such a policy would teach students that gender is not determined by DNA and manifest in biology and anatomy, but that it is determined by subjective feelings. This, however, is not a fact, and neither schools nor the community has any obligation to accept the theory that “gender” has no connection to DNA and anatomy.

Such a policy teaches students that cross-dressing (as well as hormone-doping and elective amputations of healthy body parts) is morally acceptable and good.

Make no mistake, this is a critical battle. If this policy passes, it will make national news, and the homosexual and “transgender” advocacy groups will use it to force other schools to pass similar policy. As I have said many times, cultural change rarely happens through dramatic single events. It happens through the slow accretion of small events that we ignore or dismiss as trivial or irrelevant. This has the potential to be a hugely consequential battle.

*Sample School Bullying Policy

A school bullying policy could say the following, which is taken verbatim from the bullying law:

No student shall be subjected to bullying.

Bullying means any severe or pervasive physical or verbal act or conduct, including communications made in writing or electronically, directed toward a student that has or can be predicted to have the effect of one or more of the following:

placing a student or students in reasonable fear of harm to the student’s or students’ person or property;

causing a substantially detrimental effect on the student’s or students’ physical or mental health;

substantially interfering with the student’s or students’ academic performance; or

substantially interfering with the student’s or students’ ability to participate in or benefit from the services, activities, or privileges provided by a school.

Bullying may take various forms, including without limitation one or more of the following: harassment, threats, intimidation, stalking, physical violence, sexual harassment, sexual violence, theft, public humiliation, destruction of property, or retaliation for asserting or alleging an act of bullying.

Such a policy would pass legal muster, be much more clearly inclusive, and steer clear of partisan politicization.

Stand With Us

Click here to support Illinois Family Action (IFA). Contributions to IFA are not tax-deductible but give us the most flexibility in engaging critical legislative and political issues.

Click here to support Illinois Family Institute (IFI). Contributions to IFI are tax-deductible and support our educational efforts only.

You can also send a gift to P.O. Box 88848, Carol Stream, IL 60188.