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Judge Alonso: Worker of Lawlessness

Another feckless judicial decision from another feckless judge.

In a 15-page decision, Federal Judge Jorge Alonso—an Obama appointee—explained his reasoning for refusing to stop Township High School District 211’s co-ed restroom and locker room practices. District 211, the largest high school district in the state, includes Conant, Fremd, Hoffman Estates, Palatine, and Schaumburg High Schools.

Fifty families are suing the district to overturn a policy that allows students who pretend to be the opposite sex to access opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. The district decided that the feelings of students who want to share private spaces with opposite-sex students trump the feelings of  students who want to share private spaces with only persons of their same sex. No administrator or board member has explained why subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex rather than objective biological sex should determine private space-usage policy.

According to ABC News, Alonso “said courts have ‘correctly recognized’ that ‘federal protections against sex discrimination are substantially broader than based only on genitalia or chromosome.’”

What he’s saying is that laws pertaining to “sex” actually have no necessary connection to sex.

Alonso went on to cite Judge Ann Claire Williams of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals who said this about a case in Wisconsin in which a teenage girl who masquerades as a boy fought successfully to use the boys’ restrooms:

A transgender student’s presence in the restroom provides no more of a risk to other students’ privacy rights than the presence of an overly curious student of the same biological sex who decides to sneak glances at his or her classmates performing bodily functions.

Wow.

How can it be that we have judges so foolish or so depraved that they actually believe it is no greater an invasion of privacy for a teenage girl to see a male peer urinating than it would be for an “overly curious” boy to “sneak glances” at a male peer urinating?

Ubiquitous attorney John Knight, director of the ACLU of Illinois’ LGBT and HIV Project, made this egregiously dishonest statement:

‘Throughout this litigation, one thing remains clear: The groups who filed this case remain unable to demonstrate any harm to their clients resulting from sharing restrooms and locker rooms with students who they perceive as different,’… adding that judge ‘confirmed there is no constitutional right to refuse to share a restroom or locker room with students because they are transgender.’

First, the parents suing the district did not merely perceive the boy as different from girls. He actually is different from girls.

Second, no student has refused to share restrooms or locker rooms with students “because they are transgender.” Some objectively female students object to sharing restrooms and locker rooms with students because of their objective, immutable male biological sex. Knight knows that. He also knows—as do the two male students who have sued the district—that the sex of humans can never change.

Third, objectively male persons have no constitutional right to use restrooms and locker rooms designated for persons of the opposite sex.

Fourth, Knight failed to define “harm.” Many would argue that children and teens are harmed by teaching them through such restroom/locker room practices that biological sex has no intrinsic meaning relative to modesty and privacy.

They are harmed when the government through such radical practices desensitizes students to engaging in private activities like going to the bathroom, changing clothes, or showering in close proximity to unrelated persons of the opposite sex.

They are harmed by practices that teach them that their good and natural feelings of reluctance to share private spaces with opposite-sex students constitute ignorant, hateful bigotry.

And they are harmed when ignorant school administrators, board members, and activists like Knight implicitly teach a form of dualism, which holds that the human person is composed of body and mind–which in their view are severable–with the material body subordinate to the workings of the mind.

The harm done is spiritual, intellectual, emotional, psychological, and moral. The harm is no less real and serious even though it may not be measurable or demonstrable.

Vicki Wilson, one of the parents in the group suing District 211, expresses concern for all students, including those who don’t want to share private spaces with opposite-sex students:

This practice is happening all over Illinois and children are fearful of being labeled if they say anything since administrators have intimidated them into ignoring their own needs for basic privacy and dignity…. All children need to be considered and there is a very simple solution that many school IL board members are refusing to even consider: provide a changing space outside either the girls or the boys locker rooms for children who request it.

If, as the silly people in the photo below claim, “separate is not equal” when it comes to restrooms and locker rooms, then why should we maintain any sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms anywhere? If, as the idiotic placards imply, separate restrooms and locker rooms for males and females are as unjust as separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites were, how can we possibly justify maintaining any separate spaces for males and females anywhere?

Either objective, immutable biological sex has intrinsic and profound meaning or it doesn’t. If it has intrinsic and profound meaning, then what District 211 is doing is pernicious. If, on the other hand, physical embodiment as male or female has no meaning, there remains no reason to maintain any sex-segregated spaces for anyone anywhere. If biological sex has no meaning relative to modesty and private spaces, then there is no reason to allow only “trans”-identifying boys in girls’ private spaces. Schools should permit “cisgender” (i.e., normal) boys in girls’ spaces as well. And if biological sex has no meaning, then co-ed private spaces should have no restrictions. After all, in the mixed up, muddled up, shook up world of “progressives,” wouldn’t separate showers for boys and girls be inherently unequal?

Lying seems to come naturally to Knight. He said this about the District 211 student (since graduated) that the ACLU of Illinois represented in 2015:

“What our client wants is not hard to understand. She wants to be accepted for who she is and to be treated with dignity and respect – like any other student.”

The student to whom Knight was referring was not asking to be accepted for “who she is.” The student was asking that others accept him as something he is not and never can be: a girl. He wants the whole world to pretend along with him. But there is no dignity in lies. Facilitating his disordered desires and delusional beliefs would represent an act of disrespect. School administrators, board members, and activists like Knight have put on a veneer of love, but it’s not real love. It’s an empty, fake, sickening, saccharine pseudo-love that enables them to feel good while doing evil. Real love is built on a foundation of truth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Judge-Alonso-Worker-of-Lawlessness.mp3


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Corrupt, Nonsensical Legislation Reintroduced

lauries-chinwags_thumbnailEquality Illinois, Illinois’ most prominent cheerleader for all things sexually deviant—especially doctrinaire and destructive legislation—is cheering the reintroduction of a bill that would make it even easier for gender-dysphoric persons to have their birth certificates legally falsified.

House Bill 1785, the “Birth Certificate Designation Act,” introduced by State Representative Greg Harris and co-sponsored by the usual suspects, like Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), Robyn Gabel (D-Evanston), and Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago), would amend the Vital Records Act to allow those Illinoisans who wish they were the opposite sex to enlist the government in their effort to deceive.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email message to your state representative to ask him/her to reject HB 1785 and uphold birth certificates as legal documents.  The state of Illinois has no duty or right to make it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to falsify their birth certificates.


Background
Currently, a sex-rejecting Illinoisan who seeks a falsified birth certificate must present an affidavit from a physician certifying that he or she has performed surgery on the sex-rejecting person. Harris and his accomplices seek to make this process easier by allowing doctors, advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, and licensed mental health professionals from any state provide “declarations” that the patient has “undergone treatment…for the purpose of gender transition.” In an attempt to conceal that this effort enlists government to participate in fraud, the bill’s sponsors change the wording from “sex change” to “change of sex designation,” thereby implicitly acknowledging the science-denying nature of their quest: No one’s sex can change.

For those who are unclear about what this change would mean, we have the confused attorney for the ACLU of Illinois, John Knight (who is suing District 211 on behalf of a boy who wants to be a girl) to offer clarity:

House Bill 1785 protects Illinoisans facing the unnecessary choice between living without a birth certificate that conforms with [sic] who they are and undergoing surgery they may not want or need. The scientific and medical community agrees that surgery is not necessary medical treatment for transgender people and shouldn’t be required to obtain an accurate birth certificate.

It is decidedly not accurate for a birth certificate to state that a person who is objectively male and was identified at birth as such to be changed to state that this person was identified at birth as female.

Many may not know that it can take as little as two visits and filling out some questionnaires for a certified mental health professional to declare that a sex-rejecting 18-year-old has undergone treatment for the purpose of gender transition.

Obama’s Department of Education provides clear evidence of where Leftist thinking is going. His Education Department mandated that schools treat students in every way as if they are the sex they want to be. According to his diktat, no cross-dressing, hormone-doping, or surgical mutilations are needed for students to be treated as if they are the sex they are not. No affidavit from a medical professional certifying that the student is undergoing treatment for gender dysphoria is needed. Not even parental permission can be required in order for a student to access opposite-sex restrooms, locker rooms, and hotel rooms on school-sponsored overnight trips. All that’s required is a student’s declaration that he or she “identifies” as the opposite sex.

That said, it’s critical to remember that cross-dressing, hormone-doping, and surgical mutilations do not turn males into females or vice versa. Compassion and a commitment to truth dictate that we must not treat students who take cross-sex hormones as if they are in reality the sex they are not.

And the government should never be required to participate in a science-denying fiction.

It is staggering to see a modern civilization snookered into accepting (or pretending to accept) the science-denying superstition that surgical tinkering and hormone-doping can turn a man into a woman or vice versa. The ordinary men and women behind the curtain promoting this superstition know full well that no human’s sex can change, so they had to invent new language to confuse and deceive. Thus, we hear the terms “transgender,” “transman,” “transwoman,” “cisgender,” “cisman,” and “cisgender.”

These terms are intended to conceal that humans have an objective, immutable biological sex that cannot change. And these terms are intended to create the illusion that the disordered desire to be the opposite sex (i.e., “transgender”) is ontologically equivalent to being that sex, hence the invention of the term “cisgender.” “Cisgender” refers to people whose “gender identity” (i.e., their subjective feelings about their sex) aligns with their objective, immutable sex. By creating a word that emphasizes subjective feelings about one’s sex rather than one’s sex, Leftists have managed to distract and delude otherwise science-respecting people.

There’s another new word concocted to normalize disordered feelings about one’s sex. That word is “gender marker.” This was invented to smooth passage of laws that permit gender-dysphoric men and women to have their birth certificates legally falsified, thus Equality Illinois’ press release states that current laws allow a person to “correct” the “gender marker” on his or her birth certificate only “if they have undergone a surgical procedure.”

A formerly rational society understood that birth certificates record the sex of a child as identified by a doctor at birth. In a convoluted rhetorical scheme, the Left now says that birth certificates record the “gender marker” that doctors “assign” babies at birth. The ability to get purportedly rational, science-respecting lawmakers to pass laws mandating that government commit fraud depends on the acceptance of this rhetorical non-sense.

What Illinois actually needs is a law prohibiting persons from having the sex designation on their birth certificates changed unless they produce an affidavit from a medical doctor certifying that they have an intersex condition, which are objective diagnosable disorders—wholly distinct from “transgenderism”—that result in “a discrepancy between the external genitals and the internal genitals (the testes and ovaries).” The Left likes to conflate “transgenderism” with intersex disorders in order to muddy the ontological, moral, and political waters.

Anti-nature superstitions cannot endure, so this one will eventually be tossed into the dustbin of history that holds in it scores of other abandoned superstitions. Tragically, countless men, women, and children will suffer before that happens. When that day comes, every activist, school employee, politician, and ordinary citizen who promoted lies or cowardly acquiesced to them will have to confront his or her own culpability for the incalculable damage that will have been done to so many. Don’t be one of those people. Speak truth persistently and courageously.


Read more recent articles from Laurie:

The Radical “Trans”-Formation of America

New Trier High School Avoids Diversity Like the Plague

Highlights Magazine for Children Affirms Homoeroticism


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Join IFI at our Feb. 18th Worldview Conference

We are excited about our third annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Frank Turek on Sat., Feb. 18, 2017 in Barrington. Dr. Turek is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture:

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

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UPDATE: Christian B&B Case Not Over

Initial press reports suggested that the case against the Christian owner of the Timber Creek Bed and Breakfast in Paxton, Illinois, Jim Walder, was settled. The Illinois Human Rights Commission has clarified that administrative law judge Michael R. Robinson’s decision that Jim Walder should pay an $80,000 fine and be required to offer his facility to a homosexual couple to celebrate their civil union can be appealed by filing “exceptions.”

Either party to the suit has 30 days to file exceptions. If they file exceptions, the case goes before a panel. If no exceptions are filed, the recommendations made by Robinson will take effect.

Here is what Robinson has ordered:

  • Pay $15,000 each to Todd and Mark Wathen as compensation for their emotional distress arising out of the issue.
  • Cease and desist from violating the Human Rights Act by denying same-sex couples access to its facilities and services for marriages and civil unions.
  • Offer the Wathens access to the facility, within one year, for an event celebrating their civil union.
  • Pay the Wathens’ attorneys $50,000 in fees and $1,218 in costs.

Ubiquitous ACLU attorney John Knight has erroneously stated that  “For the first time, the Human Rights Commission has made clear that owners of businesses serving the public in Illinois cannot pick and choose who [sic] to serve based on their personal religious views.” “Progressives” can’t seem to get it through their dogma-drenched minds that Christians in wedding-related businesses are not deciding whom to serve. They are deciding which kinds of events to serve, facilitate, and profit from. 

Attorney Betty Tsamis, who represents the Wathens, made a similar claim but got dangerously close to inadvertently acknowledging the truth: “It would have been shameful to reverse this history simply because some business owners object to the legal protections afforded same-sex relationships.” Tsamis veered slightly off-message by focusing on “same-sex” (i.e., homerotic) relationships rather than persons. Her slip suggests the truth that it is a type of volitional activity and ceremonies that solemnize and celebrate it that many people of faith, including Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and orthodox Christians, cannot in good conscience serve. 

While the Left continues to add conditions (all sexual in nature and behaviorally constituted) to anti-discrimination policies and laws, they are bit by bit removing religion.

It is imperative that we speak out against this unjust erosion of religious liberty. The First Amendment guarantees the right to the “free exercise” of religion, intrinsic to which is the right to act upon beliefs regarding the morality of activities and behaviors. 

Take Action: Click HERE to send an unequivocal and respectful message to Kevin Chambers, the executive director of the Illinois Human Rights Commission, and Gov. Bruce Rauner to express your strong opposition to Judge Robinson’s decision.


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District 211 Leadership: Incompetent, Dishonest or Both?

ACLU attorney John Knight who represents the gender-dysphoric boy in the lawsuit against District 211 has issued this statement about the agreement reached between the district and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR)—a clarification that should deeply trouble District 211 community members:

We also remain disturbed by the inaccurate, misleading and fundamentally troubling language used by the District, even as they adopt this agreement. For example, the District said last night that transgender students who are provided access to locker rooms consistent with their gender identity “will utilize a private changing station when changing clothes or showering” and will not be allowed unrestricted access to the locker room. This is not what the agreement with OCR provides. The agreement specifically says that “based on Student A’s representation that she will change in private changing stations in the girls’ locker rooms, the District agrees to provide Student A access to locker room facilities designated for female students at school.” Nowhere does the agreement require Student A to use a private area to dress and such a requirement would be blatantly discriminatory. [emphasis added]

According to the ACLU of Illinois, the Office for Civil Rights “clearly stated that our client, like all students, does not have to use a privacy curtain. She may choose to do so, but she is not required to use the privacy curtain under the settlement.

To my non-attorney eyes, it appears that Knight and the OCR are correct. This is what the agreement actually states:

For the duration of Student A’s enrollment in the District:

1. based on Student A’s representation that she will change in private changing stations in the girls’ locker rooms, the District agrees to provide Student A access to locker room facilities designated for female students at school and to take steps to protect the privacy of its students by installing and maintaining sufficient privacy curtains (private changing stations) within the girls’ locker rooms to accommodate Student A and any students who wish to be assured of privacy while changing;

There is no requirement that the boy use the private changing stations.

Moreover, again according to the ACLU of Illinois, the OCR claims the agreement between District 211 and the OCR “applies to all students, not just our client,” which directly contradicts what the district is claiming in its Frequently Asked Questions:

Will this Resolution Agreement require specific locker room access for all transgender students in District 211?

No. The Resolution Agreement pertains to one student in District 211 — the student who filed the original complaint with the Office for Civil Rights.

Will this Resolution Agreement require specific locker room access for transgender students in all school districts throughout the state and nation?

No. The Resolution Agreement pertains to one student in District 211 and does not extend to other students in District 211 or to other school districts.

District 211 taxpayers should be troubled by either the incompetent lack of understanding by district leaders or their deception.

In another frequently asked question, the district admits that the school which the gender-dysphoric boy attends will not be identified and that no parents will be notified if a gender-dysphoric student will be using a locker room with their sons or daughters.

Hard science-denier John Knight also made this ludicrous and ironic statement:

[T]he District continues to demonstrate a wanton ignorance of the science of gender by persisting in drawing a false distinction between transgender persons’ gender and anatomy. Let me be clear. My client is a girl – full stop.

The District’s refusal to accept transgender students as girls and boys is extremely harmful for all students, but especially those who are transgender. We had hoped the District would embrace this moment as an opportunity to educate itself and its community about what it means to be transgender. Unfortunately, that has not happened.

Precisely what “science” proves that there exists no distinction between gender-dysphoric persons’ “gender and anatomy”? If there were no distinction between their “gender” and anatomy, then gender-dysphoric persons would not be lopping off breasts and penises, shaving down Adam’s apples, adding fake breasts, and taking puberty-blockers and dangerous cross-sex hormones.

Clearly there is a distinction between the gender-dysphoric boy’s anatomy/biology and his “gender” (i.e., his desire about his anatomy/biology). His objective, scientifically verifiable anatomy (and barring the presence of an intersex condition, his DNA) is male. He desires to be female. That, Mr. Knight, is a distinction.

No one is obligated to accept the a-scientific proposition that the descriptor “girl” refers to a psychological condition rather than a biological condition. Mr. Knight’s client is a boy—full stop.


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District 211 Children: Chum for Feds

Thousands of parents in District 211, the largest high school district in Illinois, should be outraged. And anyone who rightly fears the ravenous appetite of the slavering dumb beast we call the federal government should be equally outraged. The beast’s minions in the laughingly called Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is a gangrenous section of the cancerous federal Department of Education, has concluded its 2-year investigation of District 211’s actions with regard to a male student who wishes he were a girl. Through its minion the OCR, the Fed-Beast (FEAST), lusting after the bodies and brains of children, has concluded that District 211 has violated federal law.

The very troubled boy—and he is a boy—at the center of this phantasmagorical tale wishes to remain anonymous, so hereafter he will be referred to as “Lola.” Lola has been seeking unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room—yes, you heard that right. Lola—an actual, factual boy, complete, one presumes, with the requisite anatomical parts—wants unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room, which would, of course, include the shower.

Plot summary

What District 211 has already agreed to:

In acts of contortionist-worthy back-bending and misguided charity, the district has agreed to have all school records identify gender-dysphoric students by their new names, identify them as the sex they are not, and refer to them by opposite-sex pronouns (which is to say that the district is lying on school records). In addition, gender-rejecting students are allowed to use opposite-sex bathrooms and are allowed to play on opposite-sex sports teams.

But that’s not all, folks, oh no, that’s not all. According to the Chicago Tribune, the district has also “installed four privacy curtains in unused areas of the locker room and another one around the shower.” This means a boy may, if he wishes, walk through the locker room to the shower area, where presumably girls are showering, to use these private changing areas.

But, even that leaves the beast, its minions, and its allies slavering for more.

What beast-ally John Knight demands:

John Knight, Lola’s ACLU-attorney and FEAST’s ally, vehemently opposes the district’s excessive accommodation of Lola, bleating that requiring Lola to use private dressing areas is unacceptable:

It’s not voluntary, it’s mandatory for her [sic]….It’s one thing to say to all the girls, ‘You can choose if you want some extra privacy,’ but it’s another thing to say, ‘You, and you alone, must use them.’ That sends a pretty strong signal to her [sic] that she’s [sic] not accepted and the district does not see her [sic] as girl.

Word to Knight, neither the “the district” nor any student has a moral obligation to “see her [sic] as a girl,” because he isn’t a girl.

What the beast-minion OCR has decided:

Student A has not only received an unequal opportunity to benefit from the District’s educational program, but has also experienced an ongoing sense of isolation and ostracism throughout her high school enrollment at the school….All students deserve the opportunity to participate equally in school programs and activities—this is a basic civil right….Unfortunately, Township High School District 211 is not following the law because the district continues to deny a female student the right to use the girls’ locker room.

So, now it’s a civil right for boys to use girls’ restrooms, changing areas, and showers.

By “law” the OCR is referring to Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on “sex,” which the unelected minions in the OCR have unilaterally decided includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” When the law was written, “sex” meant objective biological sex, and the law has not changed. The school policy changes that the beast-minion OCR is demanding would require that if gender-rejecting humans with male DNA and penises want to change clothes and shower with girls, they must be allowed to do so—and girls must comply or change in private areas. Not wanting to shower with boys is now seen as an act of bigotry and hatred.

What bothers Lola:

According to the Chicago Tribune, “the student, who plays for the school on a girls’ sports team, said she [sic] broke down in tears after her [sic] coaches reprimanded her [sic] for using the locker room to change. The coach told her [sic] some students felt uncomfortable dressing in front of her [sic].”

Think about what that means. It means Lola—a boy—is offended that girls don’t want to change clothes in front of him. Lola is essentially demanding that everyone accept his delusion that he is in reality a girl.

What Superintendent Daniel Cates rightly and courageously said about this arrogant and preposterous decision:

The policy that OCR seeks to impose on District 211  is a serious overreach with precedent-setting implications….The students in our schools are teenagers, not adults, and one’s gender is not the same as one’s anatomy….Boys and girls are in separate locker rooms—where there are open changing areas and open shower facilities—for a reason.”

Conclusion

It’s not tax rates or immigration policy or ISIS that most gravely injures and weakens America. It’s the bloodthirsty devouring of the hearts, minds, and bodies of our children; the dismantling of marriage and family; and the erosion of the First Amendment. Deception and depravity are consuming our children, often by nibbles that barely register and at other times by huge chunks. The father of lies conceals his deceit under a cloak of compassion. Christians should not be so easily deceived or so easily cowed.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
“it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
~Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll~


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We Got “Transgender” Trouble Right Here in District 211

WARNING: In this article about a gender-dysphoric boy’s pursuit of unfettered access to the girls’ locker room in an Illinois high school, I will be using the male pronoun because pronouns correspond to and denote objective biological sex. Politically-correct readers may want to stop reading now.

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Eighteen months ago a high school student in Palatine-Schaumburg District 211 who wishes he were a girl and his parents filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to force the district to treat him in all contexts as if he were objectively female. The OCR—an intrusive, dictatorial, de facto bastion of “LGBTQ” activism—has ordered the district to allow this boy full, unrestricted access to the girls’ locker rooms “for changing during physical education classes and after-school activities.” The district is rightly refusing to comply, which will likely result in expensive litigation and the potential loss of millions of dollars of federal funds.

Superintendent Daniel Cates, other school officials, and school board members offered a compromise solution that would have given “the transgender student use of the locker room but asked that the student change and shower in private.” The OCR rejected this overly generous compromise as “inadequate and discriminatory.”

In a district newsletter released on Monday, Cates explained that the “goal of the District in this matter is to protect the privacy rights of all students when changing clothes or showering before or after physical education and after-school activities.” This boy—and he is and always will be male—is demanding to be allowed unrestricted freedom to change clothes and shower with girls.

Already the school has made pernicious concessions to “progressive” ideologues and their chuckleheaded notions about the meaning of physical embodiment. On school forms, gender-dysphoric students in District 211 may identify themselves as the sex they wish they were. They may play on opposite sex sports teams. And even more outrageous, they may use opposite-sex restrooms since “there are private stalls available.”

None of this, however, is enough for the gender-rejecting boy, his parents, the OCR, or “LGBTQ” activists. They need every cultural signifier that affirms that objective biological sex is immutable and profoundly meaningful to be eradicated, and they will use the implacable force of the federal government to achieve that end.

John Knight of the ACLU Illinois’ LGBT program claims that in refusing to comply, District 211 is “knowingly breaking the law.” Well, the purported lawfulness of the order is in question.

In 2014, the OCR unilaterally reinterpreted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972—federal civil rights legislation that addressed sexual discrimination, not gender dysphoria—and then commanded that all school districts comply with their fanciful reinterpretation. Here is an excerpt from their imperious proclamation to schools:

The Department’s Title IX regulations permit schools to provide sex-segregated restrooms, locker rooms, shower facilities, housing, athletic teams, and single-sex classes under certain circumstances. When a school elects to separate or treat students differently on the basis of sex in those situations, a school generally must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity.

The OCR imposed their radical reinterpretation on schools without the actual law ever changing. A court case (G. G. v. Gloucester County Public Schools) is currently pending in which the Department of Justice is attempting to change the law in accordance with the OCR’s desires, but as of now, there exists no federal or state law that requires Illinois schools to allow students of one sex to use restrooms or locker rooms designated for opposite-sex students.

Knight also makes the comical claim that by prohibiting a high school boy from showering with his female classmates, the school is telling him that he “can’t be with her [sic] friends at school, but has to be regulated [sic] to a separate place to dress. That’s just a horrible thing to do.” I kid you not. An attorney actually said that.

Those who support “transgender” bathroom and locker room policies should answer these questions:

  • If gender-confused teens should not have to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, then why should other teens have to use 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”?
  • Supporters of “transgender” school policies argue that they’re 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 or locker room 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

Many community members who do not like either the policy sought by this student or the existing policy regarding sports participation and restroom use may dismiss it as unimportant since there are so few gender-dysphoric students. 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 the school has formally embraced the Left’s unproven, non-factual beliefs about sex and gender.

Here are some of the ideas that “transgender” policies teach all students:

  • These policies teach that the subjective feelings of teens who wish they had been born the opposite sex trump objective biological and anatomical reality.
  • Such policies falsely teach that what gender-confused teens feel is their true sex is, indeed, their true sex. Such policies teach students that “gender” has no inherent connection to DNA and its manifestation in biology and anatomy but, rather, that it is determined by subjective feelings. They also teach that everyone must accept their unproven belief that “gender identity” is more objectively real and more important than objective biological and anatomical reality.
  • Supporters of these kinds of policies argue that the majority should not be allowed to deny the rights of the minority, but such a 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.
  • Policies that allow students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms ignore the proper, healthy, and normal feelings of students who do not feel comfortable sharing locker rooms and restrooms with those of the opposite sex. 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.
  • Conversely, such policies falsely teach students that in order to be kind, compassionate, and inclusive of those who experience gender dysphoria, they have to affirm those peers’ feelings and ideas. In reality, neither love, nor compassion, nor wisdom, nor inclusivity requires affirmation and accommodation of every feeling, belief, or behavioral choice of every student in a school. And they certainly don’t require students to affirm confusion as soundness or lies as truth. Real love as well as commitments to morality, objective reality, and public order put limits on what individuals and schools should affirm and accommodate. And real love depends first on knowing what is true.
  • Such policies teach students that cross-dressing (as well as hormone-doping and elective amputations of healthy body parts) is morally acceptable and good.

The proponents of tolerance and diversity demand nothing less than total ideological surrender and compulsory compliance with policies that reflect their doctrinaire assumptions. Taxpayers in District 211 should protest with boldness and tenacity not just this decision but the policy changes that already exist in District 211. Sympathy for this boy’s confusion should not lead community members to affirm destructive policies that embody lies. If Americans don’t oppose such stupid, harmful, tyrannical policies, such policies will come to all government schools, undermining truth, parental rights, children’s rights, and teachers’ rights.


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