For those who despite all evidence to the contrary still believe that the bullying amendment that is pending in the Illinois Senate is centrally about stopping bullying, please read what one of Illinois’ chief homosexual activists organizations, Equality Illinois, recently sent out to its devotees:

SAFE SCHOOLS – AMENDMENT SUBMITTED FOR ANTI-BULLYING LEGISLATION

Thanks to the work of Representative Kelly Cassidy and broad Prevent School Violence Coalition, which includes groups like Equality Illinois, Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, ACLU of Illinois, among others, bill passed the House and is now going to State Senate.

Equality Illinois is a homosexual activist organization. The Illinois Safe Schools Alliance is a homosexual activist organization that was once part of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). The ACLU is an organization as committed to normalizing homosexuality and gender confusion as GLSEN, Equality Illinois, and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance.  And State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) is openly homosexual.

Equality Illinois also made clear that HB 5290 is unnecessary: “House Bill 5290 modifies current law by integrating the specific recommendations of the Illinois School Bullying Prevention Task Force.” HB 5290 restates the recommendations created by the very liberal Bullying Prevention Task Force. Those recommendations are easily available on the Illinois State Board of Education website for any school district that feels it needs further guidance.

Cassidy stated that this additional law is needed because 3 school districts (out of over 900) have no policy and 20 do not have “adequate” bullying policy. What she failed to make clear during floor debates is that the 3 school districts that don’t have bullying policy are already in violation of existing law, so HB 5290 is unnecessary.

Furthermore, HB 5290, which mandates nothing, would do nothing about the 20 school districts that have — in Cassidy’s view — inadequate policy. If these 20 districts have bullying policy, they are in compliance with existing law.

To illustrate that “anti-bullying” programs that address homosexuality or gender confusion (aka “gender identity” or “gender expression”) are centrally about promoting “progressive” notions about homosexuality, just replace “sexual orientation” (a Leftist rhetorical creation) with another condition constituted by subjective feelings and volitional sexual acts.

Everyone knows that teenage girls who are promiscuous are often called ugly names or worse. No decent person wants promiscuous girls bullied, so why don’t anti-bullying laws and school policies include promiscuity in their lists of conditions for which students may not be bullied?  Why don’t teachers show films in which promiscuity is portrayed positively?  Why don’t schools invite speakers who affirm a sexually promiscuous identity to come talk to students about how bad it felt to be bullied in high school for their promiscuity?  Why don’t they have “youth programming” in which promiscuity is affirmed? Why don’t teachers have students read and perform plays in which promiscuity is celebrated and disapproval of it is portrayed as ignorant, bigoted, hateful, provincialism — all in the service of ending bullying?

Or replace “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” with polyamory?  What if some students are bullied because either they or their “parents” identify as polyamorists? Will schools have anti-bullying “youth programming” in which polyamorous unions are  portrayed as morally equivalent to families headed by two people?  Mary Jo Merrick-Lockett, a teacher in a Minneapolis high school that has recently been at the forefront of a national bullying campaign to malign and sue the district into ideological submission to the great and powerful pro-homosexual lobby had this to say:

If you can’t talk about [homosexuality] in any context, which is how teachers interpret district policies, kids internalize that to mean that being gay must be so shameful and wrong. And that has created a climate of fear and repression and harassment.

Will teachers assert that silence on the issue of polyamory creates a climate of harassment for polyamorists? Do teachers believe that internalizing the belief that polyamory is wrong is damaging to students?

What if a student is bullied because her parents are siblings in a committed, loving incestuous relationship? Will public school administrators treat adult consensual incest exactly as they are treating homosexuality and gender confusion — all in the service of ending bullying?

We all know the answer to these questions. Schools would never have students read plays, novels, and magazine articles; or watch films; or perform plays; or attend “youth programming” sessions; or listen to invited speakers that affirm promiscuity, adult consensual incest, or polyamory — not even to end bullying. The reason that lawmakers wouldn’t seek such remedies and administrators would not permit them is that they would not want to affirm something as positive that they believe is immoral — not even to end bullying.  And this is the point: public schools are both implicitly and explicitly taking sides in the public debate about the nature and morality of homosexuality.

Some will take offense at my comparison of homosexuality to polyamory or adult consensual incest because — they argue — those conditions are immoral and homosexuality is not. But that is precisely the unsettled debate. The moral beliefs of homosexuals and their ideological allies who oppressively control public schools are just that: beliefs, assumptions, moral propositions — not facts.

All the various organizations committed to using public schools to normalize homosexuality are trying to make the case that opposition to their anti-bullying laws, policies, and programs constitutes support for bullying, and our lawmakers are falling for it. Our lawmakers are quaking in their boots because they know homosexuals will call them supporters of bullying if they don’t toe the pro-homosexual ideological line. Allowing their fear to control their actions is destructive and embarrassing. 

The truth is it is entirely possible to oppose bullying without mentioning every possible condition for which students may be bullied, without “youth programming,” and without duplicative non-mandatory laws that will before long be made mandatory.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your senator and urge him/her to oppose this unnecessary bullying bill.

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IFI readers, please, whether you have children in schools or not, take seriously the assault on the minds and consciences of students, and take action against the newly amended and completely unnecessary anti-bullying bill: HB 5290.

IFI has requested that a provision be added that would guarantee students and school employees the right to opt out of any programs or activities that promote ideas that conflict with their personal or religious beliefs. If such a provision were added, IFI has agreed to adopt a neutral position on the bill, but so far the bill’s sponsors and the ACLU have steadfastly refused to add an opt-out provision.

It has already passed in the House. Please contact your state senator and ask him or her to oppose the bill unless this opt-out provision is included:

No student or school employee will be required to attend or participate in any anti-bullying program, activity, or assembly that infringes upon free expression or contradicts personal or religious beliefs.

Listening to the audio of the House floor debate on HB 5290 was an illuminating and frustrating experience. Here are some of the illuminating and frustrating excerpts from that debate in which the bill’s chief sponsor, State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) was questioned:

Rep. Mike Bost (R-Murphysboro):

If someone has a different belief than you and they explain that belief and express their belief, and express it in a hard way, but doesn’t put a hand on the person, could that be considered bullying?

Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago):

I don’t believe it does. This would have to rise to the level of harassment and torment.

Rep. Bost:

But what is torment to you and harassment might not be torment to me and harassment.

Rep. Cassidy:

A single statement, I don’t think, can be reasonably predicted to have the following outcome. There is no reasonable person under any standard of law that would say one statement, one single statement that “I disagree with you” would put me at fear of physical harm. So, I don’t believe that your situation would rise to that level. Bullying is about behavior, not belief.

What Cassidy “thinks” and “believes” about how this law would be applied in schools is hardly reassuring.

In addition, she is either ignorant of the text of the existing law or deceitful. The law passed in 2010 does not define bullying as only “harassment,” “torment,” or being in “fear of physical harm” as Cassidy implies in her response to Bost. The law defines bullying as any severe or pervasive physical or verbal act or conduct, including communications made in writing or electronically that can be reasonably expected to place the student in fear of their person or property, cause a substantial detrimental effect to their physical or mental health, or substantially interfere with their academic performance or ability to participate in school activities.  

Since the law does not state — as it should — that bullying acts must be severe and pervasive, a single act, including a verbal act, could be construed as constituting bullying. In addition, a single verbal act that is expected to interfere with academic performance or a student’s ability to participate in school activities could be construed as bullying even if it does not constitute harassment or torment, or “put a student in fear of physical harm.”

It should have been obvious to Cassidy that Bost was not asking if students would be permitted to say literally, “I disagree with you.” He was asking if a student who expresses ideas or beliefs that another student finds offensive could be accused of bullying.

For example, if a student were to say in a classroom discussion or to her friends in the cafeteria, “Homosexual acts are perverted,” or “Gays shouldn’t be allowed to adopt,” or “When men have sex with men, they degrade themselves,” could she be accused of bullying? Could someone claim that those verbal acts caused a “detrimental effect to his mental health”?

Bost’s questioning continued:

Rep. Bost:

What does your bill add to this [existing anti-bullying] law?

Rep. Cassidy:

The underlying [existing] law required that school districts adopt policy on bullying. We have not had compliance statewide and many of the schools have very minimal policies…This [bill] defines what a policy on bullying would look like….There are 3 school districts with no policy at all and over 20 with inadequate policies—one-line policies at best.”

According to Cassidy, 20 schools have “inadequate” bullying policy, but the law passed in 2010 does not mandate any particular policy formulation, so perhaps the very liberal Task Force and Cassidy may not view the policies of these 20 unnamed school districts as adequate, but as long as they have even a one-sentence policy, they’re in compliance with the law. Moreover, no one provided any evidence that these schools’ bullying policies have been problematic. To reiterate, there are about 879 public school districts in Illinois and dozens more non-public, non-sectarian schools to which existing law applies. Of those, only 3 districts, according to Cassidy, have not complied with the law.

State Representative Dennis Reboletti (R-Elmhurst) suggested that the Illinois State Board of Education(ISBE) should be working with the districts that have no policy, rather than passing yet another law. He suggested that the judgment of “inadequacy” seems subjective and the decisions regarding “adequacy” are best left to communities and their elected school boards.

Bost’s question about what HB 5290 adds to current existing law is critical. Despite Cassidy’s obfuscation to the contrary, HB 5290 adds nothing. No school is required to adopt any of HB 5290’s recommendations.

Furthermore, a comparison of the recommendations that HB 5290 makes to the recommendations that the Task Force made and posted  on the ISBE website over a year ago reveals that they’re virtually identical.

State Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie) asked Cassidy if the State Board of Education has made “an effort with those 23 school districts to resolve those issues [no or inadequate bullying policy]. Cassidy responded awkwardly in the passive voice: “The desire was to have a more fully defined guideline.”

First, as already discussed, the guidelines in HB 5290 are not more fully defined. They are the same as the guidelines provided by the Task Force.

Second, who precisely is the person or persons whose identity Cassidy craftily concealed by using the passive voice. Who exactly desired “to have a more fully defined guideline for the school districts”? Suspicious minds would guess that the desirers were Cassidy; the homosexual activist groups Equality Illinois and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance; and the ACLU of Illinois.

Cassidy claimed during the floor debate that she “hears very often from parents,” presumably about bullying issues. How many parents over the past year since the Task Force published their bullying policy recommendations have contacted Cassidy? Did Cassidy verify their stories with their school districts? Did the parents who contacted Cassidy identify their school’s bullying policy as the problem? Did Cassidy ascertain whether these parents live in one of the 23 districts that purportedly have no or inadequate bullying policy? Did Cassidy ask these parents if they had addressed the issue with their principals, superintendents, and school boards? Did Cassidy point these parents to the Task Force’s non-mandatory recommendations, which HB 5290’s non-mandatory recommendations merely restate?

The fact that HB 5290’s recommendations are virtually identical to the Task Force’s recommendations raises a few issues:

• If HB 5290 proposes nothing new, why waste time creating and debating it?
• If HB 5290 mandates nothing, how is it different from a resolution?
• The Illinois State Bullying Prevention Task Force has already issued and posted its recommendations in a 106-page document (about which I have written). Since the Task Force has already issued its recommendations, why are multiple homosexual activist organizations pushing for the passage of HB 5290 if not to establish a beachhead from which to launch their next attack on local control?  The next step will be to make all of their non-mandatory “recommendations” mandatory. The next step will require students and school personnel to attend indoctrination sessions—I mean, “programming” and “training”—that will promote “progressive” views on homosexuality, gender confusion, and cross-dressing.
• If any administrators have contacted Cassidy or other lawmakers requesting further guidance, did the lawmakers direct them to the Task Force’s recommendations, which are posted on the Illinois State Board of Education’s website and are essentially identical to HB 5290?

Imagine we’re playing the childhood game of “Red Light, Green Light.” Homosexual activists and their ideological allies see conservatives with their backs turned away from the game and know they have the green light. Some will career wildly toward their goal of total societal transformation, while others take baby steps, hoping no one will notice until it’s too late.  

Don’t be fooled again. HB 5290 is not about bullying prevention. If we’re going to allow this unnecessary, partisan bill to pass, at least make sure it includes an opt-out for students and school employees. 

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your senator and urge him/her to oppose this unnecessary bullying bill.

How did they vote?

IFI strongly opposes the bill proposed by lesbian activist State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago).  Sixty votes were needed to pass this bill in the Illinois House, and it passed by a vote of 61-49-2. It will now be considered in the Illinois Senate. Look at the official roll call below to see how your state representative voted on HB 5290, or click HERE to download it.

Lest anyone be deceived about the central goal of Illinois’ anti-bullying laws, remember that homosexual activists created the original anti-bullying law, served on the task force charged with making recommendations for implementing the anti-bullying law, and sponsored the anti-bullying bill that just passed in the House. 

Here are a few of the problems with the bill: 

1. In order to prevent the kind of ideological indoctrination to which homosexual activists want to expose students, we requested that this language be added to the bill:

This course shall not include any instruction, resources, or activities that implicitly or explicitly contradict or undermine students’ or parents’ beliefs, including religious, moral, political, and philosophical beliefs, or that might be construed as criticisms or indictments of students’ or parents’ beliefs.”

Our request was ignored.

Some may argue that the following language in the existing anti-bullying law is sufficient protection against indoctrination:

Nothing in this Section or in the prevention course is intended to infringe upon any right to exercise free expression or the free exercise of religion or religiously based views protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or under Section 3 or 4 of Article 1 of the Illinois Constitution. 

This is not sufficient. We know from experience with the civil union bill that proclaimed “intentions” are meaningless in the face of committed homosexual activists.

It’s interesting to note how much stronger the language in Sections 3 and 4 of Article 1 of the Illinois Constitution is than that in the anti-bullying law:

The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination, shall forever be guaranteed, and no person shall be denied any civil or political right, privilege or capacity, on account of his religious opinions….

All persons may speak, write and publish freely….

Moreover, even a course that teaches wildly liberal views of homosexuality and gender confusion could be construed as not infringing on right to exercise free expression and as not infringing on the right to freely “exercise one’s religion or religiously based views.” Even if students are forced to listen to Leftist propaganda in a “youth programming” context, schools could argue that listening to such ideas does not infringe upon students’ rights to exercise free expression or freely exercise their religion or religiously based views. IFI is trying to prevent the government from forcing kids to be exposed to ideas that contradict their personal or religious beliefs.

This bill should say something stronger like “no student will be required to participate in any course, program, or activity that infringes upon free expression or contradicts personal beliefs or religious beliefs.”

2. This bill calls for a range of “restorative measures” to be implemented by schools in order to reduce the incidence of suspensions and expulsions, but one of the recommended restorative measures is the use of “peer juries, peer circles, and peer mediation.” IFI asked that language be included to ensure that participation in potentially emotionally manipulative peer juries, circles, and mediation be voluntary only. Our request was ignored.

3. We are deeply troubled by both the enumerated protected groups in existing law as well as the addition of yet more enumerated protected groups in Cassidy’s bill. Since it is impermissible to bully any student for any reason, enumerated categories are unnecessary.

Retaining and expanding enumerated categories opens the door to other special interest groups demanding the inclusion of yet more categories in this ever-expanding enumerated list. In addition, it will increase resentment among those groups who are bullied for reasons not enumerated.

In addition, since “sexual orientation,” and “gender identity” (conditions enumerated in existing law) are conditions constituted by behaviors that many consider immoral, their inclusion raises the possibility that those who affirm other conditions constituted by volitional acts that many consider immoral (e.g., polyamory) will demand inclusion of their conditions.

Cassidy “promised” that the categories she added to the bill would be deleted from the Senate bill, but as Representative Jerry Mitchell (R-Sterling) pointed out, this is a promise that Cassidy can’t guarantee will be kept.

Even if her promise is kept, however, all the enumerated protected groups from the original law will remain. What is the rationale for eliminating the newest protected groups while retaining the ones included in the disastrous original 2010 law?

Before the Senate version is passed, all enumerated protected groups should be eliminated.

4. We’re also troubled by the following squishy, ambiguous language regarding restorative measures, which opens the door to all sorts of problematic and mandatory ideological training:

Restorative measures means a continuum of school-based alternatives that contribute to maintaining school safety; protect the integrity of a positive and productive learning climate; teach students the personal and interpersonal skills they will need to be successful in school and society; [and] serve to build and restore relationships among students, families, schools, and communities.

Who will determine the nature of the “personal and interpersonal skills” needed for “success in school and society”? Who will decide what constitutes “the integrity of a positive and productive learning climate?” Homosexual activists believe that expressing conservative beliefs about homosexuality or having students study resources that express conservative moral beliefs creates a negative learning environment and will undermine chances for social success.

Who will decide how “safety” is defined? Homosexual activists have redefined the term “safety.” For them, it means absence of the expression of any ideas that dissent from theirs on the nature and morality of homosexuality. Homosexual activists believe that if students who identify as homosexual hear the idea that homosexual acts are immoral or that children deserve a mother and a father, they feel bad; and if they feel bad, they’re “unsafe.” That’s precisely how liberals defend censorship in public schools.

5. The existing Illinois anti-bullying law states that “‘Bullying’” means any severe or pervasive physical or verbal act or conduct.” It is critical to change the language from “severe or pervasive” to “severe and pervasive.” The Supreme Court decision in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, which was a case dealing with sexual harassment in schools, illuminates the potential problems with the language “severe or pervasive”:

Courts…must bear in mind that schools are unlike the adult workplace and that children may regularly interact in a manner that would be unacceptable among adults. See, e.g., Brief for National School Boards Association et al. as Amici Curiae  (describing “dizzying array of immature . . . behaviors by students”). Indeed, at least early on, students are still learning how to interact appropriately with their peers. It is thus understandable that, in the school setting, students often engage in insults, banter, teasing, shoving, pushing, and gender-specific conduct that is upsetting to the students subjected to it. Damages are not available for simple acts of teasing and name-calling among school children….Rather, in the context of student-on-student harassment, damages are available only where the behavior is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denies its victims the equal access to education

The Davis decision was clear that if the language of the law is “severe or pervasive,” it opens the door to onerous litigation for school districts:

Although [i]n theory, a single instance of sufficiently severe one-on-one peer harassment could be said to [deny victims the equal access to education], we think it unlikely that Congress would have thought such behavior sufficient to rise to this level in light of the inevitability of student misconduct and the amount of litigation that would be invited by entertaining claims of official indifference to a single instance of one-on-one peer harassment.

 While this bill is being debated in the Illinois Senate, an amendment should be proposed that changes “severe or pervasive” to “severe and pervasive” in order to protect schools from potentially costly lawsuits.

Time permitting, we will shortly expose some of the embarrassingly weak reasoning–if it can even be considered “reasoning”–offered by Cassidy during floor debates just prior to the vote.

Please contact your senators and urge them to vote “No” on this bill unless the reasonable changes discussed above are implemented.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your senator and urge him/her to oppose HB 5290.

While media pundits and liberal activists feign “concern” about the prominence of “social issues” in the GOP primary race for president, liberal activists tirelessly work to advance their social agenda. Whether it is the mandate from Washington D.C. that requires all healthcare insurance plans to provide free contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization services or the introduction of a “same-sex marriage” bill in Springfield merely nine months after “civil unions” became legal in Illinois, the Left aggressively promotes its social agenda, often with the approval of the mainstream media.

Lesbian activist and recently appointed — not elected — StateRepresentative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) is fast becoming Illinois’ champion of all things liberal. Leftwing zealot Cassidy is co-sponsor of the following bills: “same-sex marriage” (HB 5170), universal health care (HB 311), “medical” marijuana (HB 30), “comprehensive” sex education (HB 3027), a two percent sales-tax increase on firearms ammunition (HB 5167), a resolution to support the Occupy protesters (HR 610), and chief sponsor of another onerous “bullying” bill (HB 5290), which I will address in a future IFI E-Alert.

But it is Rep. Cassidy’s sponsorship of a legislative proposal that would add Gender Identity Disorder (euphemistically referred to as “gender identity”) to the existing “hate crime” law in Illinois (HB 4725) that is the subject of this article.

Enumerated “hate crime” laws are intellectually and ethically flawed and dangerous. This proposed amendment would only make a bad law worse.

It is important to remember that opposition to hate crime laws does not constitute endorsement of criminal acts committed against anyone. One can oppose both criminal acts of all kinds and the pernicious purported solution of hate crime laws, which pose a serious threat to liberty.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state representative to ask him/her to oppose HB 4725 and the addition of Gender Identity Disorder to existing hate crime law. You can also call the Springfield switchboard at (217) 782-2000 and speak to your local representative’s administrative aide about your concerns with this proposal.

It is interesting to note that this bill was originally heard in the Judiciary II committee last Friday, but failed by a vote of 2 yea, 2 nay and 3 present.  Yesterday, however, two of the lawmakers who voted “present” [Reps. Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago) and Esther Golar (D-Chicago)] were substituted by Rep. Toni Berrios (D-Chicago) and the chief sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Cassidy. Obviously, Rep. Cassidy, who was appointed to the General Assembly last summer, has enough clout with Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) for this kind of maneuvering. This exposes Madigan’s eagerness to cater to the aggressive efforts of homosexual activists to promote their “social issues” in the General Assembly.

Problems with hate crimes laws in general:

• American jurisprudence traditionally and rightly takes into account the mens rea, or state of mind, of perpetrators of crimes. In the prosecution and sentencing of crimes, we take into account whether the perpetrator was negligent, reckless, knowing, or purposeful. These categories reveal that our system takes into account the perpetrator’s mental state or the degree of intentionality with regard to his or her actions.
  
  In contrast, hate crime laws are concerned not with the perpetrator’s mental state with regard to his or her actions, but with the beliefs, feelings, or values that impel a particular criminal act. Hate crime laws depend on an evaluation of what the perpetrator believed to be true of the victim, and whether he or she acted because of that belief. This constitutes the most troublingly intrusive form of Big Brother thought control.
  
  There is no ethical justification for meting out more severe punishments for identical actions based on the beliefs, feelings, or values of the perpetrator. The beliefs, feelings, and values of citizens — even beliefs, feelings, and values that society or some segment of society views as erroneous — should be off-limits to the law.
  
  The enhancement of punishments based on the beliefs, feelings, or values of perpetrators opens the door to unconscionable government intrusion into the minds and hearts of citizens. Such intrusion into and evaluation of the beliefs, feelings, and values of citizens is inappropriate in regard to any conditions, including conditions that have no moral implications, but it’s even more problematic when it pertains to volitional behavioral conditions of which questions of morality are central (e.g., homosexuality, cross-dressing).

• The purpose behind enhanced punishments for particular beliefs, feelings, or values is to eradicate those beliefs, feelings, or values, which is decidedly not the role of government or the law.

• Equality before the law is a principle upon which this country is founded. That principle is undermined by establishing particular groups as more worthy of protection than others. Our legal system is based on punishing behavior, not selecting out particular victims for special treatment. Preferential treatment for one group, particularly a group that is constituted my subjective desires and volition, establishes a troubling precedent.

• Preferential treatment for one group will exacerbate rather than reduce inter-group tensions and hostilities.

• Establishing particular groups as deserving of special protections, preferential treatment before the law or establishing other groups as deserving of harsher punishments for committing the same criminal act because of their beliefs, feelings, or values creates a social and political climate that will affect the administration of justice.Imagine a scenario in which the victim of a mugging is a cross-dresser and the perpetrator is known to hate cross-dressers, but the perpetrator had not committed the crime because of his hatred for cross-dressing. Rather, he had committed it because the cross-dresser was alone and appeared to be wealthy. Could the perpetrator be treated fairly before the law? Should his feelings about cross-dressers be the concern of the government? Would the kind of politically charged legal context we are creating with laws that evaluate feelings ever concede that such feelings did not play a role in the commission of the crime? What crimes are prosecuted, and what sentences are levied become political acts.One writer explains this:

Prosecution is selective. This means that the district attorney or prosecutor decides which cases to pursue and which to dismiss. They also decide which charges to file. In most cases this is mainly about expediency, but there is always an element of politics involved. When it comes to hate crimes, the political element grows immensely in a potential prosecution. This is because the hate crime casts an offense against an individual or small group of individuals as an offense against an entire demographic subset.

Problems with the inclusion of the term “gender identity”:

• The term “gender identity” is a biased, non-neutral, political term that was created to disassociate certain behaviors (e.g., cross-dressing) from the psychological disorder that impels them. The neutral terms are “gender dysphoria” and Gender Identity Disorder. We object to the inclusion of “gender identity” because embedded in it are a number of non-factual assumptions about the nature of gender dysphoria and the morality of particular behaviors associated with gender dysphoria and Gender Identity Disorder.

• This term “gender identity” was invented as a rhetorical tool to legitimate or normalize behaviors that citizens have every right to view as disordered and immoral.

• The term “gender identity” was invented as a rhetorical tool to stigmatize those who view gender aberrant behaviors as disordered and immoral.

• Making possible enhanced punishments for crimes committed against those who experience gender confusion raises the question of whether those who experience other disorders/conditions that have volitional behavioral implications will demand inclusion of their conditions in enumerated hate crimes laws.

• Using laws to make social, moral, and political statements about moral beliefs that one group doesn’t like is unethical and dangerous.

Conclusion:

We are becoming a society increasingly removed from fundamental American principles of justice. The law is being used to treat people differently depending on their group membership and to invade the thoughts minds and feelings of people, all in the service of transforming the social, moral, and political beliefs of Americans.

The Chicago Tribune published an article by Associated Press medical writer Lindsey Tanner which states that a growing number of teenagers and even younger children “who think they were born the wrong sex” are finding doctors willing to give them “sex-changing treatments.” Tanner says the issue “raises ethical questions.”

Tanner tells the story of an 8-year-old girl in L.A. who at 18 months announced “I a boy.” Her parents parents now refer to her as a boy and are “watching for the first signs of puberty.” The child’s mother says that when “he” was told he could get shots to block breast development, “he was so excited.”

Leading the charge to facilitate this cruel deception is Dr. Norman Spack of Boston’s Children’s Hospital, a doctor who is no stranger to media attention for his work. “If you open the doors, these are the kids who come,” Dr. Spack says. He believes  that the psychiatric diagnosis of “gender identity disorder” for children who wish they were born the opposite sex is a “misnomer.”

Dr. Margaret Moon, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ bioethics committee, cites ethical concerns with offering “sex-changing treatment” to kids under the age of eighteen. She says that some kids may get a psychiatric diagnosis when they are just uncomfortable with “narrowly defined gender roles” and that it is harmful “to have an irreversible treatment too early.”

Dr. Spack’s “Gender Management Service” clinic opened in 2007, and he reports a fourfold increase in patients, up to 19 each year, versus four in the late 1990s. Once younger children begin to show signs of puberty, they are given puberty-blocking drugs, in monthly injections or implants imbedded in the arm. Later, teens are given hormones, which can have serious side effects, including blood clots and cancer.

The article concludes with comments from Dr. Jo Olson, medical director of a transgender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Olson said that reports appearing in the medical journal Pediatrics should help persuade more doctors to offer these kids “sex-changing” treatment or refer them to specialists who will. “It would be so nice to move this out of the world of mental health, and into the medical world,” Olson said.

Gender confusion is not confined to the world of mental health, as Dr. Olson asserts.  It is now a major issue political issue and is on the fast track to normalization in our schools and halls of legislation.  In the Illinois General Assembly, lesbian activist and State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) has even sponsored legislation (HB 4725) to add Gender Identity Disorder to the list of “hate crimes.”  (Thanks to IFI’s lobbying efforts, HB 4725 failed to advance out of committee on February 23rd. Two voted in favor, three voted “present,” and two voted no.)

Read IFI’s position paper on HB 4725, authored by IFI’s Laurie Higgins.