LGBT Issues in Education
May 17, 2016
ELW
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Federal Transgender Edict is Harmful in Many Ways

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The May 13th  edict from the Obama administration demands that every public school in America must allow transgendered students to use the restroom/locker room and participate on the sports teams of their chosen gender identity or risk losing federal funding.  Using Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 as a pretext, the joint Justice and Education Department decree redefines the term “sex,” referring to the biological characteristic defined by chromosomes assigned at birth as “gender identity” which the letter defines as:

Gender identity refers to an individual’s internal sense of gender. A person’s gender identity may be different from or the same as the person’s sex assigned at birth.


The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force definition is even more alarmingly radical, vague and socially transformative as used in a pre-K curriculum called Making Room in the Circle: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Families in Early Childhood Settings:

“Refers to a person’s internal, deeply felt sense of being either male or female, or something other or in between. Because gender identity is internal and personally defined, it is not visible to others.” (Emphasis added)

The incredible danger to the safety and privacy of the estimated 99.7% of American public school students that do not have gender fluidity/gender dysphoria issues is obvious, mostly because of how sexual criminals will exploit the opportunity to harm young girls. An extremely concerning, long list of sexual crimes has taken place in Target restrooms even before their ill-considered policy to allow restroom choice based on gender identity that has cost their business over $1 billion. And an 8-year old was choked to unconsciousness in the restroom of the Chicago restaurant.

But this tyrannical proclamation is harmful to every group involved. This includes the very group this dictate alleges to protect:

Transgendered Students
Dr. Paul McHugh, former chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital documents how fleeting these tendencies are in young people:
Then there is the subgroup of very young, often prepubescent children who notice distinct sex roles in the culture and, exploring how they fit in, begin imitating the opposite sex. Misguided doctors at medical centers including Boston’s Children’s Hospital have begun trying to treat this behavior by administering puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgery less onerous even though the drugs stunt the children’s growth and risk causing sterility. Given that close to 80% of such children would abandon the confusion and grow naturally into adult life if treated, these medical interventions come close to child abuse. A better way to help these children: with devoted parenting. (Emphasis added).
The American College of Pediatricians indicates the details of those numbers showing them to be even higher than the average quoted by McHugh:
“According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.”
They further clarify as follows:
On page 455 of the DSM-V under “Gender Dysphoria without a disorder of sex development” it states: “Rates of persistence of gender dysphoria from childhood into adolescence or adulthood vary. In natal males, persistence has ranged from 2.2% to 30%. In natal females, persistence has ranged from 12% to 50%.”  Simple math allows one to calculate that for natal boys: resolution occurs in as many as 100% 2.2% = 97.8% (approx. 98% of gender-confused boys) Similarly, for natal girls: resolution occurs in as many as 100% 12% = 88% gender-confused girls. (Emphasis in original).
McHugh also explains the problems with ignoring the biological facts of one’s gender in an article from last year at the Public Discourse:
The Emperor’s New ClothesBut the meme–that your sex is a feeling, not a biological fact, and can change at any time–marches on through our society. In a way, it’s reminiscent of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. In that tale, the Emperor, believing that he wore an outfit of special beauty imperceptible to the rude or uncultured, paraded naked through his town to the huzzahs of courtiers and citizens anxious about their reputations. Many onlookers to the contemporary transgender parade, knowing that a disfavored opinion is worse than bad taste today, similarly fear to identify it as a misapprehension.

I am ever trying to be the boy among the bystanders who points to what’s real. I do so not only because truth matters, but also because overlooked amid the hoopla–enhanced now by Bruce Jenner’s celebrity and Annie Leibovitz’s photography–stand many victims. Think, for example, of the parents whom no one–not doctors, schools, nor even churches–will help to rescue their children from these strange notions of being transgendered and the problematic lives these notions herald. These youngsters now far outnumber the Bruce Jenner type of transgender. Although they may be encouraged by his public reception, these children generally come to their ideas about their sex not through erotic interests but through a variety of youthful psychosocial conflicts and concerns.First, though, let us address the basic assumption of the contemporary parade: the idea that exchange of one’s sex is possible. It, like the storied Emperor, is starkly, nakedly false. Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men. All (including Bruce Jenner) become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they “identify.” In that lies their problematic future.

When “the tumult and shouting dies,” it proves not easy nor wise to live in a counterfeit sexual garb. The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people–extending over thirty years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered–documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers. (Emphasis added).

Similar evidence and concern has been expertly pointed out by the American College of Pediatricians and in this well- written Q and A published by the Federalist Society. This policy pronouncement from the Obama administration will not help these children. Promoting, enabling and coercing this gender confusion in students will only worsen the already considerable difficulties they face.

Women’s Athletics
The Justice Department letter said the following about athletics:
Title IX regulations permit a school to operate or sponsor sex-segregated athletics teams when selection for such teams is based upon competitive skill or when the activity involved is a contact sport. A school may not, however, adopt or adhere to requirements that rely on overly broad generalizations or stereotypes about the differences between transgender students and other students of the same sex (i.e., the same gender identity) or others’ discomfort with transgender students.
This means that stronger, faster males who identify as females will usurp spots on formerly all- women’s teams.  The Obama Justice Department used the Minnesota State High School League as a test case and imposed this policy on the public school athletics teams of Minnesota despite heroic efforts by parents and many organizations:
It is highly ironic that Title IX, the federal law that is being used to bludgeon states, public schools, and parents into submission of such a medically, ethically, legally, constitutionally, and athletically damaging situation was written in large part to protect girls and young women from male dominance of female sports.
Poor Children
This letter contains the implied threat of withholding federal education funding just as this administration is threatening to do to North Carolina because the elected legislature and governor of that state decided to protect the privacy and safety of their citizens. As stated by Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, this decision harms poor children, because, according to him, much of Texas’ federal funding supports the free breakfast and lunch programs:
“So Barack Obama, if schools don’t knuckle down to force girls showering with boys and force 8-year-old girls to have to endure boys coming into their bathroom, he’s taking money from the poorest of the poor. The President of the United States will be ending the free breakfast and free lunch program. That’s what he’s saying.”
Whether meal programs or academic programs, it is monstrously abusive, not to mention again ironic, for this first black president to threaten states and school districts with the loss of funds meant for poor and minority students based on verifiable physical, historical and financial characteristics to cater to a troubled and compassion deserving, but extraordinarily small (.01-.03%) group with a very emotional, evanescent, and impossible to verify characteristic with demands that only worsen this small minority’s confusion and difficulties.
Public School Students and Teachers

The academically inferior, developmentally inappropriate, and psychologically manipulative Common Core standards; abusive uninformative high stakes tests; and the invasive data mining system are already chasing many families out of public education. Home schooling has increased 9% in Florida already. The rise of computerized, teacher eliminating, constant assessment and data miningcompetency based education is also going to directly eliminate or drive many good and experienced teachers from the field. This horrific policy will further magnify the loss of families and teachers that are willing to stay and fight to preserve locally-controlled public education.
Parents
Parents are losing their right to control the upbringing, education, and medical care of their children in a myriad of ways. This edict that came as a result of executive fiat without consultation with parents or their elected representatives at any level is just the latest example. This decree will worsen the effects of acceptable under tenth amendment grounds, but medically and ethically terrible decision of state legislatures in states like New Jersey and California and more recently Massachusetts endangering the license of psychiatrists and therapists to that try to help these confused and troubled youth back to identifying with their birth assigned sex, even with parental permission.
Elected Representatives at All Levels
This is yet another terrifying example of the federal government crushing the power and liberties of citizens to direct their lives and those of their children in our representative republic. Whether a school board member, superintendent, commissioner, or legislator at the local, state or federal levels; you are losing your power and relevance as this nation is rapidly approaching a dictatorship or monarchy.
WHAT TO DO:
We heartily agree with this list offered by Jane Robbins and Emmett McGroarty of the American Principles Project at the Pulse 2016 and would add some more detail:

  • Challenge the feds in court, as North Carolina has done. Every sane governor, state school superintendent, and state or local board of education member should be willing to put his or her name on a lawsuit defying the federal government.
ELW: Liberty Counsel is one of several courageous legal groups that has done yeoman’s work in this area, such as offering to defend Marion County, Florida  against an ACLU lawsuit on this subject and deftly advising other Florida counties such as Brevard on how to legally and compassionately deal with this situation.
  • If necessary, give up the federal money. Yes, give it up. For most states, federal funding constitutes less than ten percent of the education budget. Much of that could probably be recouped by not having to comply with the endless federal regulations and the maintenance of federal programs which serve the interests of neither the states nor students. Imagine the freedom of throwing off the federal shackles — and the satisfaction in watching Lynch & Co. sputter and spew in utter impotence. (This applies to private schools as well — accepting any federal funding risks subjection to evil.)
ELW: Minnesota receives about  6% and Florida receives about 12% of its funding from the federal government as examples according to data from the link in the paragraph above.
  • On an individual level for elected officials, if all else fails, resign. Every elected official should be willing to go out in a blaze of glory rather than preside over implementation of such a monstrous policy. Be an example of courage for our children.
ELW: This superintendent may be one of those officials as reported by EAG News:
“I got news for President Barack Obama,” Texas’ Port Neches-Groves Superintendent Rodney Canvass told 12News. “He ain’t my president and he can’t tell me what to do. The letter is going straight into the paper shredder.”
“I have 5 daughters and I have 2,500 girls in my protection. Their moms and dads expect me to protect them. And that is what I am going to do,” he continued. “Now I don’t want them bullied … but there are accommodations that can be made short of this. He is destroying the very fiber of this country. He is not a leader. He is a failure.”

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  • On an individual level for parents, pull your children from the public schools until this policy is defeated. If alternatives are cost-prohibitive, join with other parents to find creative ways to accomplish the goal. Our children are at stake.
ELW:  Freedom Project Academy started by Dr. Duke Pesta is one of many great alternatives for non-Common Core and non-public education.

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Education Liberty Watch would add that we should support organizations like our affiliate organization, Child Protection League Action that is fighting to protect our children’s innocence and safety and that just completed a major action conference on gender radicalism with a DVD available HERE,  Liberty Counsel who is standing for parental and constitutional rights in these matters, and of course, Education Liberty Watch as your education freedom organization in Minnesota and nationally. Please also carefully research the records and statements of candidates at every level! Thank you!
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