Public school students in Massachusetts can now use either the boys or girls bathroom depending on which gender they feel they are that day. Yeah, that means your daughters in public school may be forced to share bathrooms and locker rooms with boys whether they like it or not.
And not only that, students have to affirm that this is cool or face punishments. That’s in order to be inclusive. Seriously. You’ve got to read this part of the Fox News story:
Another part of the directive that troubles parents deals with students who might feel comfortable having someone of the opposite sex in their locker room or bathroom.
The state takes those students to task – noting their discomfort “is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student.”
And any student who refuses to refer to a transgendered student by the name or sex they identify with could face punishment.
For example – a fifth grade girl might feel uncomfortable using the restroom if there is an eighth grade transgendered boy in the next stall.
Under the state guidelines, the girl would have no recourse, Beckwith said.
“And if the girl continued to complain she could be subjected to discipline for not affirming that student’s gender identity choice,” he told Fox News.
“It should not be tolerated and can be grounds for student discipline,” the directive states.
Gunner Scott, of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, praised the directive – and said punishing students who refuse to acknowledge a student’s gender identity is appropriate because it amounts to bullying.
“The reality is that it’s about creating an inclusive environment for all students to learn,” Scott said.
To not accept liberal indoctrination is bullying and you will be punished.
February 22, 2013 at 8:04 pm
School board elections matter. These sort of ridiculous directives
would not happen if decent people made their outrage known come
election time. As it is, most of those elections are decided by a
relative handful of people.
February 22, 2013 at 9:05 pm
Sounds like bullying of the rest of the student population by the few to me. Ridiculous.
February 22, 2013 at 9:58 pm
When will social conservatives stop pushing their beliefs on the rest of society?
Oh. Wait.
These stories are valuable the next time you hear a "libertarian" moaning about how social conservatism is another big government ideology.
February 23, 2013 at 2:58 am
Remember when Boston was a Catholic town? I added a link to this article from my blog to pair it with a link from Fr. Dariusz Oko, a Polish priest, on the homoheresy in the church. These things are related.
February 23, 2013 at 9:24 am
How sad and pathetic that even this most simple aspect of our lives has to be tinkered with in order to accommodate less than .5% of the population.
Just make single-unit unisex bathrooms and spare us the social engineering.
February 23, 2013 at 2:47 pm
Let me get this straight: an eighth grade boy who says, "I feel more like a girl today" can walk with impunity into the girls' locker room while they're changing clothes without any penalty, and if the girls complain, THEY get disciplined???
Another reason to homeschool (as if I needed another one, which I don't, but . . .yikes).
February 23, 2013 at 3:23 pm
Why stop it at "gender"? Today I feel like an Olympian god; I'm going to start smiting you hubristic mortals whenever the mood strikes me. And if any of you complain, it's hate speech!
February 23, 2013 at 3:36 pm
How's a body to know? Should those that want to be called something other than the obvious have the gender selection tattooed on their foreheads? Single unit toilets are in order and locker rooms should be ban. No more showers for athletes.
Homeschool…it's becoming the only option.
February 23, 2013 at 6:11 pm
@elm: Or one could just not live in Massachusetts. Seriously, what's there? A crushing tax-burden and people who think "wicked" is an adverb, that's what.
Nobody would dream of this idiocy in Arizona, I tell you that for free.
February 23, 2013 at 7:44 pm
Sophia's Favorite, I thought that about Omaha until our city passed the LGBTQ preference ordinance. This is straight up persecution by the minority. No one is really safe unless we stand together against these laws everywhere.
February 23, 2013 at 8:49 pm
I guess nobody here has actually read the guidelines (including the author of this post.)
You might want to do so at some point, so that you have some idea of what you're criticizing. (You'll note, however, that Mr. Archibald hasn't included a link to the guidelines. Perhaps because they don't say what he claims they do?)
For those who like a little intellectual rigor in their discourse and don't mind doing some work to ensure that their beliefs are grounded in reality, the guidelines can be found here: http://www.doe.mass.edu/ssce/GenderIdentity.pdf
February 23, 2013 at 9:01 pm
One the one hand, I'd like to see these measures challenged all the way to SCOTUS…
OTOH, these rules would either be upheld, or else the school district would pull an Andy Jackson on this if the Court would not rule to their liking…
February 23, 2013 at 11:37 pm
Hey Adam, if you're going to make a snarky comment about people not reading the guidelines, then perhaps the guidelines you link to should actually contradict what has been asserted.
Some students may feel uncomfortable with a transgender student using the same sex-segregated restroom, locker room or changing facility. This discomfort is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student. School administrators and counseling staff should work with students to address the discomfort and to foster understanding of gender identity, to create a school culture that respects
and values all students.
Or perhaps you got bored and couldn't read that far.
February 24, 2013 at 12:59 am
Thanks Paul. I am so tired of the LGBTQ bullies, like Adam.
February 24, 2013 at 2:22 am
@Ranting Catholic Mom: Ah, but Omaha doesn't have my school district's trump card: it's 1/8 Navajo. Navajo sexual mores are pretty much the same as most other traditional cultures, and "we're gonna let boys walk in on your daughters changing, just because they say they feel like girls" is not something they'd be okay with.
Being Native Americans—and mostly still polytheist ones—they can get all kinds of accommodation from the schools that Christians could never dream of. We can't even have snakes in the bio classrooms, because Navajos regard them as ritually unclean.
(Before anyone brings it up, yes, in traditional Navajo culture there were men who lived like women. However, for purposes like bathing and girls' adulthood ceremonies, those guys still counted as men—because the status's potential to be abused by pervs was obvious to Navajos…whose words for "metal" are actually "flint" with modifiers…but it apparently wasn't obvious to Massachusetts school officials.)
February 24, 2013 at 3:52 am
Clinton is bang-on — in a democracy, voting is everything, and only half of the electorate voted last November. Further, voting in a local school board election is a lonely experience. Your local school election is perhaps the most important. Vote. After all, each leftist / progressive gets to vote two or three times to your one.
February 24, 2013 at 4:08 pm
Wow, Sopia's Favorite, I never thought I'd be jealous of the Navajo. Bu there you go, it's another protected class that trumps another protected class. I wonder what would happen if a transgendered Navajo took one of your schools to court? That would be an epic court case of Rock-Paper-Scissiors for which protected class wins.
February 24, 2013 at 10:35 pm
What can you do when just everything is wrong, it seems?
February 24, 2013 at 10:44 pm
What can you do when just everything is wrong, it seems?
February 25, 2013 at 3:06 am
Yankeefrost: It is wrong to have the public school, not even the state, but the LGBTQ bullies exploit minor children's privacy, with the blessings of the state because they have engineered a vocabulary to make vice sound like virtue. They expose modest children to embarrassment because another student has chosen to confound himself. Everyone is entitled to privacy. "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and to our posterity." Invasion of privacy and personal space, disregarding the respect due to the person, inflicting themselves on a captive audience violates peaceable assembly and "the Blessings of Liberty."