Bribing Schools To Accept Transgender Policies

The problem with federal money is that it always comes with strings attached. Our local school boards no longer have the freedoms they once had because many of their decisions are determined by the federal Department of Education and linked to grants and funding. The Biden administration is using grants and funding in order to advance its radical agenda on child sexuality.

On Sunday, Just the News reported the following:

A new Biden administration rule forces schools to comply with progressive ideology on gender and sexuality or risk losing the federal aid for free and reduced-price school lunches.

Legal observers say this is just the first in a slew of new rules on the horizon tying federal education funding to far-left policies on gender and sexuality.

The school lunch funding controvesy began in May 2022, as The Center Square previously reported, with an announcement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which handles federal help for school lunches.

The USDA said at the time it would change its longstanding interpretation of Title IX, the law broadly governing discrimination protections in education. USDA said it would expand its previous prohibition against discriminating based on sex “to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

School lunch funding goes through the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of USDA.

The article notes:

“This is a significant departure from what Title IX has always been interpreted to be,” Sarah Perry, a lawyer at the Heritage Foundation and expert on this issue, told The Center Square.

With an ever-growing number of orientations and gender identities, and despite the political divide on the issue, schools will now be forced to comply on the complex and highly politicized gender and sexuality issue.

“This is no small change,” Perry said. “This is a significant interpretation to say that sex equals sexual orientation and gender identity when Title IX, we know, dates back to 1972 and the women’s liberation movement, and at the time there was an entire campaign by LGBTQ activists to be included in anti-discrimination law indicating that they themselves did not believe that they were protected in these particular contexts.”

Is there anyone is Congress who is willing to stand up to this? This is not a law–it’s a regulation. Does anyone in Congress have the courage to propose a law that will prevent this from happening?

Parents’ Voices Do Make A Difference

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller posted an article about an Idaho school board policy that was canceled because of objections from the community.

The article reports:

An Idaho school board canceled any further action on a proposed policy that would allow the use of bathrooms and locker rooms on the basis of gender identity rather than biological sex, following community uproar.

Caldwell School Board put its gender identity policy on hold on Monday after community backlash caused a previous meeting to abruptly end. The pause comes as Idaho’s Senate Education Committee introduced legislation that would require Idaho students to use bathrooms and locker rooms on the basis of biological sex, according to KTVB 7.

The also notes:

In January, the school board proposed the policy which advises teachers to call students by their preferred pronouns. The school board shut down the meeting early after those protesting the policy failed to listen to the board’s warnings regarding conduct.

“It is always okay to have concerns, especially when regarding the safety of your child,” a Caldwell student said at the January meeting. “But, it is also unfair to ignore the concerns of others, including the children that policy that 3281 was written for.”

Because the community said ‘no’, the policy was put on the back burner. There is no promise that the policy will not come out in the future, but for now, common sense rules the day. All of us have to learn to stand up against our school boards and other community leaders who are advocating for things that pose a risk to our children. I don’t want to see any child bullied or made fun of, but I also don’t want to see children harmed by rules put in place by well-meaning school boards who did not consider the consequences of those rules.

Stopping The Mutilation Of Children

On Saturday, The Daily Caller posted an article about a recent decision by a federal judge regarding the issue of gender identity.

The article reports:

A federal judge has reversed a Biden Administration rule that directed the Department of Health and Human Services to increase access to sex change surgeries and hormone therapies, including to children, in a Friday ruling.

Biden’s HHS said in May 2021 that it would interpret a section of the Affordable Care Act, which bars doctors from discriminating on the basis of sex, as covering sexual orientation and gender identity. Two doctors represented by the America First Legal Foundation brought a class action lawsuit against the Biden administration after the HHS took the action, arguing that the rule would interfere with their ability to properly practice medicine.

The judge argued that the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX to include “gender identity,” was faulty and could not be changed until Congress passed a law to that effect, or the Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

In recent years, we as Americans have subverted the lawmaking process our Founding Fathers put into place. Many, if not all, of our laws are being made by government agencies and Executive Orders rather than Congress. Executive Orders are easily overturned by subsequent Presidents, but laws by the bureaucracy seem to go unchallenged.

The article concludes:

The judge also added that by extending sex protections to individuals who identified with a sex other than their biological sex, the purpose of Title IX was compromised.

“Defendants’ reinterpretation of Title IX through the Notification imperils the very opportunities for women Title IX was designed to promote and protect — categorically forcing biological women to compete against biological men.”

Several states have moved to ban sex change procedures for minors. Florida’s Board of Medicine has voted to ban sex change surgeries and hormones for children under 18. Tennessee lawmakers introduced a bill to ban the procedures Wednesday.

The way to treat gender dysphoria is not to surgically confirm it–the way to treat it is to find the underlying cause or simply wait for the child to outgrow it.

The Technical Equivalent Of “The Dog Ate My Homework’

On September 14th, Fox News posted an article about a unique event related to the comments section of of the new Title IX Regulations proposed by the Biden administration. The proposed regulation would change the concept of sex discrimination to gender or gender identity discrimination, opening the door for transgender males to participate in women’s sports and use women’s restrooms and locker room.

The article reports:

Biden’s Title IX proposals include changes to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos‘ 2020 due process rules, which was the previous record holder for public comments. Her changes “weakened protections for survivors of sexual assault and diminished the promise of an education free from discrimination,” the Biden White House charged.

The Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies recently released a study highlighting what they called the “Dirty Dozen Defects” of the draft. The “defects” the group said has fired parents up most are those that would require schools and colleges to allow biological males to compete in girls’ sports and use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their “gender identity.” 

Monday was the last day for public comment on the change. Comments on the proposal totaled 350,000 last Tuesday in the Federal Register. However, things had changed by Friday.

The article reports:

By Friday, however, the total was reduced to 184,009, Politico first reported. Officials told reporters that a “clerical error” at the Department of Education had accidentally “boosted” the number of comments to the original 350,000.

The disappearance of comments on the government website did not come without warning. The government explicitly reserved the right to not make a given comment available to the public, stating, “Please note that while everyone can comment, not every comment is made publicly available to read. Agencies have the option of whether or not to post comments to [the government site].”

Somehow I don’t believe the story about the “clerical error.” What I do believe is that most Americans oppose this change even if they did not take the time to post a comment. We are reaching a point where our country is being governed by a few people who really don’t care what the rest of us think. Unfortunately, no one in Congress seems to have the courage to confront the Biden administration on the planned change.

Exposing The Truth In The Gender Identity Movement

On Friday, The Western Journal posted an article about ‘Libs of TikTok,’ a Twitter account that exposes the far-left gender identity activists for what they really are: groomers.

The article reports:

Ron Coleman, who was part of the Trump legal team and is a partner at Dhillon Law Group, has had enough. His firm represents “Libs of Tik Tok,” a Twitter account that exposes the far-left gender identity activists for what they really are: groomers.

The creator of LoTT remained anonymous until Taylor Lorenz, the Washington Post’s hypocritical internet culture reporter, wrote an expose in which she doxed the woman behind LoTT, publicly sharing personal information including her home and workplace addresses. Leftists try to suppress the First Amendment because they know full well that when their useful idiots go public, they look very, very bad to us common folk.

LoTT posts video clips of gender identity activists plying their trade on Twitter. The clips have been posted elsewhere on social media by the activists themselves. LoTT gathers clips into a freakshow forum.

LoTT is not a hit operation. It merely highlights what the crazies are saying about themselves. The site does little in the way of editing or commenting on the clips.

The article notes:

Tucker Carlson is no stranger to backlash for his conservatives views, either. He jumped in to defend LoTT by devoting an opening monologue to the subject and airing clips from LGBTQ activists discussing how they educate young schoolchildren about gender fluidity, transgenderism and the Black Lives Matter movement.

One of the “teachers” on the clips claims that when babies are born the doctors look at them and “guess” the baby’s gender.

Another “teacher” claims that three- and four-year-old kids are aware of gender identity and that anybody who disagrees with teaching kindergarteners about it is guilty of “internalized homophobia and transphobia.”

The far left is smart enough to understand that when mainstream Americans watch these clips about innocent children being indoctrinated with nonsense, they get angry.

Whatever happened to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic?

What Are We Doing To Our Children?

On Friday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about a twelve-year-old girl in Florida who tried to commit suicide twice. Suicide among teenagers is a problem that has been exacerbated by the coronavirus lockdowns, but the problems that drove this child to try to take her life had nothing to do with the coronavirus or the lockdowns.

The article reports:

The parents of a 12-year-old Florida girl who tried to hang herself twice at her school after ‘months of secret meetings about her gender identity’ are slamming the district staff who allegedly went behind their backs and ‘created a double life’ for their daughter.

Wendell Perez, and his wife Maria Perez, allege the staff at at Paterson Elementary School – where their daughter was enrolled – violated their parental rights by failing to inform them of the alleged gender identity crisis and developing a plan to help her address it without their consent. 

‘We’re talking about the staff from school this information and developing a plan of several sessions with my daughter, for months, talking about issues that are related and that the parents need to be involved,’ Wendell Perez told DailyMail.com on Thursday. ‘They basically created a double life for my daughter.’

…The complaint alleges that school counselor Destiney Washington held secret weekly meetings with Wendell Perez’s daughter about her alleged ‘gender identity crisis’ but neglected to alert her parents. It also claims school leaders encouraged other students and staff to refer to the young girl as a boy and even gave her a new name. 

It remains unclear why the 12-year-old was seeing the counselor or how the gender identity meetings come of fruition. 

The article concludes:

There is currently active legislation in the state of Florida, addressing concerns similar to that of the Perez family.

House Bill 1557, also known as the Parental Rights in Education bill, would require school boards to notify parents about specific information regarding a child’s emotional, physical and mental well-being. It would also limit classroom conversation on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Critics, calling it the Don’t Say Gay bill, claim it also encourages parents to sue schools or teachers that engage in discussions about these topics with students. 

‘We call it the ‘don’t say gay’ bill because it will essentially erase conversations in our classrooms about LGBTQ students, families, and history,’ State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith told the TV station.

‘Many LGBTQ people don’t have supportive homes. They don’t have supportive parents. Oftentimes their teachers and their school environment is the only form of support they have and we cannot take that away.’

Boyles is reportedly a proponent of the bill, which is currently in the House Judiciary Committee.

There is a trend in some of our schools now to try to usurp the rights of parents. Parents have the right to raise their children–to know what is happening in sensitive areas such as gender confusion. The teachers and administrators involved in this need to be charged with child abuse and never allowed to work with children again.

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This Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone

The Epoch Times posted an article today about a sexual assault case in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. The alleged assault took place in a gender-neutral bathroom in a high school. I sincerely question if the people who came up with the idea of gender-neutral bathrooms were ever teenagers. Unfortunately we don’t live in a world that can safely support the idea of gender-neutral bathrooms. I’m not sure that world ever existed, but it does not exist now.

The article reports:

According to News 9 WOAW, 18-year-old Austin Sauer was arrested on Thursday on charges of child enticement, fourth-degree sexual assault, and exposing genitals to a child, the sex of whom has not been reported.

The Wisconsin state law defines fourth-degree sexual assault as “sexual contact with a person without the consent of that person.”

An officer from the Oneida County Sheriff’s Department told the local ABC affiliate that the incident took place in a gender-neutral bathroom at Rhinelander High School. The school has promptly closed that bathroom.

In a statement released to WOAW, Rhinelander School District Superintendent Kelli Jacobi said that “both students went into the bathroom voluntarily.”

“This was not a random incident, as both students went into the bathroom voluntarily,” she said. “The male student will no longer be able to be on school grounds, and the gender-neutral bathroom is no longer available to students.”

The article concludes:

Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision in a privacy lawsuit against a public school district in Dallas, Oregon. A panel of three judges ruled in favor of the school district, saying that it did not violate federal law or constitutional rights with a “student safety plan” that allows transgender students to use bathroom, locker, and shower facilities that “match their self-identified gender.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court last May refused to hear an appeal in a case from Pennsylvania, in which lower federal courts upheld a school district’s policy of permitting transgender students to use restrooms or locker rooms matching their gender identity. Four students, who felt uncomfortable with the policy, sued the school district on the basis that it violated their privacy rights and federal laws under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

It seems to me that common sense needs to be part of this discussion. The majority of our high school students are not transgender. Those students are entitled to privacy. There is no reason for a student with male genitals to be in a high school girls’ locker room. I don’t know exactly what provisions would have to be made, but I wouldn’t want my granddaughters to have to deal with boys in their locker room. If they still have their male body parts, they are boys and do not belong in the girls’ locker room. If they no longer belong in the boys’ locker room, then other facilities need to be made available.

Addressing A Politically-Created Problem

Breitbart reported the following yesterday:

The New Hampshire House Education Committee will hold a public hearing on Tuesday on HB 1251, legislation to protect female athletic programs from men, or transgender women, who want to compete in girls’ and women’s sporting events.

The bill — sponsored by New Hampshire Republicans Mark Pearson, Judy Aron, Regina Birdsell, Linda Camarota, Linda Gould, Kathleen Hoelzel, Alicia Lekas, Jeanine Notter, Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien, Kim Rice, and Ruth Ward — states it is about “Discrimination Protection in Public Schools.”

The article reports the reaction to the bill:

Organizations for and against the bill are mobilizing the public. Save Women’s Sports and Cornerstone are hoping for the legislation to become law.

Cornerstone wrote in a notice about the public hearing:

Female athletes deserve a level playing field. They should not have to compete against biological males for a spot on the podium, even if those males claim a female gender identity. Biological males are already starting to dominate women’s competitive sports.

The Citizens Count website is reaching out to people who support transgender sports.

If the bill becomes law it would be effective 60 days after its passage.

Athletic scholarships are one ticket to college for athletic high school girls. In recent years many of these girls have lost scholarship opportunities because of losing to high school boys transitioning or claiming to identify as girls. Anyone who understands basic biology understands that this is simply unfair. I don’t have an answer to a transgender high school student who wants to complete athletically. Do we need a transgender athletic program? I don’t know. What I do know is that letting boys compete in girls’ sports is simply unfair to girls.

Insanity Made Legal

An article at New Jersey News 12 updated on December 23 reported that New Jersey birth certificates will now include a third, non-binary label come February 1.

The article reports:

Gov. Phil Murphy signed the Babs Siperstein Bill into law last July.

The new legislation gives parents the option of choosing a gender-neutral or non-binary identity on their child’s birth certificate. It also allows adults to change the gender marker on their birth and death certificates, without proof of reassignment surgery.

“Just because your sex assigned at birth is one thing, it does not necessarily mean that it is something that’s going to be consistent with your gender identity throughout your life,” says Ashley Chiappano with the group Garden State Equality.

I would like to remind Ms. Chiappano that the sex assigned at birth is not randomly assigned–it is based on visible biological, scientific information.

The article concludes:

Chiappano says that there is a difference between sex and gender.

“Sex is more like a label. When we’re talking about sex, this is assignment by a doctor,” she says. “Gender identity goes even further to say that it’s how you feel on the inside and how you express yourself. It’s how you express yourself through your clothing, your behavior, your personal appearance.”

The new law is named after Edison resident Babs Siperstein, the first elected transgender member of the Democratic National Committee in 2012.

New Jersey joins Oregon, California and Washington, which have all approved similar legislation. New York City also just changed birth certificates to be gender neutral.

I totally reject the idea that sex is assigned by a doctor. It is designated on the basis of visual evidence. It is becoming obvious that in several states the inmates have taken over the asylum.

About That Oft Repeated Concern For The Constitution…

Yesterday PJMedia posted an article about constitutional violations under President Obama. Somehow I don’t remember the Democrats being very upset about those violations.

The article lists the violations:

5. Illegally firing an inspector general

In 2009, Barack Obama illegally fired Gerald Walpin, the inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service,  without notice or providing the legally mandated explanation for the firing to Congress. Obama did this to protect Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, an ally of his, whom Walpin had been investigating for misusing federal funds Walpin had discovered a cover-up of sexual assault allegations by minors against Johnson.

4. Giving “green energy” loans to donor companies

If you want to talk about an abuse of power, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were both personally involved in the decision-making process to determine who got $80 billion for clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits for green energy companies, in a highly politicized process that favored companies that supported the Obama-Biden campaign over those that didn’t. It was no coincidence that the companies that got all the cash were donors to their campaign. In fact, DOE officials expressed concerned that Obama and Biden’s involvement was putting taxpayer dollars at risk. Not only did they give all this money to green energy companies that donated to their campaign, but the Obama administration also stole proprietary technology from companies that didn’t get the loans to the Obama cronies who got them. This scandal was much bigger than Solyndra, but the calls for Obama’s impeachment weren’t there.

3. Unconstitutional recess appointments

When Obama made a number of controversial picks for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), he was unable to get them through the Senate. So, in January 2012, he declared his nominees appointed to the Senate via recess appointments. Except the Senate wasn’t even in recess at the time. Obama’s actions were such a blatant abuse of power that experts on both sides of the aisle blasted Obama for what he did and a federal appeals court overturned the appointments a few days after his second inauguration, declaring, “Allowing the president to define the scope of his own appointments power would eviscerate the Constitution’s separation of powers.” The United States Supreme Court ultimately took up the case, and unanimously agreed Obama abused his power.

2. Illegally reinterpreting Title IX

When Title IX was written, the goal was to protect people from discrimination based on sex in education. The notion of “gender identity” or “gender expression” wasn’t even a thing back in 1972 when it was passed. Nevertheless, Obama unilaterally decided that “sex” meant “gender identity” and threatened to enforce this bizarre idea. This was a huge violation of the rights and privacy of women and girls nationwide without so much as a national debate in Congress, where this issue needed to be worked out. Instead of going to Congress, Obama simply threatened educational institutions at all levels with the loss of Title IX funding if they didn’t comply and allow boys to share bathrooms, locker rooms, and dorm rooms with girls, as well as allow boys to play on girls sports teams. Obama’s going around Congress on this issue was a huge violation of power.

1. Changing immigration law via executive order

The truth is, Obama spent most of his presidency with a divided Congress or a GOP-controlled Congress. His radical left-wing agenda was mostly DOA because rather than work toward compromise legislation, his default position was to act on his own, assuming the executive authority to change laws via executive fiat. Anyone who’s familiar with the Constitution knows he had no such authority.

Still, when the DREAM Act failed to pass, Obama issued an executive order creating DACA, an executive-branch version of the DREAM Act. Obama literally bypassed Congress, changing U.S. immigration law via executive pen to appease his pro-open-borders base.

There seems to be something of a double standard here. The Democrats are not able to name one instance where President Trump abused his power or violated the Constitution, yet there was not a peep out of them when President Obama openly violated the Constitution.

Maybe There Is A Solution Not Yet Tried

Breitbart posted an article yesterday about an aspect of the transgender population that has not yet been fully considered.

The article reports:

A new study that examined students who claim to have gender identity issues found that, compared with 45 percent of students who are comfortable with their biological sex, 78 percent of gender-disturbed students met the criteria for at least one mental health problem.

Researchers affiliated with the Boston University School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, and University of Michigan School of Public Health, conducted the expansive study, published at the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The study, which included more than 1,200 college students with gender identity issues across 71 U.S. college campuses, found that, across commonly used mental health measures, 78 percent of the gender-disturbed students met the criteria for one or more of the outcomes of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-injury, and suicidality.

The article concludes:

In 2018, Dr. Lisa Littman at Brown University set out to learn more about why the number of adolescent girls identifying as transgender at Britain’s Gender Identity Development Service had increased from 41 percent in 2009 to 69 percent in 2017.

The researcher said she had observed teens without a history of gender dysphoria – a clinical term describing psychological discomfort caused by a sense one’s gender is incompatible with one’s biological sex – were “coming out” as transgender “after a period of immersing themselves in niche websites after similar announcements from friends.”

In her study of 256 parents, which was condemned by LGBT activists, Littman found 87 percent of the young people were reported to have “come out” as transgender after increased time spent on social media and the Internet and after “cluster outbreaks” of gender dysphoria among their groups of friends. Most of the teens who ultimately identified as transgender also showed increased popularity with peer groups afterward, according to their parents’ reports.

Additionally, Littman found nearly two-thirds of the young people whose parents participated in the survey had already been diagnosed with at least one psychiatric developmental disorder prior to the onset of the gender dysphoria. For example, nearly half of the young people had already attempted to harm themselves or had experienced a trauma, suggesting the mental health issues preceded the reported gender identity disturbance.

Recently, the academic response to a child who expresses a desire to change their sex has been to aid them in the process, sometimes without parent knowledge or consent. It would make more sense to search for underlying issues and deal with those issues before encouraging a child to walk down such a life-changing path. I recently read an article about a young boy, about nine or ten, who told his parents he wanted to be a girl. The parents sought counseling for the child, rather than simply go along with his wishes. The counseling revealed that because the child noticed that his younger sister who was handicapped got more attention from his parents than he did, he thought that if he were a girl, he would get more attention. His going through the transgender process would not have helped his problem at all. After counseling, the family dynamic was altered, and the boy went happily along the way as a little boy.

Not every person who claims to be transgender is actually transgender. Some have simply walked down that path in a desperate attempt to deal with other underlying issues. We do these people a disservice when we don’t look for and attempt to solve those underlying issues.

Usurping Parental Rights

Yahoo News posted a USA Today article about a 14-year-old school child who decided that she was a boy. The story is heartbreaking because the parents tried to provide the help the child needed, and the school undermined them every step of the way.

The article reports:

In April 2016, my then 14-year-old daughter became convinced that she was my son. In my attempt to help her, her public school undermined me every step of the way.

Throughout my daughter’s childhood, there were no signs that she wanted to be a boy. She loved stuffed animals, Pocahontas and wearing colorful bathing suits. I can’t recall a single interest that seemed unusually masculine, or any evidence that she was uncomfortable as a girl.

The only difficulty she had was forming and maintaining friendships. We later learned why: She was on the autism spectrum. She was very functional and did well in school, helped by her Individualized Education Program (IEP), a common practice for public school students who need special education.

At her high school, my daughter was approached by a girl who had recently come out at school as transgender. Shortly after meeting her, my daughter declared that she, too, was a boy trapped in a girl’s body and picked out a new masculine name.

The school began treating the girl as a boy and addressing her with masculine pronouns. The parents were unaware of this. When they found out about it, they requested that those in the school call her by her legal name at all times. Their request was ignored–the school continued to address her by a masculine name and masculine pronouns.

The article continues:

We met with the school district’s assistant superintendent, who told us the hands of school personnel are tied and that they had to follow the law. But there was no law, only the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleagues” letter of May 2016 that said schools need to officially affirm transgender students. Just three months later, in August 2016, a federal judge in Texas blocked the guidelines from being enforced. And in February 2017, the Trump administration rescinded the Obama-era guidelines, leaving it to the states to set their own policies.

I also learned that the ACLU has sent threatening letters to schools stating that it is against the law to disclose a student’s gender identity, even to their parents. But this letter appears to misunderstand federal law. The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act requires that schools allow parents to “inspect and review” their child’s education records as long as the child is under 18.

The article then reveals the peer pressure in the world of psychology:

We had our daughter evaluated by a psychologist approved by the school district. He told us that it was very clear that our daughter’s sudden transgender identity was driven by her underlying mental health conditions, but would only share his thoughts off the record because he feared the potential backlash he would receive. In the report he submitted to us and the school, he did not include these concerns that he would only share in person.

Please follow the link to the article to read the rest of the story. I need someone to explain to me how this sort of behavior by schools is in any way helpful to our children.

Taking Away The Freedoms Guaranteed In Our Constitution

The First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution reads:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Laws passed by Congress and state legislators are supposed to be in line with the U.S. Constitution. However, there is a bill currently in the House of Representatives that not only undermines the First Amendment, it also cancels out The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. H.R. 5 is a nightmare for those who believe in religious liberty and freedom of religion.

The Heritage Foundation lists seven problems with the bill:

1. It would penalize Americans who don’t affirm new sexual norms or gender ideology.

2. It would compel speech.

3. It could shut down charities.

4. It would allow more biological males to defeat girls in sports.

5. It could be used to coerce medical professionals.

6. It could lead to more parents losing custody of their children.

7. It would enable sexual assault. 

All of these problems have already arisen. Please follow the link to The Heritage Foundation to view the details.

The Liberty Counsel posted an article on May 10 detailing one major aspect of H.R.5. The article states:

HR 5, in the U.S. House, and S. 788, in the Senate, misnamed the “Equality Act,” takes the unpreceded step of eliminating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) as a claim or defense to the application of many federal laws. This bill drastically alters religious freedom in all cases, not just those involving LGBT.

For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 permits houses of worship to make employment decisions based on religion. This recognizes the essential right for houses of worship to employ those who align with their religious doctrine. The “Equality Act” would abolish this fundamental right. Catholic and Christian churches could be forced to hire atheists. If a synagogue preferred a Jew over a Muslim, it would not be able to raise RFRA as a claim or defense.

RFRA is a federal law that protects religious freedom. Specifically, it “prohibits any agency, department, or official of the United States or any State (the government) from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, except that the government may burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person.” 

However, HR 5 clearly forbids raising RFRA as a claim or defense to the application to the “Equality Act” and many other federal laws that would be amended by this bill.

This “Equality Act” extends the federal protections to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy, i.e. abortion. HR 5 applies to employment, housing, rental, public accommodation and more. In addition, the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” will be defined to mean “pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition.” In other words, under the terms of this bill, “pregnancy, childbirth or a related medical condition… shall not receive less favorable treatment than other physical conditions.” The “Equality Act” also expands the definition of public accommodations to include places or establishments that provide (1) exhibitions, recreation, exercise, amusement, gatherings, or displays; (2) goods, services, or programs; and (3) transportation services.”

After passing the House Judiciary Committee recently, the “Equality Act” will now go to the House next week and then be sent to the Senate, where the bill number is S. 788.

If you value religious freedom in America, please call your Senator and tell them to vote against this bill. It will probably pass in the House of Representatives, but needs to be stopped in the Senate. If you are not a religious person and don’t think this is a problem, remember that if the government can undo religious freedom, it can also undo other freedoms. You might not be impacted this time, but if this bill passes, there will be more to follow.

Child Abuse In Our Schools

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about a lawsuit filed by some parents against an Oregon school district. The case began with an 8-year-old boy with a stomach issue and ends with that child being encouraged to be a girl.

The article reports:

Parents in Woodburn said their 8-year-old son was held back from recess multiple times for one-on-one conversations about his gender identity – and they had no idea.

The mother and father in Woodburn are now suing a school district for nearly a million dollars after they say a second-grade teacher singled out their son by asking him if he was transgender. The parents say the teacher had inappropriate conversations with the child at school without their permission. …

The parents say this all started when their son started using the staff restroom because of a stomach problem. They say their son was uncomfortable using the boy’s bathroom because of his medical condition. However, they believe the teacher assumed their son was uncomfortable because he was transgender.

“Still today, a year later, if he plays with my niece, he’s a girl in that moment… if he plays with my nephew, he’s a boy,” said the mother.

The mother says her son was left confused and hurt after being singled out. Now, a year later, the 9-year-old is taking anxiety medication and going to therapy, according to his parents. The family says the boy’s confusion and emotional distress has also affected the entire family. The father says he’s suffering from panic attacks and the mother says she’s now on medical leave, suffering from anxiety and depression, and staying home from work.

It is entirely possible that the panic attacks and anxiety on the part of the parents might be something of an overreaction, but their complaint is certainly valid.

The article notes:

There’s video at the link, but it’s not embeddable here. Bear in mind that this wasn’t a teenager, which might be bad enough, but an eight year old with a stomach problem. Even granting the best of possible intentions, why wouldn’t the first step in dealing with suspicions of gender dysphoria be to contact the child’s parents? It’s not as if the parents in this case are social neanderthals, at least from the perspective of Academia. They tell reporter Bonnie Silkman in the video that they aren’t concerned about what identity he chooses as long as he chooses it, and not get indoctrinated into it by an activist teacher.

The article concludes:

The most impressively loco part of this story is that the teacher still works at the school — a full year after the school confirmed the parents’ story. The only correction the teacher received was to be reminded of the district’s policies on “controversial issues” and to notify parents and the school when she “alters a student’s regular school day.” Meanwhile, this family will be dealing with the aftershocks of her actions for years.

The school district declined to comment on the story because of the lawsuit, but they might owe an explanation to the other parents in the district, especially to those whose children are within this teacher’s supervision. How many other children has she attempted to indoctrinate into transgender identities? And how many of the parents in this school district — and elsewhere — might start considering private schools or home-schooling to protect their children from predatory behavior?

If I had children in that school district, this article would cause me to consider seriously the option of home-schooling.

This Is Where We Are

As a parent, are you comfortable with this?

 

I don’t want to see transgendered students bullied, but I don’t want to put high school girls in danger of being molested or leered at by students claiming to be transgender who are not. Separate facilities are needed. We also need to help all students learn to stand up to any bullying that happens. Fighting back is not a bad thing. I would also like to note that no matter how you may feel, your DNA has not changed. Maybe we should go back to the days of little kids playing doctor and let them sort this out.

As A Parent, Is This Something You Support?

This was posted on YouTube on June 14th:

Further information on this can be found at the Daily Signal.

If I still had children in school, I would wonder why I wasn’t initially told about this program. I would probably also be ready to consider seriously the option of homeschooling my children. There are a lot of homeschool options now that were not there twenty years ago, and I think now might be a really good time to investigate them. There is a website called The Homeschool Resource Roadmap that can help parents with questions about homeschooling gather information.

I am appalled at this. I believe we need to let our children be children and not treat them as social experiments. What we are encouraging in our children is still considered a mental disorder by many social workers. We need to stop this runaway train and get back to teaching kindergartners to build things with blocks and get along with their classmates.

Remember All Those Russian Women Athletes?

I trust this source, but I am having a hard time believing what I am reading. In January of this year, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about a new rules change by the International Olympic Committee.

The related article at Breitbart.com article reports:

There’s great news for adventurous male Olympic hopefuls: if they declare themselves women and reduce their testosterone below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to competition, they can compete against ladies.

There’s even better news for these men; according to transgender guidelines approved by the International Olympic Committee, genitalia does not serve as a prerequisite. The guidelines state: “To require surgical anatomical changes as a pre-condition to participation is not necessary to preserve fair competition and may be inconsistent with developing legislation and notions of human rights.”

Cyd Zeigler at OutSports.com reported on the policy change.

The IOC held a “Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism” in November at which they created the new guidelines, loosening prior rules adopted in 2004 to allow transgender athletes into the Games. The previous rules required that transgender athletes must have undergone external genitalia changes and removal of gonads, as well as obtaining legal recognition of their assigned sex  from appropriate official authorities.

The new guidelines attempt to justify themselves by citing various societies’ acceptance of fluid gender identity, writing, “Since the 2003 Stockholm Consensus on Sex Reassignment in Sports, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of autonomy of gender identity in society, as reflected in the laws of many jurisdictions worldwide.”

So now gender identity and gender fluidity has entered the olympic games.

Has anyone considered that generally speaking a male who decides to become a female after the age of 20 or so is probably taller and has more muscle mass than he would have if he had been born a female? His size and his muscle mass give him an unfair advantage.

I remember all those Russian women in the 1950’s and 1960’s that were accused of being men. Their lives would be so much simpler if they were competing today.

The Consequences Of Letting Everyone In The Same Bathroom

The bathroom bill (should be locker room bill) passed in North Carolina has caused a lot of controversy. This article is based on two articles, one posted at CBN News today and one posted at Lady Liberty 1885.

The article at Lady Liberty 1885 includes the following video (also posted on YouTube):

As the video points out, women need a safe space to change clothes or go to the bathroom. I can’t imagine thinking parents wanting their teenage daughters to share locker rooms with teenage boys.

There has been another interesting example of the fallout of this law.

CBN News is reporting today:

A former state executive director of the ACLU has resigned because her own daughters were frightened when transgendered men entered the women’s bathroom.

The American Civil Liberties Union has been a champion of transgender bathroom rights. Former director of the Georgia ACLU chapter Maya Dillard Smith says she is resigned after her daughters’ experience in a public bathroom.

“I have shared my personal experience of having taken my elementary school age daughters into a women’s restroom when shortly after three transgender young adults, over six-feet tall with deep voices, entered,” Smith wrote in a statement.

“My children were visibly frightened, concerned about their safety and left asking lots of questions for which I, like many parents, was ill-prepared to answer,” she continued.

She also said the incident highlighted the ALCU‘s “hierarchy of rights.”

She wrote in a statement that the ACLU is “a special interest organization that promotes not all, but certain progressive rights….based on who is funding the organization’s lobbying activities.”

Transgender people constitute a very small percentage of our population. They deserve to be respected and not bullied, but their desires should not be used to put the safety of other Americans in jeopardy. The transgenders themselves are not the issue–it’s the people who will use the issue for their own nefarious purposes.

 

Bullies Don’t Stop Until You Stand Up To Them

Yesterday The New York Times reported that the Obama Administration will now direct all public school to allow students to use the bathrooms (and locker rooms) that conform to their sexual identity. I doesn’t matter what parts you have, you use the bathroom (or locker room) that corresponds to the way you feel at that particular time.

The article reports:

A letter to school districts will go out Friday, adding to a highly charged debate over transgender rights in the middle of the administration’s legal fight with North Carolina over the issue. The declaration — signed by Justice and Education department officials — will describe what schools should do to ensure that none of their students are discriminated against.

It does not have the force of law, but it contains an implicit threat: Schools that do not abide by the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law could face lawsuits or a loss of federal aid.

…“A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so,” according to the letter, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times.

I don’t want to see anyone discriminated against or bullied, but it seems to me that this directive (aside from being unconstitutional) opens the door for bullying and all sorts of other high-jinks. Can the imagine the ‘dare you’ going around various teenage boys about going into the girls’ locker room? This is just plain silly.

The obvious answer to this is a private bathroom and changing area for anyone who feels that they need extra privacy. No questions asked. It is really sad that we are talking about discrimination in this matter rather than talking about protecting women and children from people claiming to be transgender who are not. There are already a number of criminal cases filed in various states where nefarious people have used transgender-sympathetic laws to gain access to women’s restrooms. What happened next was traumatizing for the women involved and has severe legal consequences for the man involved. Men do not belong in ladies’ rooms or in women’s locker rooms.

Purposely Ignoring The Obvious

On Friday, CNS News reported that Chicago Public Schools have announced that all students and teachers will have access to whichever locker rooms and other spaces that were formerly reserved for one sex. This means that any teenage boy who wants to undress in the girls‘ locker room is free to do so. It also means that girls only health classes dealing with feminine issues are a thing of the past in Chicago.

The article reports:

In a weak acknowledgement of the uproar this will cause, the Chicago Public Schools says students that are not gender confused “should” be allowed access to alternative facilities. So, for example, if there are fifty girls who object to a boy undressing in front of them, it is the fifty girls, not the boy, who must go change in “single stall restrooms” elsewhere. Of course, the odds are high that school officials on the lookout for any sign of “bullying” will take careful note of which students leave the locker rooms, presuming they are allowed to leave at all.

To add to the confusion, the definition of gender identity changes about every three months, so the rules we are supposed to live by are constantly moving. But the latest definition, according to the Chicago Public Schools, is that sex is merely “a label a person is assigned at birth” and that the reality lies in one’s internal “psychological knowledge” of their own gender “regardless of the[ir] biological sex.”

At what point does common sense make an appearance?

The article concludes:

And therein lies the biggest affront from these new policies. Not only must government employees play along with a gender confused child’s every subjective wish, so must every other student. In fact, the Chicago Public Schools specify that students must address a gender confused child by whatever pronoun they wish, be it “they, their, ze, he and she.” Failure to do so “will result in appropriate consequences for offending staff and students,” in other words, discipline up to and including expulsion from school.

But many people of good will and faith conviction will simply refuse to put aside their legitimate privacy, modesty, and safety concerns. Many children of good will resist being forced to say “she” when speaking of a boy they have known for years just as they would resist being forced to say “5” when asked “what does 2+2 equal?

The left for years claimed that all they wanted was for LGBT persons to be left alone but this was a lie. It is now clear that liberals and their enablers will not leave anyone alone and will use the full force of courts, lawsuits, and government to ensure any resistance to their new gender ideology “will result in appropriate consequences.”

I think I would continue my school day sweaty and smelly rather than take a chance and dress in the locker room under the new rules. What are we doing to our children?

Maybe It’s Time No One Paid For This Junk

Steven Hayward posted an article at Power Line today about a recent “Working Glossary of Terms” put out by the University of Washington. In this exercise in absurdity, the students are asked to identify themselves by gender. When you look at the list of options, male and female are not included. Instead, students are given the option of “Cisgender,” meaning “describes someone who feels comfortable with the gender identity and gender expression expectations assigned to them based on their physical sex.” Wow. I never realized that my gender was assigned. I never realized I had an option. Does this mean that my husband could have done the pregnancies? It would have been much easier–he has a cast iron stomach.

Some of the students answered the question with the terms ‘male’ or ‘female,’ which were considered microaggressive terms (the students obviously had more brains than the administrators).

This is the response from the administration:

UnivWashParents, what are you paying for? I wonder how many parents have any idea what is being done to their children in the name of education.

 

Is This Really What We Want?

Today The Civitas Institute (a North Carolina conservative group) reported some interesting information on the recent bill passed in Charlotte regarding transgender use of bathrooms. The article posted on their website reported some information that was omitted by one of the major Charlotte, North Carolina, papers.

The article at Civitas reports:

For months, residents of Charlotte have been debating whether the city should (or in fact could) pass an ordinance allowing individuals who identify as transgender to use the men’s or women’s bathrooms in places of public accommodation. Those opposed to the ordinance have had serious concerns about its effect on public safety.

This morning, Breitbart News is reporting that Chad Sevearance, president of the Charlotte Business Guild, who has taken a lead role in promoting the transgender bathroom ordinance, is a convicted and registered sex offender.

The article goes on to explain that Sevearance was convicted in 2000 of one charge of sexual molestation of a minor. He was required to register with the police for a minimum of ten years.

The Civitas article concludes:

This is not about further condemnation of Sevearance for his sexual offenses. (Although his advocacy group also knew he was a convicted child molester and defended him by calling reports of his convictions “mudslinging.”) The justice system has dealt with him, and it is not my place to heap further condemnation on a man who surely has been thoroughly condemned. This is about the Observer‘s failure to report on how a major figure at the center of a debate involving sexual predators and children has been convicted of being a sexual predator of children. In this context, the Observer‘s failure is tantamount to concealment. It is unfortunately one more example of our media picking and choosing its causes, leaving the task of actual journalism up to Internet news outlets.

I wonder if having this information before the vote would have changed any votes.

Laws That Really Don’t Make Any Sense

Just when you think state legislators couldn’t pass any more weird laws, someone comes up with a new idea. The law I am about to describe is not only unnecessary and useless, it doesn’t even apply where it might matter.

Hot Air is reporting today that California has politically gone off the deep end.

The article reports:

A California lawmaker has introduced a bill that would ban government-funded travel to states with laws that he says discriminate on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

“No one wants to send employees into an environment where they would be uncomfortable,” said Democrat Evan Low, Jon Ortiz, a reporter for the Sacramento Bee, reported this week.

Low said he decided to introduce the bill after Indiana signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law in March 2015.

Does the law include government-funded travel of women to Saudi Arabia and other countries where they do not have equal rights?

I believe that America is made up of states. The last I heard, each state had the freedom to make laws that applied in that state. California is perfectly within its rights to limit the travel of government officials or employees to places where they will not be uncomfortable. Obviously, being within your rights does not mean that what you are doing can be described as logical or sensible.

It gets worse. The article explains:

Low said he doesn’t know which states his bill would apply to yet. He said it would not cover lawmakers and political trips but would affect administrative travel.

So what, pray tell, is the point of this legislation?

 

Symbolism Over Substance?

There is a conflict in America right now as to the exact meaning of the First Amendment as regards to religious freedom. One of the questions being asked is whether or not Christians who choose to enter the business world still have the right to act according to their Christian beliefs. Does a Christian businessman have the right to choose who he does business with? In January I posted a story about a couple who is required to do re-education training because they refused to host a homosexual wedding. I had never considered re-education training as an American concept.

The latest chapter in the war against Christian ideas in the marketplace has occurred in Oklahoma. Eagle Rising posted a story on February 27th about a law proposed by an Oklahoma Democrat in the state legislature.

The article reports:

Democrat state Rep. Emily Virgin believes that Christian businesses should be forced to post a public notice that they will be discriminating against homosexuals, if those businesses are to be allowed to claim the right to refuse service based on religious beliefs.

That’s right, if you’re a Christian businessman in Oklahoma and you don’t believe that you should be forced to participate in a gay wedding, Democrats want to force your business to post a public scarlet letter detailing your “bigoted” beliefs!

This is the text of the law:

“Any person not wanting to participate in any of the activities set forth in subsection A of this section based on sexual orientation, gender identity or race of either party to the marriage shall post notice of such refusal in a manner clearly visible to the public in all places of business, including websites. The notice may refer to the person’s religious beliefs, but shall state specifically which couples the business does not serve by referring to a refusal based upon sexual orientation, gender identity or race.”

The law was suggested in response to a Republican bill that would allow Christian businessmen to operate their businesses in accordance with Biblical principles.

The article further notes:

The right to practice your faith as you see fit (as long as you aren’t infringing on the rights of others) is the cornerstone of our nation’s stability and health. Along with that, the right to choose who we do business with and when we do business is the very foundation of free market capitalism. The moment we allow the government (or some fascist group of rabid socialists) to force us to act against our religious beliefs, or force us to work as indentured servants at the beck and call of others… that is the moment that we have LOST our nation.

Something to consider as we approach this election season.