Posted on 02/22/2013 4:21:31 AM PST by IbJensen
BOSTON, February 19, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Massachusetts Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester has issued orders to the state’s K-12 public schools requiring them to permit “transgender” boys and girls to use the opposite sex’s locker rooms, bathrooms, and changing facilities as long as they claim to identify with that gender.
Many elementary schools in smaller Massachusetts towns include children from kindergarten through eighth grade, making it possible for boys as old as 14 to share toilet facilities with girls as young as five.
Under Chester's leadership, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) released an 11-page document on Friday outlining this and other new guidelines giving “transgender” students special status and privileges in Massachusetts schools. Some family advocates are calling the document, which was prepared with assistance from homosexual and transgender advocacy groups, “the most thorough, invasive, and radical transgender initiative ever seen on a statewide level.”
The policy does not require a doctor’s note or even parental permission for a child to switch sexes in the eyes of Massachusetts schools. Only the student’s word is needed: If a boy says he’s a girl, as far as the schools are concerned, he’s a girl.
“The responsibility for determining a student’s gender identity rests with the student,” the statement says. “A school should accept a student’s assertion of his or her gender identity when there is … ‘evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held as part of a person’s core identity.’” That evidence, according to the document, can be as simple as a statement given by a friend.
That means, according to the newly issued school policies, that boys who say they identify as girls must be addressed by the feminine pronoun and be listed as girls on official transcripts.
They must also be allowed access to girls’ facilities and be allowed to play on girls’ athletic and club teams. The same is true for girls who say they are boys.
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The document was issued to clarify the schools’ obligations in light of “An Act Relative to Gender Identity,” a law that went into effect last July. That bill amended Massachusetts law “to establish that no person shall be excluded from or discriminated against in admission to a public school of any town, or in obtaining the advantages, privileges and courses of study of such public school on account of gender identity.”
However, Brian Camenker, spokesman for government watchdog group MassResistance, told LifeSiteNews the DESE’s new directives go far beyond what the law requires.
Camenker pointed out that the only requirement the Gender Identity bill imposed on schools was to add “gender identity” to their non-discrimination policies, alongside other protected groups such as religious or ethnic minorities. Under the DESE’s policy, however, self-identified transgendered students will have more rights than other students, including the right to access bathroom and changing facilities of the opposite sex and play on the opposite sex’s sports teams.
Not only that, but students who object may be subject to punishment under the state’s new “anti-bullying” law, which, like the new school policy, was written with the help of homosexual and transgender activist groups.
Under that law, any outwardly negative reaction against transgenderism can now be considered bullying, and subject to discipline and punishment, according to Camenker.
“The directive is clear that there is to be no tolerance for students who become uncomfortable or upset at these situations being pushed on them,” Camenker wrote. “The school's approach is to be unyielding to any such discomfort, and to re-educate those students to have more ‘acceptable’ reactions and values.”
“[It] is completely natural for a child to feel very uncomfortable using a female name for an individual they know to be male, seeing a boy in girl’s clothing, or feeling it’s unfair that a boy is competing athletically as a girl,” Camenker added. “These feelings are now considered by the school to be backwards and disruptive.”
Andrew Beckwith, attorney for Massachusetts Family Institute, called the document’s definition of transgender “extremely broad.”
“If a male student tells his teacher he feels like a girl on the inside, the school has to treat him in every way as if he actually is a girl,” Beckwith said. “School personnel may be forbidden from informing the parents of their child’s gender decisions, and students can even decide to be one gender at home and another at school.”
Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, worries that the new policy could put girls at particular risk for violations ranging from privacy invasions to sexual assault.
“The School Commissioner’s first duty is to protect all students, from kindergarten to grade 12, not endanger them,” Mineau said in a statement. “The overriding issue with this new policy is that opening girls’ bathrooms to boys is an invasion of privacy and a threat to all students’ safety.”
The DESE expressed awareness that parents and students would likely have concerns, but they dismissed such feelings as invalid.
“Some students may feel uncomfortable with a transgender student using the same sex-segregated restroom, locker room or changing facility,” the document concedes, but then admonishes administrators, “this discomfort is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student.”
The Massachusetts Family Institute reminded the public that during debate, the gender identity law that led to this new policy had been called the “Stealth Bathroom Bill” by critics. At the time, the part of the law explicitly opening all public bathrooms to self-identified transgender people was removed in response to concerns about safety and privacy.
In schools, however, the bathroom provisions will now effectively be put back in.
Democratic State Rep. Colleen Garry has introduced amending legislation to the current law intended to force people to use restrooms and locker room facilities consistent with their anatomical sex.
“Like many of my colleagues, I am very concerned about Commissioner Chester’s directive to open public school bathrooms to all genders,” said Garry. “This was not the intent of the Legislature, and we need to pass legislation that clearly defines the use of such facilities.”
A Massachusetts teacher, I presume. Or a school board member.
Can’t you just envision it now? The children have just finished their sex education class. They’ve finished with their classroom session on the benefits of glorious homosexual love-making.They’re congregating in the restroom.
“I’ll show you mine, if you’ll show me yours.” states young Johnny to little Susie. “No Johnny, let me see yours.” says little Bobby.
“Here comes our teacher, he’ll let us look at his.”
Your focus is too tight.
A better course is to leave Neo Europa and move into America. America was developed by people who left such crap and crossed the Atlantic.
The eurotrash in the Northeast are the same as those that drove people to leave europe before. Some would argue that the good people moved west leaving dregs in Neo Europa
off with his head
Imagine PUNISHING children for treating a boy like a boy and a girl like a girl.
Insanity.
bump
The root of this is also found in the castration of the American male. Anything they can push that removes the masculinity of the male species. The want America neutered so that the demilitarization and disarming can be easier.
Nope, now you are a criminal who needs punished.
I am sure they will make condoms and other crap available to those 6 year olds too
Are there no sane fathers left in the MAsshole State? Is there no one to protect the normal boys and girls from the predators in the homosexual
movement.? They ought to throw every school board member and Leftist politician who approved of this outrage into the bay and start over.
The parents need to INSIST that the school board lead by example. If schools must have transgender bathrooms, then all public buildings should have them, too, starting with the school board. Children should not be the test subjects for controversial, untried public policy.
Here is the reality: Public officials cannot force this perversion on the public, as the public has the legal right to fight this policy to its quick reversal. Children in public schools - complete captives of the bureaucrats - have no such right. In terms of human rights, schools are only slightly more free that prisons.
There is something perverted & possibly illegal when adults in charge of children put the children in sexual situations where they are forced to expose their genitals to others of dubious, transitory “sexual preference”.
Bear in mind that kindergarten kids may have NEVER use a public restroom, & many more have never done so ALONE. Many kids are shy of urinating/defecating around strangers. There is a real possibility of negative effects on the physical & mental health of children as a result of this new policy.
Teens present other difficulties. How many boys would be willing to wear a dress to school to gain access to the girl's locker room? I'm gonna guess a substantial number would do so at least once!
Suppose a transgender female, who dresses as a man, decides to shower & change in the “boys” locker room. As the naked female enters the shower room full of boys, one or more boys in the shower gets an erection, a completely normal reaction to seeing a nude girl, & especially so for a teenage boy. But the TD female is “disrespected”, feels sexually threatened, & reports the incident to the principal.
I doubt even Solomon could resolve this. I suggest cutting the offending bureaucrats in half.
Do the teachers & admin. use the same restrooms? At my school they often did! If so, which restroom will they use? Which restroom will be used by small children unsure of their sexuality? Will they “do the tour” each day until they find a bathroom in which they are comfortable?
This policy is just absurd!
In the end, the only logical policy is that “outies” go into one restroom/locker room, while “innies” go into another.
As a parent - if this stupid item is protocol - then I would say, fine, my daughter doesn’t go in a bathroom as along as a boy is there — and if my daughter is in there - the boy waits...because his right doesn’t supersede her rights to use the bathroom with this nonsense.
When evil is so pervasive in a society -— one sees this crap arise...this is not a red flag waving — it’s a huge billboard with lights of a RED FLAG waving....
They don't have to wear a dress. They can come dressed the same way as always. The school won't even tell the parents their kid is "transgendered".
One word...homeschool
That would get your daughter punished for her failure to affirm the “rights” of the transgendered students.
Yep, that’s the way they are saying this
Hey Chester you don’t need your job anymore! When will Ru Paul be making it’s debut @ your learning center ? This cannot be called a school but a learning center for fools because that’s what you are making “Fools”~ Now Go Away please!
My high school friends and I would all have claimed this and then showered with the cheerleaders. Man o man that would have been sweet!
K12.com — public schools are failing...time to bring the kids back home and let the disaster fall in on itself once and for all...
I think a group of parents could monitor their children from one home for a few days and then trade off in another home - and do this as a private group without saying it’s private day care — and just pull the kids out of school...
My wife, a public school teacher, and I are considering this after she retires in a few yrs...the public school system is struggling all over the US right now...to much weight with stupid stuff like this...
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