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It’s painful to watch a once-great newspaper commit professional suicide in slow motion.
Sadly, the Bangor Daily News has transformed itself over the past several decades from a respectable journalistic enterprise into a propaganda organ pushing left-wing identity politics. So it came as no surprise in the past couple of years when the BDN’s owners, editors, and reporters jumped aboard the Transgender Express bandwagon.
I don’t have any personal objection to the paper’s embrace of this bizarre cult. As a private business, the BDN is free to wallow in whatever dangerous, delusional ideology suits its owners.
[RELATED: No, Letting Boys Use the Girls’ Bathroom Is Not “Settled Law” in Maine…]
But I do object to the the BDN’s repeated and willful mischaracterization of the Doe v RSU 26ruling by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 2014, citing it as a mandate on local school districts to allow biological boys posing as females (so-called “transgender students”) to relieve themselves in the girls’ restrooms. The decision was nothing of the sort. The justices were emphatic that their ruling applies only to students who have a documented history and medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
Here’s what the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled when they vacated the lower court’s more expansive ruling:
“[W]e emphasize that in this case the school had a program carefully developed over several years and supported by an educational plan designed to sensitively address Susan’s gender identity issues. The determination that discrimination is demonstrated in this case rests heavily on Susan’s gender identity and gender dysphoria diagnosis, both of which were acknowledged and accepted by the school. The school, her parents, her counselors, and her friends all accepted that Susan is a girl.
“Thus, we do not suggest that any person could demand access to any school facility or program based solely on a self-declaration of gender identity or confusion without the plans developed in cooperation with the school and the accepted and respected diagnosis that are present in this case. Our opinion must not be read to require schools to permit students casual access to any bathroom of their choice. Decisions about how to address students’ legitimate gender identity issues are not to be taken lightly. Where, as here, it has been clearly established 14 that a student’s psychological well-being and educational success depend upon being permitted to use the communal bathroom consistent with her gender identity, denying access to the appropriate bathroom constitutes sexual orientation discrimination in violation of the MHRA.” (Emphasis Added)
At the same time the BDN has habitually and falsely represented Doe v RSU 26 and its implications for Maine’s schools, its opinion writers and news writers have tarred those who point out their misinformation as bad actors and bigots. I object to being smeared repeatedly as an “anti-LGBTQ+ activist” for opposing bathroom policies in K-12 schools that compel teenage girls to share toilet facilities with mentally ill teenage boys.
Here’s a brief chronological summary of the most recent journalistic malpractice that’s now the rule rather than the exception in the BDN editorial and news rooms.
The current gender-bender controversy erupted on February 27th with the publication of a front-page, above-the-fold article by reporter Kathleen O’Brien. Under the headline, “Advocates say adults are making transgender students in Maine less safe,” the lengthy puff piece consisted of an extended interview of two so-called “transgender advocates.” Not a single opposing viewpoint was quoted. Not one.
The article reads like a fund-raising letter from any of the dozens of Maine-based LGBTQ+ non-profits lobbying for the legalization of chemical castration and genital mutilation of minor children without parental consent. Making matters worse, the hook for the story was the now thoroughly-debunked story about an Oklahoma high schooler who was supposedly bullied into suicide for being gender non-confirming. The tragic truth is that the poor girl in this story was abused by her father — not “transphobic peers” — yet the BDN totally lost interest in the story when it no longer fit their ideological agenda.
[RELATED: Transgender Youth, Like Any Other American, Deserve the Highest Quality of Care…]
O’Brien’s article mentioned me by name, but she didn’t bother to contact me for a comment. Instead, she relied on “reporting” by a left-wing activist who wasn’t present at the event referenced by O’Brien.
O’Brien reported that according to the media outlet of the Maine Peoples Alliance, I hosted a public forum in Brewer to oppose the local school district’s transgender bathroom policy, and announced that I’m “pursuing a lawsuit that targets the rights of transgender Mainers.”
Actually, I’m not pursuing a lawsuit against anyone, much less one that targets anyone’s rights. If O’Brien had extended to me the professional courtesy of a simple phone call, I could have steered her clear of relying on hearsay from the Marxist People’s Alliance.
Just three days later, in an article titled, “2 lawsuits target Brewer School Department over transgender policy,” O’Brien struck again. She repeated her hearsay about the public forum, as well as her brazen mischaracterization of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruling in 2014.
In response, I submitted an opinion piece to editorial page editor Susan Young to rebut the falsehoods in O’Brien’s reporting. But it quickly became apparent that Young will not permit publication of any commentary that doesn’t conform to the Orwellian newspeak of the transgender cult.
Negotiations began to break down when Young objected to this verbiage in my op-ed submission: “…teenage girls have a fundamental right to keep their private parts private from biological boys.”
Young insisted that I substitute “transgender students” for “biological boys.”
In effect, she was demanding that I play “let’s pretend” with her and her fellow cultists on the BDN editorial board.
I reminded Young that my description of these students as “biological boys” is reality-based, while her reference to them as “transgender students” is a shape-shifting, imprecise legal fiction subject to repeated clarifications and re-definitions by politicians in Augusta.
That proposed edit was bad enough, but it got worse when she axed this key sentence in its entirety:
“Parents of school-age children should not feel bullied or intimidated by transgender advocates who insist that their pseudo-scientific ideology is now settled law.”
I objected as follows to her heavy-handed editing:
“It’s a fact that female students and their parents have been bullied and intimidated by transgender advocates. The pending lawsuit [against the Brewer School Department] details the bullying and intimidation in detail via sworn affidavits signed [by female students] under penalties of perjury. That alone should be enough of a factual basis to support my choice of words. Also, my reference to transgenderism as a ‘pseudo-scientific ideology’ is well within the bounds of civil discourse. Yes, it’s my opinion, certainly not yours or the BDN editorial board’s, but it’s a fact-based opinion that’s supported by numerous scholars, scientists, and medical doctors.
Why not let your readers reach their own conclusions?”
Young dismissed the sworn allegations of bullying with this lame excuse:
“There is no evidence that the school policies are an attempt at intimidation. More likely, they are an effort by people with law degrees to draft policies to accommodate all students. Maybe they failed in your eyes, but that does not equal intimidation.
I have dozens of columns awaiting editing. It is really unfair to expect me to take so much time with what you write, therefore taking time away from other people and their commentary.
So, I’m afraid I need to move on.”
OK, I get it. Susan Young is a busy woke woman, and doesn’t have time to deal with an unrepentant Deplorable like me. I understand.
She reminds me of the observation by red diaper baby, communist-turned-conservative David Horowitz. He warned us that inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.
Horowitz went on to say that Leftists are defined by their instinctive, practiced, and indispensable dishonesty: “People on the Left may be delusional but they are not stupid. They know what they can say and get away with, and what they can’t.”
And so the Bangor Daily News has come full circle. It was born as a tabloid in 1889, noted for publishing “some news, but also plenty of gossip, lurid stories and scandals.” It evolved (transitioned?) into a fairly respectable daily newspaper, reaching its zenith in the 1980s with daily paid circulation of 100,000+ readers.
That’s down to about 30,000 today. To be sure, some of that precipitous decline can be attributed to the worldwide shift from paper-and-ink to digital news reporting, and the proliferation of online news platforms. But there’s no doubt the BDN’s lurch to the Left has been a big factor in its decline.
Any business that habitually insults the intelligence of large numbers of its prospective customers will sooner or later find itself circling the drain.
Get woke, go broke.
To read this article on The Maine Wire website, click here.