Hallelujah!
Parents and taxpayers showed up in huge numbers on Tuesday night to deliver a blunt message to the Oxford Hills school board: stop using gender-bender ideology to drive a wedge between parents and their children!
And while you’re at it, board members, stop relying on advice from the dishonest lawyers who are browbeating you to enact this hideous policy proposal. The thugs in three-piece suits at Drummond Woodsum stand to collect enormous legal fees when the district is sued for coaching kids to lie to their parents.
Close to 300 people turned out at the public forum in South Paris, and I can tell you, it was a grand-slam home run for our team. Scores of parents, grandparents, and taxpayers stepped up to the microphones in the high-school auditorium in opposition to a proposed “Gender Identity of Students” policy. Even the Fake News media outlets reported that most of the folks who addressed the school board spoke AGAINST the proposed policy.
As we reported last week, the proposal requires staff at schools in the district to withhold information from parents about a child’s decision to transition to a different “gender identity.” School officials will even be required to coach students on how to keep their new “gender identity” secret from parents.
Opposing the policy were real Mainers from all walks of life — blue collar, white collar, no collar, teachers, retirees, a medical doctor, young mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts and uncles — and they offered fact-based, heartfelt testimony.
They were polite, respectful, and well-informed.
I can’t tell you how inspiring it was to be there to watch and listen.
By the time the forum concluded after two and a half hours, opponents made an airtight case that the new policy is built on a foundation of lies, disinformation, and transgender propaganda. And I’m pleased to report that speakers in opposition outnumbered proponents by a margin of 47 to 7.
One point that was raised by several speakers bears repeating: the Maine Supreme Court did NOT mandate that school districts allow students who claim to be “transgender” to use the restrooms and locker rooms of their choice.
This is important, because the woke lawyers at Drummond Woodsum and the Maine Human Rights Commission are lying through their teeth when they tell school boards that this is a matter of settled law.
The 2013 decision in Doe vs. RSU 26 applies only to students with medically diagnosed gender dysphoria. Here’s what the court actually said:
“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….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.”
But the proposed policy for Oxford Hills specifically says that no medical diagnosis is required, only a “consistent assertion while at school” that 13-year-old Harry thinks he’s Sally. If the new policy is adopted, Harry will be free to relieve himself in the girls’ restroom and shower with the cheerleaders.
The next step in the process is a second reading of the policy, at a date to be determined. Before that happens, the school board chair promised that the board will respond to ALL the questions raised at the public forum.
We’ll see.
Maine First Project will continue to keep you informed on the situation in Oxford Hills and elsewhere.
In closing, I want to thank Rep. John Andrews of Paris for showing up and speaking out on Tuesday evening, as he did at the first reading on October 17th.
Rep. Andrews and Sen. Lisa Keim of Dixfield are the only two sitting legislators, I’m aware of, who have answered the call of parents who are appalled at the dangerous and demented gender-bender madness embraced by Maine’s deeply dysfunctional government-run K-12 schools.
Thank you, John and Lisa, for being fighters. I just hope you can prevail on some of your colleagues to grow backbones. This is no time for legislators to be hiding under their desks to avoid controversy.
Sincerely,
Hon. Lawrence Lockman
Maine House of Representatives, 2012-2020
Co-founder & President
Maine First Project
PS
Here’s the definition of “Gender expansive” from the proposed policy for MSAD 17 students:
“An umbrella term used to describe a person who expands notions of gender identity, expression, and/or roles beyond perceived or expected societal gender norms. Sometimes used as a term that includes transgender and nonbinary people. Gender Nonconforming is another term that is commonly used.”
Get it?
As I’ve said before, this is madness. It’s time we start calling it what it is before the cultists ensnare any more Maine children and lead them down the path to irreversible damage.