Posted on 12/02/2017 4:33:21 PM PST by Kaslin
This week, the Portland, Maine School District adopted a comprehensive transgender policy for their students. But in an attempt to welcome and create a safe haven for all, the left-leaning city has ended up crafting an overreaching debacle that tramples upon parental rights.
On Tuesday, November 28, 2017, the Portland Board of Education unanimously approved a motion that requires all Portland, ME schools implement annual staff training on gender issues, “use a student’s preferred name and personal pronoun, and take the student’s side at school if there is disagreement with a parent’s wishes.”
The intent is to create a space welcoming for transgender individuals and pupils questioning their identity. The main purpose is so teachers and students now respect whatever their peers choose to identify as. The policy is consistent with state law, which since 2014 has allowed boys and and girls to use whatever bathroom they please based on their identity.
In theory, it sounds noble. Who doesn’t want a student to feel welcomed at school? The problem is that it strips away parental control and allows children to make serious, life altering decisions about their identity.
Under the Portland School District’s new policy, if a 7-year-old wanted to be called King Tut after learning about Egypt in first grade world history, the teachers would have to abide. They would even have to call him “your majesty” if he chose that as his new personal pro-noun. If the parents said, “This is absurd, he’s an imaginative young boy, let’s not feed his fancy by calling him King Tut anymore,” the teachers would have to ignore their requests.
But, this opens some serious questions about the role of a parent in their child’s upbringing. If students can determine their gender and name at any age, why bother having any parental oversight at all? Can’t a young girl under the age of 18 who decides she is a boy then also have the same mental capacity to see an R rated movie? And if a young man can identify as a genderless being and prefer the pro-noun Xe, then why can’t he sign his own approval slip to attend a field trip? Or, if a high school student wants to take the basic level math class, but her mom wants her to take the AP Calculus, who gets the final say? Why should the mom be allowed to force her daughter to take a higher level math class, but not have any say in what teachers call her?
Yet again, in the left’s seemingly earnest desire to make a welcoming and inclusive society, they have opened a Pandora’s box stripped of any logical or reasoned thinking.
Oddly enough, the Portland Superintendent puts-forth a rather Conservative case for the district’s decision. Xavier Botana advocated for local control and state’s rights.
“You know, mostly we’ve heard really positive — you saw really positive comments today,” Botana said. “You know, we’ve gotten some not so positive comments — not, frankly, from people from Portland, but from people in other parts of the country who’ve heard about it and have chosen to react in ways that suggest they know what we should do better than the people in Portland do.”
In a sense he is right. It is doubtful the people of Springfield, Illinois are too concerned with Portland, Maine’s school district teachings on Maine’s lobster and fishing community. That’s why Conservatives for years have advocated for a small federal government that allows parents and local communities to make educational decisions, not Washington, DC. Obviously, there are cases of abusive parents where they should be stripped of custody and decision making responsibility for their child. We need laws to protect those kids. But shouldn’t parents across the nation be wary of the left’s attempt to wrangle away parental rights through the guise of transgender advocacy?
So kids run the schools, and dictate the rules, and we should all go by what the mentally, sick tell us .
I never get this safe haven or safe spaces business.
By making it “safe” for a transsexual person, you are making it less safe for the 99.9% of us who don’t have that issue to deal with in our lives.
So how is it, that we have to completely upend social norms of male and female, and the concept of men’s room/ladies room, to somehow provide for “civil rights” of a tiny number of people?
How is it “civil rights” for transsexuals means stepping on the civil rights of everyone else?
Well,I’m glad to see that Portland Maine is just as loony lefty as Portland Oregon.
can i self identify as a burrito? i’ll only answer to, el burrito!
In the world of liberalism parents have no rights.
The difference between trans-gender and trans-dragon is only a matter of degree. A bit of reconstructive surgery, some prosthesis, a fuel supply and an ignition source. There is very little difference.
Home School
The nature of public schools is to step on parental rights.
“Home School”
Even that is no surefire answer unless your household is entirely isolated electronically and in every other respect from mainstream culture. And when they turn 15 or 16 they can rebel and reject everything you taught them. I’ve seen it happen. Maybe long after I’m gone they’ll return to their senses.
Botana sounds like ghetto trash, ya know?
Home school!!! Have you seen some of the nuts who are so called home schooling?
It's b.s. and it is absurd. They know, EXACTLY what they are doing.
I live in Maine and, yes, Portland, Maine is the moonbat central of The Pine Tree State....as loony left as Portland, Oregon.
Portland, Maine is in the First Congressional District, a RAT strong hold that covers 20% of the State of Maine.
Maine’s Second Congressional district covers 27,000 square miles, or 80% of the State. Trump carried the second district by 10 points in November 2016. (Maine splits it’s electoral votes).
On my annual trip up thru there last summer, I was traveling thru Portland on the interstate in my big old nasty diesel pickup truck enjoying my freshly-purchased, ice-cold Moxie soft drink and a tasty bag of Humpty Dumpty BBQ potato chips when I started noticing all these fools in Subarus with a Thule on top. I kinda figured they were the typical yankee-style libs we hear so much about....so I just politely renamed em: lib pickup trucks (rather than a fool with a Thule in a Subaru).
Apparently it is the STATE’s job to foster mental illness. And do it against the parent’s wishes.
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