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Oklahoma attorney general signals resistance against DOJ transgender decree

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Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign
Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign

President Obama issued a Kingly decree to his subjects that all public schools in the land are to allow men to use women’s bathrooms, showers, change rooms, etc., because it is part of their rigorous public school education, and will prepare them to compete for jobs.

The Weekly Standard reports:

Late Friday afternoon Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt wrote a letter to the Justice and Education officials advising that “if you attempt to enforce this . . . letter on schools in the State of Oklahoma, we will vigorously defend the State’s interests.” Pruitt’s letter sets forth the grounds of defense: That without warrant the administration has redefined “sex” to mean “gender identity”; that it has forced this definition on parents, students, and communities because it has “deemed unjustifiable any discomfort that [transgender students] may express,” thus elevating “the status of transgender students over those who would define their sex based on biology and who would seek to have their definition honored in the most private of places”; and that it compels schools to enforce the new definition of sex “by conditioning receipt of federal funds on compliance” with the letter—”an ultimatum: take it or lose it,” which is not a “real choice” for many schools.

Pruitt concludes by saying that the administration’s actions are unlawful and “represent the most egregious administrative overreach to date. You have taken a public policy issue that must, by our constitutional design, be worked out in the laboratory of democracy and enforced it on all people. And you have done so through a misuse of the spending power.”

State attorneys general in the age of Obama have devised state coalitions to challenge federal overreach. Most notably, 26 states have joined in taking on the president’s executive action on immigration, now before the Supreme Court. Watch for a new coalition to be formed, in the event of actions taken to enforce the guidance letter.

Are you feeling sad? Then read the letter (PDF) from the Oklahoma attorney general.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott defies the tyrant
Texas Governor Greg Abbott defies the tyrant

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports on Texas’ response to Obama’s Kingly decree:

Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick said on May 13 the state will “not yield to blackmail” after the Obama administration announced a directive to public schools to give transgender students access to facilities, including bathrooms that match their chosen gender identity.

[…]Just hours after news outlets reported on the directive, which will be sent to all public schools across the country Friday, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick offered a doomsday outlook.

“This will be the beginning of the end of the public school system as we know it,” he told NBC 5.

Patrick and other top Republicans in America’s largest conservative state, had spent the day listening to Gov. Greg Abbott’s vows to unite with the state of North Carolina as it wages a legal battle with the federal government over the Tar Heel state’s new law requiring people to use the bathroom that aligns with the gender on their birth certificate.

And just this week, Patrick called for the resignation of a Fort Worth schools superintendent after he proposed policies more inclusive of transgender students.

For those of you looking for a good state to move to, Oklahoma and Texas.

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Sex abuse survivors discuss consequences of transgender bathroom laws

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Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign
Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign

In this latest video from Alliance Defending Freedom:

The Daily Signal explains the new video:

Policies allowing a person who is biologically male to access women’s restrooms and locker rooms can create negative, unintended consequences, according to some sexual abuse survivors.

“The presence of a male of any variety, whether he’s somebody who identifies as a trans or not, whether he has deviant motives or not, that’s irrelevant to the reality that for survivors of sexual trauma to just turn around and to be exposed to that is an instant trigger,” Kaeley Triller, a sexual trauma survivor, said in a video created by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative, Christian legal organization.

The video explains from a first-hand perspective how unintended victims are the consequence of open restroom and locker room policies in place at some companies like Target and in schools, such as in Fort Worth, Texas.

[…]“People are afraid, and with good reason, because they’ve had experiences where they were in places where they were vulnerable and someone hurt them,” a woman named Autumn Bennett said in the video.

[…]Janine Simon, a sexual assault victim, shared her thoughts in the video.

“I’ve only been telling my personal story publicly for a few months,” Simon said. “I do it because I know there are so many kids out, there are so many kids out there already being abused. There’s so many kids out there that pedophiles, they’re just looking for a chance… We’ve just created a law that makes it easier for them to access their victims.”

[…]This year in Washington state, a man was reported to have undressed in front of girls in a women’s locker room.

“As long as the person says, ‘I identify as a woman,’ and they’re not doing something criminal like actually assaulting somebody, this rule gives them the legal right to be present,” Joseph Backholm, executive director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, told The Washington Times in February.

And as I blogged before, the Obama administration, which is in the back pocket of the gay rights lobby, has ordered all the public schools in the nation to implement transgender bathroom access. Even if you pull your kids out of the public schools, you are still paying for the public schools to be run the way that the gay rights lobby wants them to be run. You can’t opt out of paying taxes to the Democrat Party.

Fort Worth, TX

What is scary is how this is even happening at the state and local level, in states that are supposedly conservative.

Look at this:

The public schools in Fort Worth — Fort Worth — are going trans-positive. Here’s a link to the new school policy, [UPDATE: Link corrected. Sorry! — RD] which is based on the new federal interpretation of Title IX. It’s in Scribd, so I can’t quote excerpts. Highlights include:

  • There doesn’t need to be a medical or mental health diagnosis involved. If a male student says he’s a girl, then he’s a girl, and vice versa.
  • Schools are instructed to keep the student’s asserted gender identity hidden from parents unless authorized to share that information with them.
  • School personnel are to consider themselves to be allies of a student undergoing gender transitioning. That means not telling their parents or guardians.
  • Transgender students must have the opportunity to participate in school sports as the gender they claim to be, though they are not guaranteed this as a right.

But there’s more. The Fort Worth schools are now compelling teachers and others to teach gender ideology to students. Highlights:

  • Teachers are no longer to call their students “boys” and “girls,” but to use gender-neutral language to refer to them, e.g., “students”
  • Classrooms are to “feature diversity” in their classroom materials

So, let’s recap: public school teachers and personnel in the Fort Worth Independent School District are now required by policy to instruct students that gender can be whatever you want it to be. And they are required to keep parents in the dark about their kids transitioning or presenting themselves as the opposite gender at school.

Not in Austin. In Fort Worth.

Where are the people in Fort Worth supposed to go to get their kids away from this? And where do they get the tax money they paid into the system back, if they do pull their kids out of these public schools?

My solution to this is to allow the victims of anything that follows from this to sue the public school administrators and the Democrat Party officials who put the policy in place, and make it very expensive for them. They understand lawsuits. But we’ll have to wait for a real conservative to be elected President before that happens.

News

Obama administration forces transgender bathroom access in all public schools

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Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign
Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign

This is from The Stream:

Public schools must permit transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity, according to an Obama administration directive issued amid a court fight between the federal government and North Carolina.

The guidance from leaders at the departments of Education and Justice says public schools are obligated to treat transgender students in a way that matches their gender identity, even if their education records or identity documents indicate a different sex.

“There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement accompanying the directive, which is being sent to school districts Friday.

In issuing the guidance, the Obama administration is wading anew into a socially divisive debate it has bluntly cast in terms of civil rights. The Justice Department on Monday sued North Carolina over a bathroom access law that it said violates the rights of transgender people, a measure that Lynch likened to policies of racial segregation and efforts to deny gay couples the right to marry.

“We must ensure that our young people know that whoever they are or wherever they come from, they have the opportunity to get a great education in an environment free from discrimination, harassment and violence,” [Education Secretary John B.] King said.

Ah yes – the students get their educations in the bathrooms, changerooms and showers. So that’s where they have to be free to pretend to be a sex they are not, or they won’t learn anything in there. It’s part of their education, what goes on in bathrooms, changerooms and showers.

In any case, things are going so well academically in our schools, that of course we can focus on these human rights issues instead. Our public schools are the best in the world, and our students are the most educated, right?

OK, so who is behind this power play? The largest gay activist group in the United States, of course:

The move was cheered by Human Rights Campaign, a gay, lesbian and transgender civil rights organization, which called the guidelines “groundbreaking.”

“This is a truly significant moment not only for transgender young people but for all young people, sending a message that every student deserves to be treated fairly and supported by their teachers and schools,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement.

All of this Obama administration activity is being down with taxpayer dollars. Even if you disagree with it, you’re paying for it. The solution is to shrink the size of government by voting for people who want the federal government to only focus on the responsibilities outlined for it in the Constitution, and push the other responsibilities down to the state level. I can guarantee you that if you live in a red state, you would never have your state government forcing gay activist legislation down your throat. But even then, at least you could move to a more conservative state. When the federal government does it, you’re stuck.

Think of the things that the federal government should be working on like fighting wars, building up our armed forces, detecting and neutralizing terrorists, securing the border, and lowering taxes and regulations on business. But they do none of those things, and instead just do whatever the Human Rights Campaign wants them to do. And this is what people who vote for the Democrat party want.

Ted Cruz campaigned on abolishing the federal department of education, precisely because education is something that should be left to the states. But, unfortunately the Republican primary voters were not looking for someone with good policies. So this isn’t going to get fixed, no matter who wins the election in 2016. It might get fixed in 2020, if we elect a Constitutional conservative.