The Minnesota Department of Education has just approved a transgender “toolkit” that will be distributed to all public and charter schools in the state.
The toolkit, which was authored by a number of transgender and gay-rights activists, directs schools to stop referring to students with gender-specific pronouns like he, she, him or her. A decision to use a pronoun other than the ones preferred will likely be considered verbal harassment.
It also instructs schools to allow students to use the bathroom or shower facility of whichever sex they identify with, regardless of their actual sex. In a nod to the extreme discomfort that such policies will produce, the toolkit advises schools to make single-user restrooms available—not to accommodate the rare transgender student—but for other students who feel uncomfortable sharing intimate space with a person of the opposite sex.
State Rep. Tim Miller, a 2016 alumnus of the Family Policy Foundation’s Statesmen Academy, took to the airwaves to address the situation on Fox & Friends.
Miller pointed to the hypocrisy of the transgender activists, noting that at one point they criticized him for speaking out against their agenda “since there are only a few (transgender) kids throughout the entire state of Minnesota.” But now they claim that this broad, statewide policy is needed because there are so many transgender students. “Common sense has sort of left the room,” said Miller. You can watch a video of his appearance here.
“Though 67 Minnesota legislators authored a letter urging decision makers to prevent approval and distribution of the toolkit, they were ignored,” said Meredith Campbell, Policy Director for Minnesota Family Council. “This irresponsible, disrespectful decision to ignore legislators’ recommendations is shocking, especially being that gender nonconforming issues remain unsettled in science, the courts and the Minnesota legislature.”
This is not the first time that transgender policy has been in recent Minnesota headlines. In May, we reported that a Minnesota kindergarten incorporated a transgender book, My Princess Boy, into its curriculum. That’s because the parents of a 5 year-old boy—who has long blond braids, dresses in jumpers with tights and identifies as a girl—complained about bullying and asked school officials to proactively teach kindergartners about gender identity.
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