California: Bathroom Case Hits Close to Home

The hot topic in recent weeks at Colorado’s Florence High School hasn’t been about calculus, history, English, college admissions or who the Huskies would face on their Friday night football games.

Instead, the big news has centered on a transgendered student who, born male but perceiving himself as female, has been using the girls’ bathroom. The situation prompted a parental complaint to administrators, who responded that the boy’s rights as a transgendered student trump the privacy concerns of his peers.

“This is a nightmare scenario for the teenage girls—some of them freshmen—and their parents at this school,” said Matthew McReynolds, a staff attorney with Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute (PJI).

After being contacted by a Florence High School parent, McReynolds sent a letter to Principal Brian Schipper and Superintendent Rhonda Vendetti outlining the privacy rights of students.

“This is exactly the kind of horror story we have been warning would accompany the push for radical transgender rights in schools, and it is the type of situation that LGBT activists have been insisting would not happen.”

McReynolds said officials at the school, located near Pueblo, warned the complaining students they could be removed from sports teams or be charged with hate crimes if they persisted in voicing their opposition to the policy.

In a blog interview with a transgender-affirming website, Superintendent Vendetti asserted that the claims made by PJI and its client were unmerited.

“(It’s) one parent basically bringing their viewpoint about this situation to the media because they weren’t getting the responses that they hoped they would get from the district, from parents of students at the high school, or from the board and myself,”

Vendetti said in the taped interview. “I think it’s just an attempt to elevate the situation to a point where maybe some more attention can be drawn to that in hope of having a different outcome.”

The next day, however, the Canon City Daily Record posted a story in which Vendetti said “the district was advised by lawyers not to comment about the specifics of the case because it is under investigation by law enforcement.”

“We are committed to providing a fair and equal education to all students at Florence High School,” Vendetti said in a brief statement.

In a follow-up statement issued by Pacific Justice on Oct. 22, its president, Brad Dacus, chided the district for being dismissive and refusing to address the institute’s allegations of punitive threats by the athletic department.

“Even more troubling was the superintendent’s warning that the complaining families were now subject to having their social media monitored by police,” the PJI statement read.

“It is increasingly apparent that school officials and LGBT activists are on an all-out mission to discredit our clients rather than deal with the serious problems they have identified with a biologically teenage boy sharing bathrooms with their teenage daughters,” Dacus said in the statement. “These new developments only stiffen our resolve and renew our focus to seek a balanced solution that honors the rights and needs of all students.”

The media circus surrounding the story, including coverage internationally, shamefully demonstrates the distractive atmosphere that homosexual activities are thrusting upon children in public schools.

Such scenarios are expected to pop up all across California on Jan. 1—unless a pending referendum seeking to reverse Assembly Bill 1266 (Ammiano, D-San Francisco) gathers enough signatures to make the ballot. AB 1266, dubbed the bathroom bill and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, will require all public school personnel to accommodate the perceived gender of students for all activities and campus facilities, including locker rooms.

Frank Schubert, who successfully spearheaded the Proposition 8 campaign and who is working with the current referendum team through Privacy for All Students, told the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday that 750 churches statewide are circulating petitions in an effort to gather at least 505,000 valid signatures to qualify for the November 2014 ballot. The deadline is Nov. 12, though organizers plan to finish their drive on Nov. 8. According to the Chronicle, about 320,000 petitions, each with eight signature lines, are in circulation.

The National Review online reported that by mid-October paid signature gatherers, hired to augment the volunteer effort, had submitted at least 250,000 signatures alone, though they still need to be verified. Thousands more are expected through the volunteer campaign, which includes the churches. Schubert told the National Review that Privacy for All Students had to print 50,000 more petitions to keep up with the demand.

“There certainly is sympathy for any student who might be subjected to bullying for any reason,” Schubert told the National Review’s Alec Torres. “But we’ve already passed in California multiple pieces of legislation prohibiting discrimination and bullying. What we don’t need to do is to open up the most sensitive areas of our public schools to members of the opposite sex.”

Schubert went on to say that their polling shows that 51 percent of respondents oppose AB 1266, with just 35 percent supporting the new law. When individuals hear the pros and cons of the measure, opposition to AB 1266 rises to 60 percent, Schubert said.

“Once people become aware of it, then they oppose it,” Schubert said, adding that his team is “extremely confident” that the law will be overturned if it is put on the ballot.  CitizenLink