Enemies of Truth Wage War in School Districts 211 and 15

Written by Laurie Higgins

While conservatives with liquefied spines avert their gaze from co-ed restrooms and locker rooms in the schools their taxes subsidize, trying to pretend this issue doesn’t matter, the Left rubs their hands together in unseemly glee, knowing they are winning their anti-science war.

If conservatives would take a gander at what’s taking place in Illinois School Districts 211 and 15, they may begin to understand the nature of the war from which too many are AWOL. And maybe understanding will lead to action, the first step of which will be to vote in the April 4th election.

District 211

As some may remember, District 211, the largest high school district in the state, made national news when the district was sued by a gender-dysphoric boy who is pretending to be a girl and sought access to the girls’ restrooms and locker room.

Putting money ahead of truth, the cowardly and/or ignorant school board and administration squealed “uncle” and agreed to allow this boy to invade the private spaces of girls, thus creating de facto co-ed restrooms and locker rooms. Adding insult to injury, they made these illicit and subversive accommodations without telling parents.

When in the girls’ locker room, this student must change in a private changing cubicle because, you know, he’s actually a boy. This requirement, however, will not long stand because the Left insists that everyone in society pretend along with gender-dysphoric persons that they are in reality the sex they are not.

The ACLU, who represented the District 211 boy, fiercely objected to the privacy stall requirement, insisting that he have unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room. The ACLU lost that skirmish, but unless taxpayers object to co-ed private spaces with the boldness, fervor, and tenacity of the left, the war will be won by the enemies of truth.

Three courageous souls have stepped into this war against science, modesty, privacy, and children’s rights: Ralph Bonatz, Katherine David, and Jean Forrest are running for the District 211 School Board. We need an army of men and women like these three.

District 15

One of District 211’s feeder schools, Community Consolidated School District 15 in Palatine which is an elementary and middle school district, is plagued by the same feckless leadership as District 211. After parents discovered that District 15 was secretly allowing gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, a heated school board meeting ensued at which Superintendent Scott Thompson offered this ignorant defense of co-ed restrooms and locker rooms:

If we have a transgender student in one of our schools who wishes to use a bathroom or locker room of his/her identified gender, we have established stalls in every bathroom and privacy screens in our locker rooms for any student who wishes to use them.

If stalls and privacy screens provide sufficient separation between, for example, a gender-dysphoric boy and girls in private spaces, then why have any sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms? Why can’t “cisgender” boys join girls in restrooms with stalls and locker rooms with privacy screens? Why should it make any difference to girls if the boys in their locker rooms wish they were girls or not? When schools prohibit “cisgender” boys from using girls’ facilities, aren’t they discriminating based on “gender identity”? Why require “transgirls” (i.e., boys) to change behind privacy screens? Doesn’t that requirement necessarily acknowledge that objective sex matters? Doesn’t it necessarily acknowledge that “transgirls” are in reality boys?

And if stalls and privacy screens provide sufficient separation between gender-dysphoric boys and girls in private spaces, then why don’t stalls and privacy screens provide sufficient separation between gender-dysphoric boys and other boys in boys’ private spaces?

Thompson falsely claimed that the district’s policy and practice are rooted in anti-discrimination laws:

The district is bound to follow federal and state laws regarding the treatment of students….Illinois law requires the school district prevent any discrimination on basis of race, color, gender, religion, national origin, language, disability, sexual orientation, age or any other legally protected characteristic (including transgender students).

Surprisingly, Thompson seems ignorant of the fact that the Illinois Human Rights Act and Title IX explicitly permit public schools to maintain separate restrooms and locker rooms for girls and boys.

Outside involvement in local affairs

Whenever the Illinois Family Institute writes about a school skirmish pertaining to homosexuality or gender dysphoria, “progressives” squawk about “outside” organizations getting “involved” in local affairs. Oddly, they never seem bothered when outside pro-sexual deviance pundits like Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn or organizations like the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance or Equality Illinois get involved in local affairs. And boy, oh boy, is Equality Illinois involved in District 211.

Equality Illinois, Illinois’ most powerful pro-homosexuality/pro-biological-sex rejection organization, has a political action committee that has endorsed three lousy District 211 candidates with this doozy of a statement:

Schools should be environments where students can be who they truly are and thrive. Yet, anti-LGBTQ organizations are using our schools in their mean-spirited effort to allow discrimination against transgender students. We should not let these groups pick on transgender students with bad policy.

Word to Equality Illinois: Students who “identify” as “transgirls” are truly boys. Students who “identify” as “transboys” are truly girls. That’s a scientific fact—and we all know how much “progressives” value science.

Moreover, having sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms does not constitute unjust discrimination, mean-spiritedness, or bullying. If it did, society should have no sex-segregated restrooms or locker rooms anywhere. Nor should schools tolerate sex-segregation by requiring objectively male students to change behind privacy screens in girls’ locker rooms. Nor should schools prohibit objectively male students who “identify” as “trans” from showering with girls.

Please take note of what Equality Illinois is saying: They are saying that parents who believe that objectively male and objectively female students should not share restrooms and locker rooms are discriminatory, mean-spirited bullies.

And that, my friends, is exactly what co-ed restroom and locker room policies teach all children.

Take Action:

• VOTE in local school board elections.

• DO NOT support any school-funding referenda until the following changes take place:

1.)  School choice is made available.

2.)  Elementary and middle schools stop exposing students to resources that affirm Leftist positions on homosexuality and “gender.”

3.)  High schools stop exposing students to resources that affirm Leftist positions on homosexuality and “gender” or they have students spend equal time studying “progressive” and conservative resources on these topics.

4.)  Schools adopt policies that require sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms.