LGBT Pride Month has come to public schools nationwide with a Twitter announcement by the U.S. Department of Education (ED).
The “I” in the ever-expanding acronym stands for “intersex.” Intersex people are born with rare genetic mutations that give them male and female sex organs.
The ED post on Twitter displays the LGBT pride flag, the transgender pride flag, and the words “Happy Pride Month.”
The ED also changed its Twitter icon to include the "Progress Pride" flag, which uses light blue, pink, and white stripes to represent transgender and non-binary people, and the brown and black stripes to represent "marginalized people of color."
The federal agency posted the message on the first day of June because it's nationally recognized as LGBT Pride Month.
On Twitter, the message received strong pushback in its comments.
Thousands of replies condemned the ED for supporting a movement that encourages children to consider sex change.
“Teach math and science and stop trying to groom kids. This explains why 1 in 10 children in public schools will be sexually assaulted by a public school employee before they graduate,” one commenter wrote in reply to the ED post, receiving more than 200 affirmations from other Twitter users.
Another popular comment called the ED announcement “the best homeschool ad I’ve ever seen.”
Few commenters seemed in favor of the agency's Pride Month position.
Scholastics and 'Gender Support Plans'
The ED post celebrating Pride Month isn’t the first time the federal government has backed child sex change in official statements. In a White House proclamation, President Joe Biden announced presidential support for “the fight for transgender equality.”“We are expanding Federal non-discrimination protections; promoting strategies to address violence against the transgender community and advance gender equity and equality; and disseminating new resources to enhance inclusion, opportunity, and safety for transgender people,” Biden announced in March 2022.
Official guidelines call for schools to use “welcoming and inclusive language,” “respect all students’ gender identities,” and “develop gender support plans.”
On the ED website, those official guidelines don’t have the neutral background other resource pages have. Instead, they display the transgender flag’s pink and blue in the background.
The guidelines mean teachers should use a child’s new transgender name and new transgender pronouns. And they should take action to “safeguard students’ privacy.”
Such measures could include “maintaining the confidentiality of a student’s birth name or sex assigned at birth if the student wishes to keep this information private," the guidelines instruct.
The ED also tells schools to support transgender students through student-led clubs, faculty, teachers, peers, staff, and “safe spaces on campus.”
The document provides hypothetical examples showing what CRT and OCR might investigate:
“On her way to the girls’ restroom, a transgender high school girl is stopped by the principal who bars her entry. The principal tells the student to use the boys’ restroom or nurse’s office because her school records identify her as ‘male.’ Later, the student joins her friends to try out for the girls’ cheerleading team, and the coach turns her away from tryouts solely because she is transgender. When the student complains, the principal tells her, ‘Those are the district’s policies,’” one example reads.
In another example, teachers do nothing when a middle school girl says she is a boy, and her classmates call her by her former name, then bully her.
Calls to Dissolve the ED
Republican politicians have called for the dissolution of the Department of Education in recent statements, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Gov. Ron DeSantis.The child sex change movement has entrenched itself in the agency for years.
“In some places, people in positions of authority are putting up obstacles that would keep you from playing on the sports field, accessing the bathroom, and receiving the supportive and life-saving care you may need,” said Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ's civil rights division.
Clarke also said keeping children out of opposite-sex bathrooms is “against the law.” The acting assistant secretary for the ED’s Office of Civil Rights, Suzanne Goldberg, encouraged affected children to file a complaint with the agency.
In the video, Rachel Levine—a doctor and assistant secretary of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—added that Biden backs children who want to get a sex change. Levine is a man who lives as a woman.
“I want all of you to know that I have your back, too," Levine said. "And I will do everything I can to support and advocate for our community."
