Archive | September, 2024

Moneyed People Attack Wilmington Schools

23 Sep

By Thomas Ultican 9/23/2024

July 10th the Christina school board voted, at 2:45 AM, to remove popular Superintendent Dan Shelton. The seven member board split 4 to 3. It seems that Shelton’s opposition to allowing charter schools to take over the district motivated the vote. The Christina school district serves the small Delaware cities of Wilmington, Newark and their outskirts. It is a modest sized district with about 14,000 students. The unseen force behind the ouster was the DuPont family.

The attack by billionaires on schools in Delaware is similar to harm visiting public education throughout the nation. The local rich guy sets up tax exempt “charities” and uses them to undermine local schools. The “charities” hire young ambitious and talented people to lead the effort. Looking behind the scenes in Delaware illuminates the undermining of public schools nationwide.

Board President Donald Patton was joined by Vice President Alethea Smith-Tucker, Y.F. Lou, and Dr. Naveed Baqir in voting to oust the Superintendent two months before the new school year begins. It is alleged that they are the compromised four. In a local pod cast, Highland Bunker, board member Doug Manley reported that Matt Clifford, who dropped out of the recent school board election, was offered support if he agreed to vote with Board President Patton. Manley also speculated that Y. F. Lou received the same offer.

Trustee Manley stated that in his view the only reason Shelton was removed from office was because of his opposition to letting charter schools parcel out the district. It is notable that in 2022, Shelton was named Delaware State Superintendent of the Year.

Longwood Foundation

The Longwood Foundation is not called the DuPont Foundation because it was originally established in 1937 by Pierre DuPont to support Longwood Gardens. A tax reform act in 1969 caused a change and, Longwood Gardens, Inc. was formed to finance the gardens. The Longwood Foundation remained in existence to “principally support charitable organizations” and push forward the DuPont agenda.

Over the last decade, the foundation has spent $1,812,200 to support Reading Assist Inc. whose web page says:

“Reading Assist provides high-dosage tutoring for students in grades K-3 in the lowest 25% for reading proficiency, with a focus on serving in schools where there is the highest need.

“We recruit, train, and embed AmeriCorps members – known as Reading Assist Fellows – willing to commit a school year of service to provide our accredited, one-on-one intervention program to struggling readers.”

Reading Assist is a science of reading (SoR) advocate whose founder has ties to the dyslexia community. AmeriCorps has helped provide Teach for America (TFA) training and recruits. In other words, these organizations come with privatization blemishes. Many researchers believe SoR is bad science promoted by wealthy people and publishing companies while TFA is their army.

Longwood is still a DuPont family run organization. According to the 2022 tax form 990PF (TIN: 51-0066734), John DuPont is the current president and Margaret DuPont is Vice President. The tax records also show that in the last decade they have provided the fake education graduate school, Relay Graduate School, $1,300,000.

The Foundation concentrates its spending into the Wilmington area and does very little spending nationally. So their spending of more than $15,000,000 on charter schools in the last decade has made a huge impact locally. Margaret and one other DuPont family member also sit on the board of the smaller Chelsea Foundation (TIN: 51-6015638) which also provides grants to charter schools. It is this drive to privatize the Christina School District that seems to have led to firing a respected and popular administrator.

In 2017, Indiana scholars Jim Scheurich, Gayle Cosby, and Nathanial Williams posted an article on Diane Ravitch’s blog that outlined the model used by billionaires to gain control of local schools.  Point five of their rich guy privatization model is, “Development of a network of local organizations or affiliates that all collaborate closely on the same local agenda.”

First State Educate, Inc.

First State Educate’s 2019 form 990 (TIN: 84-2554991) reports its founding officers as President: John DuPont, Treasure: James Kelly and Secretary: Jocelyn Stewart. Since then, the Longwood Foundation has gifted it $731,100. In other words, First State Educate is fueled by DuPont money.

Their documents reveal:

“First State Educate/Action Fund (FSE/AF) were founded in 2019 to catalyze radical change in education by activating the power of Delawareans. In the four years since its founding, FSE/AF has helped 16 game-changing leaders be elected to school boards throughout the state, including five school board members enrolling 45,000 students who now serve in leadership positions. FSE/AF also helped propel numerous initiatives to change the conditions of teaching and learning, including the Wilmington Learning Collaborative, RISE UP Delaware and FaCE coalitions.

The reason there are two organizations is that First State Educate is the tax exempt “charity” and Action Fund is a political organizations that is not tax exempt.

There was only one change in the board leadership shown on the 2023 tax report; Jocelyn Stewarts position became Interim Executive Director. The form says she put in 40 hours a week in this position with no pay. She is a busy person. When she was appointed to the board of trustees for Delaware State University, the school reported, “Ms. Stewart is the chair of the board chairperson (sic) for Teach for America Delaware, the vice chair of the East Side Charter School, a trustee for Christiana Care Health Services and has served on a number of State of Delaware committees.”

Stewart comes from the banking industry where she worked in the Events Marketing Department of First USA Bank. In 2000, when Barclaycard US was founded she developed their community strategies.

This picture from the NPR affiliate Delawarepublic.org shows Delaware Senator, Chris Coons, on the left and Jocelyn Stewart on the right holding Barclay’s gift to EastSide Charter School. It is unknown why the Democratic senator is supporting public education privatization but he clearly is.

Stewart was replaced as director of First State Educate in July 2023 by Julia Keleher.

While serving as Secretary of Education in Puerto Rico, Keleher who is not Puerto Rican, secured a new law allowing for charter schools and vouchers plus the closure of hundreds of schools.

On December 28, 2016, Keleher was appointed Puerto Rico Secretary of Education by Governor-elect Ricardo Rosselló who became so hated he was driven from office in 2019. The appointment was just a few months before hurricane Maria hit. Keleher also became disliked as was demonstrated by San Juan protesters loudly chanting, “Julia go home!”

Things went sideways for Keleher. December 17, 2021, a federal judge in Puerto Rico sentenced her with six months prison, 12 months house arrest and a $21,000 fine. She plead guilty in June to two felony counts involving conspiracies to commit fraud. Almost as soon as she finished her prison term, she was hired by First State Educate. Now she is the executive director.

Conclusion

Rich people in Delaware are working to privatize the public schools in Wilmington and environs. The school board voting 4-3 to fire Dan Shelton is a result these efforts. It appears the school board has been completely corrupted with a compromised four.

WHYY reported, “[Naveed] Baqir and the private school he co-founded are under scrutiny concerning invoices submitted to the school district.”

Delawarpublic.org noted that in June the Department of Justice (DOJ) stated “that the board has made repeated Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) violations …”

On top of the state (DOJ) ruling, it seems that Dan Shelton has firm grounds for a lawsuit. The former Christina School District Attorney, James McMakin, severed ties with the board and said his firm is working to finalize a lawsuit against the district on the superintendent’s behalf. Shelton’s attorneys claim that he was discharged without a pre-determination hearing and he has constitutional rights. When still representing the district, McMakin told them “they’re acting lawlessly.”

It appears that the board members who voted to oust the superintendent are not protected from the lawsuit.

There is a good chance some of this injustice will be righted but damage has been done to the Christina School District. The people of Wilmington and Newark are in jeopardy of having their schools stolen by wealth neighbors including the DuPont family.

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Polikoff Makes NCLB Type Accountability Call

17 Sep

By Thomas Ultican 9/17/2024

Article by Professor Morgan Polikoff, University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education, is a throwback to the No Child Left Behind era. The piece’s purpose was to advertise a new report he worked on with the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). The teaser for his article at The 74 says, “Given the importance of public education and the need for student data, how can states justify doing such a lousy job at informing parents?” Because of COVID learning loss, he says state education report cards need big improvements.

Is leaning loss a real thing? Probably not but let’s ignore that argument for now. Polikoff shared, “I’m on the board of the Data Quality Campaign and I’ve written extensively (and favorably) about the role of accountability in promoting educational improvement.” Additionally, the 2023 Data Quality Campaign “Show Me the Data Report” says, “13 [states] did not include growth data from the 2021–22 school year, and 4 states did not include growth data at all.”

Virtually everything Polikoff shares is billionaire funded baloney.

Center for Reinventing Public Education

In 1993, Political Science Professor, Paul T. Hill, established the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE).

Professor Hill, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, was a member of Brookings’ cadre of researchers convinced that American public education was failing. Furthermore, they shared a general agreement that market based business principles were central to fixing schools and declared teachers unions and governance by locally elected school boards must be overturned.

CRPE was fortunate to be in Seattle, Washington where the world’s richest man, Bill Gates, decided to implement his opinions concerning education. The fact that he was so rich appeared to be his only qualification for what became an outsized influence over public education. CRPE became one of his tools.

“Doing School Choice Right” was a CRPE project funded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. CPRE listed two salient goals for their study:

  • “Create models for how school districts can oversee public schools in multiple ways—including direct operation, chartering, contracting, and licensing private schools to admit voucher students. This study is conducted in partnership with the National Charter School Research Project.”
  • “Examine issues involved in moving toward pupil-based funding, particularly technical, legal, and regulatory barriers.”

Out of this study, the “portfolio school” management model was created. In October 2009, CRPE published “Portfolio School Districts for Big Cities: An Interim Report.” It became popular with billionaire school reformers and in 2018 was a central purpose for Jon Arnold and Reed Hastings to establish The City Fund.

By 2019, CRPE quit sharing who it funders are. In 2018, their listed funders were:

  • The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Carnegie Corporation of New York
  • Laura and John Arnold Foundation
  • Michael and Susan Dell Foundation
  • US Department of Education
  • Walton Family Foundation  

Data Quality Campaign

Kati Haycock the founder of Education Trust became leader of the Data Quality Campaign (DQC). Ed Trust was a central player in foisting Common Core State Standards on America. Haycock had a lot of experience working around education but like most reformers had no actual teaching experience. Mercedes Schneider’s book Common Core Dilemma details how DQC was created and for what purpose (Pages 44-56).

DQC is described as a national collaborative effort to improve accountability and the use of data. It is an effort by technocrats to control the way standardized testing data is collected and used to improve student achievement. Originally conceived by the National Governors Association, it was assigned to Haycock and Education Trust.

The big unrecognized problem for DQC is that Standardized testing is useless. Student data does not indicate learning, teacher effectiveness or school quality. A correlation study of how testing data is affected by various factors assigns r-values of between 1 and 0. A value of 1 means 100% correlated and a value of 0 means not correlated at all. When correlation studies are done with standardized testing data there is only one factor that has an r-value greater the 0.3 (weakly correlated) and that is family wealth which has an r-value of 0.9.

Teacher quality, class size, urban or rural, race, gender, curriculum design, music availability, art availability and so on all effect education outcomes but these effects are swamped by family wealth. Noel Wilson’s famous 1997 peer-reviewed article, “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” fundamentally states that the error involved in educational testing is so great validity is compromised. This paper has been ignored but never debunked.

In other words, family wealth so overwhelms all other effects, standardized testing becomes meaningless.

In the No Child Left Behind era, testing data was used as proof that public schools were failing. Of course, 100% of those so called “failing schools” were in poor zip codes.

DQC calls for mandating ten pieces of data tied to standardized testing, includes unique student identifiers, a teacher identifier system to match teachers to students and the ability to match student records between the P–12 and postsecondary systems. Students, parents and teachers would need to trust them and give up all pretenses of privacy.

These unprofessional and misguided organizations continue to operate because billionaires support them. As of 2022, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (ISN: 56-2618866) has financed Ed Trust and DQC with more than $114,000,000 while other billionaires have also kicked in money.

Growth Models

When professor Polikoff calls for growth data he is referring to growth models.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) and California Office of Reform Education (CORE) sound like official governmental organizations but they are not. Billionaires created these institutions. In 2019, PACE was determined to sell California on growth models. Morgan Polikoff, produced a policy brief stating:

“Based on the existing literature and an examination of California’s own goals for the Dashboard and the continuous improvement system, the state should adopt a student-level growth model as soon as possible. Forty-eight states have already done so; there is no reason for California to hang back with Kansas while other states use growth data to improve their schools.”

Jesse Rothstein, professor of public policy and economics at University of California, Berkeley, ran a verification test and found, “these models indicate large ‘effects’ of 5th grade teachers on 4th grade test score gains.”

There are fundamentally three types of growth models. The gain-model is the least mathematically manipulated model with the least amount of assumptions required. The residual-gain model requires significantly more manipulation and the multivariate model is the most complex, manipulated and opaque of them all. None of the three models have been decisively shown to provide accurate analysis but strong evidence has emerged that they do not.

All of these models face the same insurmountable problem when modeling testing data, garbage in leads to garbage out.

Conclusions

Polikoff excoriates state education reporting sites for being difficult to navigate and not being standardized.

The education writer, Peter Greene, wrote about Polikoff’s report:

“It’s that same childlike faith that transparency and data will drive the education marketplace towards excellence, which is doomed because A) excellence in education defies transparent data collection (BS Test results are not it) and B) that’s not how the marketplace works, anyway.”

“I’m not sure there is any audience for these sites at all. It’s the kind of thing I think of as a library publication–something that puts down information that needs to be stored somewhere, because it’s important and the odd researcher or historian may want it at some point.”

Billionaires believe in testing because it is an avenue for them to centralize power and exert greater control over public education. Growth models, which are opaque and force us to accept mathematics experts like Polikoff, are fueled by bad data. It is part of a two decades long technocratic attack on public schools.

America rose to power in the world because of democratic principles and public education. Selfish and short sighted interests are working to destroy both.

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Another Oklahoma Education Blunder

8 Sep

By Thomas Ultican 9/8/2024

Under the suspect leadership of Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, the education department released testing results he described as “tremendous.” However, they were a fiction. With the new unannounced cut scores, 51% of third graders were proficient in reading or better compared to last year’s 29%. That is just one of many examples.

September 10, 2020, Governor Kevin Stitt appointed Walters Oklahoma’s Secretary of Education. In 2022, Walters ran for Superintendent of Public Instruction receiving the governor’s endorsement and that of Texas Senator, Ted Cruz. Walters won 53% of the vote in a Republican primary runoff against April Grace and then easily defeated Democrat Jena Nelson in the general election.

The 2022 election appeared to be part of the seven mountains movement. Crazy Ted’s father, Rafael Cruz, is a seven mountains advocate, who during a live streamed Patriot Mobil sermon, asserted that the separation of church and state is a myth. He claimed the founders meant it to be a “one-way wall” preventing the government from interfering with the church, not preventing the church from having dominion over the government. Clearly Kevin Stitt spent political capital appointing Walters and then supporting him ever since for a reason. Walter’s behavior in office, mandating Bible lessons, attacking the LGBTQ+ community and teachers, looks like dominionism.

The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) known as the nation’s report card has consistently shown Oklahoma results trailing most states. In 2022, NAEP testing results after COVID were down for the nation. The fourth and eighth grade math and reading results reveal that the average declines in Oklahoma were worse than the national averages. This is the first data that is related to Walters’s leadership of education in Oklahoma.

The testing fiasco is odd. Was it just incompetence or was there something else happening? This is not a unique event. As a member of the Technical Advisory committee wrote in May to the education department’s assessment director, “Historically, I understand that [the department] has handled these types of changes with media events where the department has invited news organizations to help support the communication of changes to the system.” For some reason, these past practices were not followed. Maybe Walters thought he could make the state’s poor testing performance disappear.

Attacking the Media

When the testing issue exploded, Ryan Walters responded:

“It is an incredible position of the media gaslighting the public on what’s happening here. We have not rolled out the test scores yet. So to be attacked on how we rolled out test scores before we roll out test scores, I found [a] really fascinating bit of fan fiction out there.”

Was he purposefully lying or didn’t he know? Neither case looks good. Walters’ department had already posted the statewide testing data to the state website before his attack on the media.

Another odd lie from Walters was his claim that no public announcements were made because his administration was busy explaining the new results to school districts. Several school leaders claimed they received their test scores from the state Department of Education with no notice of material changes to scoring.

Even without an explanation, it was obvious to district leaders something must have changed. Midwest City-Del City Public Schools Superintendent Rick Cobb said, “We’re probably seeing some growth, probably hitting that point past the pandemic where statewide we’re reversing the learning loss, but we didn’t reverse 20% of it in one year.” In Watonga Public Schools, Superintendent Kyle Hilterbran said he expected his students to show improvement, but the leap in statewide averages told him the state must have reset its scores.

The Oklahoma Voice developed a source in the state assessment group allowing them to report:

“Fifth-grade results in English language arts had the greatest boost from the new scoring method. About 59% of fifth graders will be considered proficient this year, an increase of 33%.

“Without the recent scoring changes, their proficiency rate would drop to 26%. In 2023, the proficiency rate for fifth-grade English was 28%.”

Impeachment Possible

Many are blaming Walters for the communications breakdown. They cite his messy political brawls over the summer as distracting him from doing his job. In June, he drew national attention by mandating that all public schools teach the Bible. A federal audit by the U.S. Department of Education called Oklahoma out of compliance with testing and handling Title I funds. Walters of course blamed the previous administration.

On top of all that, seventeen Republican said they would be seeking an impeachment investigation against him. Their signed letter included:

  1. Denied entry into a Department of Education executive board meeting for an Education Committee member.
  2. Employed significant delays in answering Committee inquires (2 committees).
  3. Failed to comply with legislative budgetary directive regarding school security dollars.
  4. Failed to turn over complete information regarding spending on travel.
  5. Failed to fill in a timely manner Open Records Act requests.
  6. Defied legislative appropriation authority by refusing to buy critically needed asthma inhalers.

The letter from the sub-committee on education chair, Mark McBride, was addressed to Speaker of the House, Charles McCall. McCall said he would not act on the letter unless 51 house Republicans signed on which is two thirds of them. McBride responded, “I don’t know that 51 is obtainable, but I think at 26, that’s concerning to me if I was in his shoes.” Twenty-six members would represent half the Republican caucus.

The Education Committee member barred from the Department of Education’s executive board meeting was former teacher and Democratic Representative, Jacob Roscrants. The former teacher observed:

“If you look at the state statute and how it spells out how you impeach a statewide-elected official, in my eyes, Superintendent Walters has far exceeded that. There’s so much incompetence coming from Superintendent Walters, his board and the State Department of Education under him.”

Walters reacted defiantly to the call for his impeachment. In reporting on this, the Oklahoma Voice header read, “Ryan Walters urges Oklahoma House to start his impeachment proceedings ‘immediately.’” He claimed lawmakers have publicized baseless lies about him.

Walters accused House Speaker, McCall, and Education Committee Chairman, McBride, of trying to impeach him for political gain. He asserted the speaker plans to run for governor in 2026. “The speaker wants to impeach me for political advantage in the 2026 governor’s race,” Walters declared.

On another front, the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency (LOFT), an investigative service for the Oklahoma legislature, was activated. It is investigating the allegation that Walters was withholding funds for school security, asthma inhalers and teacher maternity leave. Speaker McCall reported, “This investigation by LOFT allows us to address these concerns efficiently without the need for a costly special session.”

In another related occurrence, Phil Bacharach, a spokesperson for Attorney General Gentner Drummond, said, “We are very concerned by what appeared to be a willful violation of the Open Meeting Act.” He noted that his office is investigating and will “take appropriate action.”

Walters had an eventful August.

Observations

Former school teacher, Ryan Walters, with no administrative experience was put in charge of Oklahoma education by Governor Kevin Stitt. The only obvious reason for his selection is he is a Christian culture warrior. Makes me wonder if Oklahoma has been captured by a dangerous Christian cult?

A member of the Republican Party, Walters, has been a vocal critic of critical race theory, LGBT students’ rights, and teachers’ unions. He has been described as “the state’s top culture warrior.” Walters appointed anti-gay “The Libs of TikTok” creator, Chaya Raichik, to the Oklahoma Library Advisory Board.

He campaigned for and won the removal of Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist and supported the conservative political organization Moms for Liberty.

When non-binary, Nex Benedict, died after an horrific bathroom beating, Walters showed off his profound ignorance saying he does not believe non-binary or transgender people exit. He stated:

“There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us.”

This is what it looks like when a dangerous cult gains power.

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GOP Attacking Trans Kids

1 Sep

By Thomas Ultican 9/1/2024

Less than 2% of Americans are born with gender-dysphoria, a mismatch between gender identity and their own personal sense of gender. Republican culture-warriors have made this group of people their latest victims, to insure evangelicals vote. Despite a strong showing of support by Americans including Republicans for LGBTQ+ equality, Republican dominated states have bombarded us with anti-LGBTQ+ legislation since 2020, particularly anti-transgender bills.

This month in San Diego County, the culture war bloomed in the Cajon Valley School District. All five board members voted to expand parental rights, including the right to review curricula and challenge books in the school library. However the most controversial part of the rules that had parents lining up to speak was the requirement that administrators must inform parents if any student under age 12 was requesting to change their gender identity by asking to be called by a different name or pronoun or use a different restroom.

In September 2023, Chino Valley School District enacted a similar rule and was immediately sued by California State Attorney General Rob Bonta. Judge Michael Sachs came down on the Attorney General’s side stating that “mandatory gender disclosure policies are facially unconstitutional as they violate the Equal Protection Clause of California’s Constitution and discriminate against transgender and gender nonconforming students.” In other words, students also have rights.

The state department of education has previously interpreted the equal protection clause to mean that schools must not notify parents or others of a student’s transgender status without getting the student’s consent; claiming doing so could endanger student safety.

In July 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new law barring school districts from passing policies that require schools to notify parents if their child asks to change their gender identification. Cajon Valley was aware of this law which takes effect January 1st but apparently wants the fight.

The San Diego Union reported the new law came about after several California school districts passed policies requiring that parents be notified if a child indicated wanting to change their gender identification. This led to push-back by Democratic state officials, who say students have a right to privacy.

Parent’s Rights and Children’s Rights

Jill Filipovic in an opinion piece for CNN wrote, “And while ‘parents rights’ or ‘parental rights’ may seem like common sense – of course parents should have the broad ability to guide their children, keep them safe and make decisions that children are too young to take on – those terms are too often trotted out to strip children and teenagers of their basic rights …”

Some people refuse medical care for children in the name of Christ. Others have adopted a fundamentalist Christian child-rearing book called To Train Up A Child which advises raising children to obey without question by starting to spank when they’re just a few months old. The book has been implicated in the beating deaths of several children. Forced childhood marriages, which are get-out of jail free cards for statutory rapists, are still a common practice in much of this country.

Where do parent’s rights end and children’s rights begin?

Filipovic continued:

“In the meantime, many conservatives have exploited understandable parental fears about their kids making significant emotional and physical changes, casting transgender people and those who support them as ‘groomers’ and dangerous sources of indoctrination. They have drawn gender-affirming care and even the simple recognition of transgender people under the umbrella of ‘parental rights,’ and essentially tell parents, ‘No one should be making decisions about your child’s gender identity but you.”’

In an article for EdWeek, on the same subject, Libby Stafford reported that groups like Moms for Liberty (M4L) have been behind much of the criticism of schools when they don’t disclose a student’s transgender changes to parents. M4L supports eliminating mention of gender identity and sexuality from school curriculum and accuses schools of “indoctrinating” students with “woke” values through pride celebrations and other efforts affirming LGBTQ+ identities.

Two years ago, Florida passed an attack on LGBTQ+ rights known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. CNN’s report by Zachary Wolf says, “Suffice it to say the new Florida law suggests a minor child should not have the ability to speak in confidence to a counselor at school.”

Commenting on the new Florida law, medical director of the Thrive Gender Development program at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, Dr. Scott Leibowitz noted, “It basically sends a message to these young, vulnerable people that politicians are willing to sacrifice the youths’ emotional and physical well-being and health for political gain.”

Politico reported on a Saturday Night Live Weekend Update segment about the Florida anti-gay law. Colin Jost said to cast member Kate McKinnon, this bill “means that you can’t acknowledge that ‘gay’ exists at all.” McKinnon heatedly replied, “I am deeply gay — sorry, deeply concerned. It just seems like this is going to make kids, gay and trans — sorry, depressed and suicidal.” It is a valid point.

Killing Trans Kids

Many of the new laws popping up in Republican led states block physicians from providing care to trans children and block insurance companies from paying for it. Lillian Rivera, director of family programming for the nonprofit Gender Spectrum observed, “It’s very confusing when people put forth legislation that will harm the health and well-being of children and teens.” In some states, doctors are caught in a vice between living up to their Hippocratic Oath and following state law.

For many trans kids, finding good medical care and guidance is literally life or death. Ignoring the impulses is not an option. Some kids must have both the physical and psychological relief to survive.

A typical issue with trans children was shared by a Texas mom, Cindy Crawford. She and her gender fluid child, who just made a serious suicide attempt, were in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. The 14-year-old was saved but the pain that led to an attempted suicide remained.

Today Crawford says, “Gender-affirming care is what is keeping my child alive, literally.”  After receiving a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and the accompanying therapy and hormones, the depression and anxiety lessened. While there are risks associated with medical interventions, there are also significant risks associated with continued untreated gender dysphoria.

Reporter, Lisa Selin Davis, shared, “Despite rumors that parents are rushing their kids into body-changing hormones and surgeries, the opposite … is true.” And Lillian Rivera noted:

“No parent is having their 8, 9, 10-year-old undergo surgery to change their bodies. But that’s the narrative that folks are putting forth.”

In Texas and other states, laws are being considered that redefine “child abuse” to include administering gender-affirming care. Ignorance is a frightful thing. Making life saving practices illegal is senseless but led by lies and bad politics right wing politicians are attempting to do just that.

The GOP Embrace of Homophobia is Despicable

How benighted is the evangelical community that GOP politicians think attacking trans children will keep them voting? Both homosexuality and gender dysphoria are naturally occurring phenomena. They are not a mistake. There is nothing wrong with either set of human beings other than living with the craven fools in their environment.

I grew up on a ranch in Idaho where we had homosexual animals regularly appearing in our herds. For cattle and sheep ranchers, this just meant you were not going to select them as breed animals. In other words, homosexuality is a naturally occurring phenomenon throughout the animal kingdom. The same can be said about gender fluid individuals.

In the human realm, we have many examples of creative members of the LGBTQ+ community making significant contributions in science, art, law and so on. When the HIV/aids epidemic tore through the gay community in the early 1980s, Broadway and Hollywood were devastated spiritually and critically. Some of society’s greatest leaders are members of the gay community.

The bigotry and lack of human understanding shown the LGBTQ+ community and gender fluid children is unacceptable.

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