When I get home from a day of substitute teaching in public schools, I sometimes feel an unshakable need to drink Keystone beer, watch the fishing channel, and say the word “bro.” Now I know why. According to a recent email blast by the Colorado Republican Party, Democrats are using this institution to “turn more kids trans” and it’s affecting us adults as well.
This rambling “Local Policy Agenda” email states “Colorado’s woke laws are coming to fruition, our women and children are at grave risk of predatory males violating their rights.”
As evidence, it claims a male teacher named Ms. Sparks uses the 3rd grade girls’ restroom at Grand Peak Academy in Colorado Springs with the principal and school board’s approval. The email also references “House Bill 24-1039 … [which] requires teachers in public schools to use ‘pronouns’ for kids” that do not correspond with their biological sex. To prevent kids from being indoctrinated by Democrats, the Colorado GOP implores “all Colorado parents… remove their kids from public education.”
The email, riddled with factual errors, distorts gender-related controversies and ill-equips parents and voters seeking solutions.
First of all, no teacher by the name of Ms. Sparks works at Grand Peak Academy. Adults in public schools are not allowed to use children’s restrooms; they have their own adult facilities. Secondly, HB 1039 does not require teachers to use preferred pronouns. Legislators know such a law would be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The Colorado law concerns preferred names.
Requiring school personnel to use students’ preferred names could but would not necessarily violate their First Amendment rights. Students often go by other names — be it a middle name, a short version of their own name, or another name altogether. Unlike pronouns, many names are not gender specific.
If parents discover school personnel have been calling their child by a different name without their knowledge and against their intentions, that’s another matter and the school should expect a lawsuit. According to a 2013 research paper published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, of 127 children identified with gender dysphoria, 52 had stopped identifying as transgender three years later and only 47 remained in the program for gender transition. The other students stopped responding to requests. Older studies have also shown high rates of desistence among children. Parents, not other adults, should determine how best to help their kids navigate this mental health challenge.
Finally, it is demeaning to the thousands of hardworking Colorado public school teachers to characterize public schools as hotbeds of indoctrination. As a substitute teacher and previously as a school evaluator, I have been in hundreds of public schools and can attest most teachers are there to teach. Unethical teachers constitute a very small minority.
In addition to inaccurately depicting public schools, the GOP email distorts gender-related controversies. There are policy disputes between those who believe sex is biologically determined and immutable and those who believe sex and gender are mutable characteristics. Both sides disagree about the best way to support people experiencing gender confusion while respecting the rights of their peers to single-sex spaces such as bathrooms and sports teams. These policy disputes will not be solved by fleeing public schools under the belief that “predatory males” are lurking outside bathrooms.
This fall, Coloradans will have a chance to vote for two common sense ballot initiatives (assuming adequate signature collection) that offer fair solutions that respect the rights of students, parents, and school personnel regardless of what they believe to be true about gender and sex.
Initiative 142 will ensure that parents will be notified if their children are experiencing gender incongruence. Parents can then determine how best to support their child. The second proposal, Initiative 160, will ensure biological girls have access to sports teams and programs where they can compete with members of their own sex. Boys and girls, including those with gender dysphoria, will still have the opportunity to compete with each other on coeducational teams.
It’s a win-win and Republicans and Democrats should support these middle ground proposals. In the meantime, the state GOP should knock off the inflammatory and factually incorrect emails. It’s reducing whatever little credibility Chairman Dave Williams has left, bro.
Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.
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