Notice that all of these have some LGBTQ+ content or characters. It doesn’t even have to be explicit as the rhyming book of babies shows. The goal is to remove representation of LGBTQ+ from society. As if you don’t see it then it won’t exist. Got news for these people, it is straight people that create gay kids. I never read a book with gay characters when I was growing up, but I was gay from birth. This is what was done in Russia and other authoritarian countries, and the maga parents want to have that kind of authoritarian government here. The thing is these vocal groups are the minority. They are a small group of religiously motivated people. Yet they scream that any mention of LGBTQ+ offends them. OK well any mention of religion or the bible offends me. So can we get a don’t say Jesus law for schools, and a warning sticker for the bible that it is not suitable for students. Hugs
Golden Gate High School in Naples, Fla.Google Maps
A southwest Florida school district added warning labels to more than 100 books, many of which touch on issues related to race or the LGBTQ community.
Collier County Public Schools, a district that includes part of Naples, added the labels both on physical copies of the books and in Destiny, the district’s online catalog, according to the nonprofit Florida Freedom to Read Project. The top of the label, according to a photo shared with NBC News by Florida Freedom to Read Project, says “Advisory notice to parents” in capital letters.
An advisory notice to parents placed on over 100 books in public schools in Collier County, Fla.Courtesy Stephana Ferrell/Florida Freedom to Read Project
“This Advisory Notice shall serve to inform you that this book has been identified by some community members as unsuitable for students,” the label states. “This book will also be identified in the Destiny system with the same notation. The decision as to whether this book is suitable or unsuitable shall be the decision of the parent(s) who has the right to oversee his/her child’s education consistent with state law.” A sticker of the notice is on the front inside cover of the books, according to Stephana Ferrell, co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which advocates against censorship in Florida schools. Ferrell said a media specialist in the school district shared photos of the labels with her in June.
After a series of public records requests about the labels, challenged books and the district’s creation of a committee that reviews school materials, Ferrell said she received a phone call from Elizabeth Alves, associate superintendent of teaching and learning for Collier County Public Schools.
Ferrell said Alves told her the district began adding the labels in February, after the district’s legal representative spoke with the Florida Citizens Alliance, a conservative group that last year issued a “Porn in Schools Report.” The report included a list of books that “promote gender self-identification and same-sex marriage” as well as titles that include “indecent and offensive material,” according to the group.
Alves defended the decision as “a compromise,” Ferrell said.
“I said, ‘It’s unfortunate, because this is a literary work. The sticker that they chose to put on there, the language that they chose, would make any reader who would otherwise pick up the book based on the cover and the description, it would make them think twice about reading the book,’” Ferrell said of her response to Alves.
Chad Oliver, a spokesman for Collier County Public Schools, confirmed that Alves spoke to Ferrell but denied that the warning labels were added in response to a conversation with the Florida Citizens Alliance.
“Based upon advice from the General Counsel, we placed advisory notices on books about which parents and community members had expressed concern and in accordance with the recently passed Parents’ Bill of Rights Law (HB 241),” Oliver said in an email, referring to a state law that allows parents to object to instructional materials.
A total of 110 books feature the advisory labels, according to PEN America, a nonprofit group that promotes free speech. This list, which PEN America shared with NBC News, has significant overlap with a list of at least 112 books that the Florida Citizens Alliance inquired about in a Dec. 11 email sent to Collier County Public Schools. Ferrell, who obtained the email through a public records request, shared a copy with NBC News.
Keith Flaugh, CEO and co-founder of the Florida Citizens Alliance, confirmed his group submitted a public records request about 112 novels in the district.
“Many of these contain sexually explicit and age inappropriate content,” which he said in an email is in direct violation of Florida laws on obscenity and the sale of harmful materials to minors. He also citeda 2017 law that the group helped draft that allows parents and any residents of the state to object to instructional materials and provide evidence for why they believe the material is inappropriate.
“Gender Queer” by Maia KobabeOni Press
Some of the titles that appear on both lists — and now have an “advisory notice to parents” warning label in Collier County Public Schools — include LGBTQ- and race-related books that have landed on banned-book lists across the country. These titles include “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, and “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. The list also includes literary classics like “Beloved” by Toni Morrison and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou.
Also included is the popular children’s book “Everywhere Babies,” a rhyming, illustrated book about what babies do. The illustrations include what could be interpreted as a few same-sex couples, but they are never identified as such in the text. The book first landed on a banned-book list in Walton County, Florida, in the spring, after the Florida Citizens Alliance included it in its 2021 “Porn in Schools Report.”
The labels appear digitally in the library records & physically on the books. They warn: “this book has been identified by some community members as unsuitable for students.” Apparently, a lot is ‘unsuitable’. Even Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers & illustrated by @MarlaFrazee. pic.twitter.com/wA5fT5fjLr
“The labeling of these books risks attaching a stigma to the topics they cover & the books themselves….Every child deserves the right to learn from a diverse set of voices & perspectives & to freely access the books they wish to read.” – @jzfriedman. https://t.co/DSrLhTQf5x
The “Babies, Babies Everywhere” book has a single illustration where there are two dudes sitting on a bench while two babies play nearby. The pairs don’t even look like they’re the same race or ethnicity.
The virulent homobigots decided the only explanation is they must be two gay dads in a blended family, when really there’s no context whatsoever. Could just be a couple of dads who were friends, letting their kids play together.
But somehow this book deserves a warning label stating the book is dangerous.
In truth, these are dangerous times for the entire LGBTQ community. I haven’t seen this kind of non-stop bigoted, slanderous shit since the early 1980s. And in truth, it feels vastly more overtly threatening now.
Great points. The overt threats and vitriol against trans people appears to be growing. If politicians continue to draft and pass laws that target trans people, the physical violence and murder statistics will rise.
I’m so sick of their extremist virtue signaling. They don’t care how much damage they do to children as long as they feel like they triumphed over someone weaker. They are coward bullies.
The fall backwards has been difficult and disturbing. I graduated HS in 92. Without the library, because I grew up pentecostal, I would have had nothing. Putting that label on a book seems like putting a target on those that have checked it out, look at it or maybe put on a list. You can’t put anything past these people I am sad that the freedoms we fought so hard for the ones coming up seems to be disappearing and our compromised Supreme Court along with the radical religious right is ushering us back to the darkness.
I didn’t dare look for anything gay-themed in the school library. This was pre-internet of course. Thank FSM for the college library in town that had a pretty good collection for the time.
The man when asked by the woman how to explain to her young children how she was forced to deliver a stillborn child and his reply was no one is guaranteed another tomorrow and he told her to return to her faith. This is the Republicans telling you who they are. Hugs
The authoritarian fascist right wing government is moving forward with returning the country to a time when they did not think that the LGBTQ+ did not exist or at least were visible in the public. Anyone who thinks they are exempt from what is coming is wrong. Let the destroying of abortion rights be an example of how extreme these people will be. Now it is any book that has LGBTQ+ content or characters, but how soon will it be any book that has content that the maga crowd don’t support? How about the drive to not teach the real racist history of the US? Will those books be banned? What about books that are against religion? Will those books be banned? You fill in the blanks and ask if those books will be banned. This is the US Taliban people! Hugs
Residents of Jamestown, Michigan, voted this week to shut down town’s library rather than tolerate certain LGBTQ books
Controversy has swirled around the Patmos Library since patrons began protesting some books with LGBT themes written for young adults. Photograph: Ron French/Bridge Michigan
A small-town library is at risk of shutting down after residents of Jamestown, Michigan, voted to defund it rather than tolerate certain LGBTQ+-themed books.
Residents voted on Tuesday to block a renewal of funds tied to property taxes, Bridge Michigan reported.
The vote leaves the library with funds through the first quarter of next year. Once a reserve fund is used up, it would be forced to close, Larry Walton, the library board’s president, told Bridge Michigan – harming not just readers but the community at large. Beyond books, residents visit the library for its wifi, he said, and it houses the very room where the vote took place.
“Our libraries are places to read, places to gather, places to socialize, places to study, places to learn. I mean, they’re the heart of every community,” Deborah Mikula, executive director of the Michigan Library Association, told the Guardian. “So how can you lose that?”
“We are champions of access,” she added, including materials that might appeal to some in the community and not others. “We want to make sure that libraries protect the right to read.”
An anonymous letter Lawrence said was sent to homes in Jamestown. Photograph: Courtesy Matt Lawrence
The controversy in Jamestown began with a complaint about a memoir by a nonbinary writer, but it soon spiraled into a campaign against Patmos Library itself. After a parent complained about Gender Queer: a Memoir, by Maia Kobabe, a graphic novel about the author’s experience coming out as nonbinary, dozens showed up at library board meetings, demanding the institution drop the book. (The book, which includes depictions of sex, was in the adult section of the library.) Complaints began to target other books with LGBTQ+ themes.
One library director resigned, telling Bridge she had been harassed and accused of indoctrinating kids; her successor, Matt Lawrence, also left the job. Though the library put Kobabe’s book behind the counter rather than on the shelves, the volumes remained available.
“We, the board, will not ban the books,” Walton told Associated Press on Thursday.
A few months later, in March, an anonymous letter went to homes in the area. It criticized the “pornographic” memoir and the addition of “transgender” and “gay” books to the library, according to Lawrence. “That fired a lot of people up and got them to start coming to our board meetings to complain,” he said. “The concern from the public was that it’s going to confuse children.”
The library’s refusal to submit to the demands led to a campaign urging residents to vote against renewed funding for the library. A group calling itself Jamestown Conservatives handed out flyers condemning Gender Queer for showing “extremely graphic sexual illustrations of two people of the same gender”, criticizing a library director who “promoted the LGBTQ ideology” and calling for making the library “a safe and neutral place for our kids”. On Facebook, the group says it exists to “keep our children safe, and protect their purity, as well as to keep the nuclear family intact as God designed”.
A flyer distributed at the town’s Memorial Day events. Photograph: Courtesy Matt Lawrence
Residents ultimately voted 62% to 37% against a measure that would have raised property taxes by roughly $24 in order to fund the library, even as they approved similar measures to fund the fire department and road work. The library was one of just a few in the state to suffer such a loss, Mikula said: “Most passed with flying colors, sometimes up to 80%.”
The vote came as a “shock” to Lawrence, who left his job in part because of town officials’ criticism of the Patmos library and libraries across the US.
“I knew that there were people that were upset about material in the library, but I figured that enough people would realize that what they’re trying to do with the removal of these books is antithetical to our constitution, particularly the first amendment,” he said.
The vote comes as libraries across the US face a surge in demands to ban books. The American Library Association identified 729 challenges to “library, school and university materials and services” last year, which led to about 1,600 challenges or removals of individual books. That was up from 273 books the year before and represents “the highest number of attempted book bans since we began compiling these lists 20 years ago”, the ALA president, Patricia Wong, said in a press release.
“We’re seeing what appears to be a campaign to remove books, particularly books dealing with LGBTQIA themes and books dealing with racism,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, head of the ALA’s office for intellectual freedom, told the Guardian last year. Celebrated books by Toni Morrison, Alison Bechdel and Ibram X Kendi are among those facing bans.
“I’m not quite sure what instigated the culture wars that we’re seeing, but libraries are certainly at the front end,” Mikula said. Indeed, as states across the US move to deny LGBTQ+ rights, the ALA’s No 1 “most challenged” book last year was Gender Queer.
“When you remove those books from the shelf or you challenge them publicly in a community, what you’re saying to any young person who identified with that narrative is, ‘We don’t want your story here,’” Kobabe told the New York Times in May.
Each library chooses its own collection, Mikula noted, an intensive process that involves staying abreast of what’s new, listening to what’s being requested, and “weeding out” selections that are rarely on loan.
“Our librarians are qualified. They have advanced degrees,” she said. “We want to make sure that the people who have been hired to do this work are trusted and credible, and that they’re making sure that the full community is represented within their library. And that means having LGBTQ books.”
If community members oppose the inclusion of certain books, there are formal means of requesting their removal, involving a review committee and ascertainment that the person making the appeal has actually read the book in question. But recently, she said, people have been “going to board meetings, whether it’s a library board meeting or a school board meeting and saying, ‘Here’s a list of 300 books. We want them all to be removed from your library.’ And that’s not the proper channel, but they’re loud and their voices carry.”
Let’s face it, Republicans would defund every library on the planet if they had the opportunity, them saying it’s LGBTQ+ related is just trying to score extra points with their knuckle dragging constituency.
This entire clip is projection. He is railing against ‘book burners’ and ‘cancel culture’ when he comes from a state where the GOP governor is banning books and firing attorneys who don’t fall into line. https://t.co/c1pZ0wizop
They want books censored. Books that come with no pictures and require an imagination to illustrate. The books that almost no one reads.
Meanwhile, on the internet you can find videos of the kinkiest sex acts with even the most simple searches. They all carry the internet in their pocket 24/7.
If I had the money I would fully fund the library and turn it in to an LGBTQ resource center and history museum just to explode the heads of these small minded freaks.
Of course the fascists hate the library. Free books and media? People can watch movies, read books and magazines and listen to music without paying anything other than taxes? That’s communism!
MAGAts don’t read anyway, so for them it’s no big loss to close a library.
“Make America Great Again” means keep kids ignorant about human sexuality, like many were in the 1950s, when they were taught that girls could be impregnated by kissing boys and that gay sex was only practiced by devil worshipping atheists and godless commies.
Keeping kids away from science or knowledge was a thing when people sought books on evolution and slavery because white Christianity was the only acceptable belief system, except where Jews were tolerated.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but as I recall, reading any particular library book is optional. Nobody is going to get held back a grade for not reading the books. Oh, I forgot, conservative dictionaries don’t have the word “choice” in them.
And followed immediate by an article about Senator Rick Scott screeching against Democrats allegedly trying to cancel culture and burn books. Republicans are constitutionally incapable of recognizing hypocrisy.
In a recent comment Tildeb championed an interim report of an inquiry on the best way to serve the needs of trans children in the UK. Almost everything I read said the report only got one thing correct in that much more needed to be done to open more treatment facilities for trans people and that the national health system needed to do more. Then because it seems the thing the report wanted to push was anti-trans propaganda the report tried to say the best treatment would be to deny that kids are trans and would grow out of it and should be treated with affirmative therapy which is another way of saying conversion therapy. Affirmative therapy is saying kids should be treated and forced to see that they are in the right body to match their gender and to accept that is who / what they are. Forget that trans nonsense, just like being gay is a fad, it is just rebelling against your parents and kids will grow out of it. All kids experiment and then they grow up, no one is gay because god did not make mistakes. It is all the same thing of denying it and forcing kids to never admit it. It is something most of the modern world has grown beyond and only the traditionalists refusing to admit times have changed in a way they dislike still cling to. For those wanting to know how bias and slanted the report was here is a breakdown of it. Hugs
This morning people who care about trans kids were reacting in utter dismay to hearing the Secretary of State for Health use the Cass interim review to justify the need to exclude trans people from a ban on conversion therapy.
I’ll link the lovely Olly Alexander linking to a clip of our Health Secretary using Cass to call for conversion therapy for trans kids – see here
Despite evidence that conversion therapy on trans children is particularly harmful, with research showing “For transgender adults who recalled gender identity conversion efforts before age 10 years, exposure was significantly associated with an increase in the lifetime odds of suicide attempts”.
For days now, MPs and commentators have cited the Cass review, in justification of the need for conversion therapy specifically for trans kids.
Of course they do not say conversion therapy for trans kids. They talk of ‘children suffering from gender confusion or gender distress’, they talk of ‘exploratory therapy. They talk of ‘unintended consequences, by which some clearly mean, they fear the law would stop them conducting conversion therapy on trans kids.
Those who want to conduct conversion therapy on trans kids hide behind a new favourite term of ‘exploratory therapy’. It is a friendly sounding rebrand of conversion therapy. It is focused on probing, delaying, questioning and at its heart, problematising trans identities. There is nothing wrong with being trans. Some kids are trans – get over it.
The same people who actually want conversion therapy for trans kids, are trying to create confusion on the meaning of affirmative therapy. They are trying to paint affirmation as a bad thing, as something forced. They are wrong and they know it. Affirmation is about meeting a person where they are, about listening to what they need. It has space for as much talk therapy on identity as a person wants. Without coercion. Without compulsion. Without considering trans or cis as a bad outcome.
Parents of trans kids are today VERY upset. People had put their faith in Cass to help our kids.
Personally, I feel something else other than upset. I feel cross at myself for not speaking up earlier.
Back when the Cass review was first announced, I had serious concerns. Concerns that have continued to mount.
There was Cass’ personal twitter following of a load of highly transphobic groups & no trans people.
There was the Cass review’s initial refusal to even say the word trans kids, in a review aimed primarily at helping trans kids.
There was the lack of any trans people on the Cass team, and the fact that the Cass team explicitly asked for people with no knowledge or experience of trans-ness, as though that was a preferable.
The fact there was no oversight group consisting of respected trans health experts and trans community leaders.
Back at the start I felt deep in my gut that this would go badly and would not serve the needs of trans kids. I seriously considered trying to get parents of trans kids together to stage a boycott until there was some proper trans representation. I didn’t for four major reasons. For one, the biggest reason, I was so tired & out of time and energy. For two, I wanted to give optimism a go – just cos everything else always fails trans kids in the UK, why couldn’t this be different – here we had a paediatrician reviewing trans kids healthcare, something I’d been asking for for years, maybe this time would be different. For three, I hoped having formal peer reviewed publications to feed into the process would make a difference (spoiler – it didn’t – the Cass team had my peer reviewed research article on the UK service from the highly respected international journal International Trans Health and didn’t even bother citing it). For four, I didn’t think things could really get much worse for trans kids in the UK, so I didn’t see how much real harm it could do.
Obviously I was very wrong. I noted my initial reaction to the pathologisation embedded in the Cass report.
The Cass interim report is now being cited everywhere to justify the need for conversion therapy for trans kids. It is being cited to deny inclusion of trans people of any age from a ban on conversion therapy.
The red flags about the Cass process meanwhile continue to grow.
I’ve been interviewed, found Cass on the face of it an empathetic listener who keeps her cards close to her chest.
Other parents of trans kids have been interviewed, again felt Cass had listened with kindness.
Many are deeply upset about the Cass interim report and the way it has encouraged further bigotry.
The Cass interim report couldn’t even take a decision on whether being trans is pathological. It couldn’t even take a decision on whether trans kids are better off being loved and supported or put through conversion torture. It is not acceptable.
I won’t dig into the details of the Cass report itself, but the references and evidence base are deeply biased and flawed. It is yet another total failure for trans kids in the UK.
There are still no trans experts involved in a senior role in the Cass review. There is no trans power at all.
The Cass process seem to think the exclusion of trans people is acceptable, because they have told themselves they are not dealing with trans people at all. They have told themselves they are dealing with healthcare for ‘children suffering from gender distress’. This phrasing has become standard.
Worryingly there are also trans-antagonistic people involved in the research for Cass.
This week, the world respected paediatrician with over a decade of practical hands on experience HELPING trans kids in Australia published a response to the Cass review in the British Medical Journal. That response is not open access to the public, but this is of incredible important to those who are directly affected (and now even threatened) by the Cass outputs, so I will put its text here:
Gender identity services for children and young people in England
Landmark review should interrogate existing international evidence and consensus
Ken C Pang, 1, 3 Jeremy Wiggins, 2 Michelle M Telfer1, 3
1 Royal Children’s Hospital; 2 Transcend Australia; 3 Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
The long awaited interim report of the Cass review was finally published in March this year.1 Commissioned in September 2020, the independent review led by paediatrician Hillary Cass examined NHS gender identity services for children and young people in England. These services are currently provided by a single specialist clinic known as the Gender Identity Development Service. After consulting people with gender diversity, health professionals, and support and advocacy groups, Cass expressed various concerns within her interim report, such as increasingly long waiting lists, the “unsustainable workload” being carried by the service, and the “considerable risk” this presented to children and young people.
Recognising that “one service is not going to be able to respond to the growing demand in a timely way,” Cass used her interim report to recommend creation of a “fundamentally different service model.” Under this model, the care of gender diverse children and young people becomes “everyone’s business” by expanding the number of providers to create a series of regional centres that have strong links to local services and a remit to provide training for clinicians at all levels.1 Although it remains to be seen how and when this key recommendation will be implemented, the proposal will be largely welcomed by gender diverse children and adolescents and their families in England. The shift away from centralised, tertiary, and quaternary centres is already occurring internationally, including in Australia,2 where local services are being enhanced to meet growing demand and provide more equitable and timely care.
Hormonal treatment In what was likely a disappointment to many, the interim report did not provide definitive advice on the use of puberty blockers and feminising or masculinising hormones. Instead, Cass advised that recommendations will be developed as the review’s research programme progresses. In particular, the report expresses the need for more long term data to assuage safety concerns regarding these hormonal interventions. Although additional data in this area are undoubtedly needed, the decision to delay recommendations pending more information on potential unknown side effects is problematic for several reasons.
Firstly, it ignores more than two decades of clinical experience in this area as well as existing evidence showing the benefits of these hormonal interventions on the mental health and quality of life of gender diverse young people.3 -9 Secondly, it will take many years to obtain these long term data. Finally, Cass acknowledges that when there is no realistic prospect of filling evidence gaps in a timely way, professional consensus should be developed on the correct way to proceed.” Such consensus already exists outside the UK. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, and the World rofessional Association for Transgender Health have all endorsed the use of these hormonal treatments in gender diverse young people,10 -12 but curiously these consensus based clinical guidelines and position statements receive little or no mention in the interim report.
Indeed, there is no evidence, as yet, that the Cass review has consulted beyond the UK. This inward looking focus may be a reflection of how England’s gender identity service has come to chart its own path in this field. For example, its current use of puberty blockers diverges considerably from international best practice. In particular, NHS England mandates that any gender diverse person under the age of 18 years who wishes to access oestrogen or testosterone must first receive at least 12 months of puberty suppression.13 However, many young people in this situation will already be in late puberty or have finished their pubertal development, by which time the main potential benefits of puberty suppression have been lost.11 Moreover, using puberty blockers in such individuals is more likely to induce unwanted menopausal symptoms such as fatigue and disturbed mood.14 For these reasons, puberty suppression outside the UK is typically reserved for gender diverse young people who are in early or middle puberty, when there is a physiological reason for prescribing blockers.
Another possible reason exists for the Cass review appearing to have neglected international consensus around hormone prescribing. While the interim report often mentions the need to “build consensus,” Cass seems keen to find a way forward that ensures “conceptual agreement” and “shared understanding” across all interested parties, including those who view gender diversity as inherently pathological. Compromise can be productive in many situations, but the assumption that the middle ground serves the best interests of gender diverse children and young people is a fallacy. Where polarised opinions exist in medicine—as is true in this case—it can be harmful to give equal credence to all viewpoints, particularly the more extreme or outlying views on either side. Hopefully Cass will keep this in mind when preparing her final report.
(Back to me typing) The authors of the above include some of the most respected paediatricians with decade long expertise in working with trans kids in Australia. The Cass team should have been queuing up to learn from Australian experts. The fact they have totally ignored expertise from outside of the UK and its partner system in the Netherlands, strikes as amazing arrogance. The fact the Australian experts felt the need to write a submission to the BMJ to raise their concerns with the Cass report is again astonishing, and in another less transphobic country would set off alarm bells.
I don’t know where we go from here.
I do know the cards are now on the table. I have zero faith in the Cass process. It has already done more harm than good.
My number one hope for Cass was it would take significant strides in depathologising approaches to trans kids. It has done the exact opposite. 18 months in and they won’t even say the word trans.
I had hoped Cass would educate the public that being trans is not a problem or a pathology. It has done the opposite, and legitimised some incredibly problematising media pieces this week alone.
I had hoped it would move us from psychoanalysis to modern healthcare – instead people are using Cass to justify the need for exploratory therapy, conversion therapy by a different name.
I had hoped it would move trans kids’ healthcare away from a monopoly mental health trust to modern secondary or primary care. Instead, the focus appears to be on talk therapy to problematise trans-ness, without tackling the hostile climate that makes life so hard for trans kids, and perhaps with even less route to medical intervention where needed.
Cass has done nothing to highlight the biggest problem for many trans kids. The climate of societal transphobia. Just this week we have had headlines stating trans people can be humiliated and segregated as the UK tries to bring in a bathroom bill by the back door. Trans kids and adolescents have been in crisis again this week, many are really struggling with mental health. Not because there’s something inherently wrong with being trans, but because the UK is a hostile terrifying place to be trans as our rights are continually debated or taken away. Cass has done absolutely nothing to highlight the crisis in mental health caused by the terrible way our country treats trans people.
Cass has failed us on every level.
The whole process is cis-supremacism in full dominance.
Why do a bunch of cis people continue to debate and dictate whether or not trans kids should be put under conversion therapy.
Why do cis people continue to have all the power, and continue to use it to harm trans kids.
Trans liberation now. Trans kids deserve so much better than this.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas and declared that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Attendees gave the right-wing authoritarian a standing ovation in response.
“Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” he said to applause. “Family ties shall be based on marriage or the relationship between parent and children. To sum up, the mother is a woman, the father is a man, and leave our kids alone. Full stop. End of discussion!”
Viktor Orbán receives a standing ovation at CPAC for expressing his country’s bigoted anti-gay marriage policies. pic.twitter.com/ldPjwQidoc
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) August 4, 2022
Hungary allows for legally recognized same-sex unions, but not gay marriage. Last year, Orbán’s government enacted a law banning the promotion of content in schools the government deems to be promoting homosexuality. Critics said the aim of the law is to associate homosexuality with pedophilia.
Last month, Orbán courted controversy again when he stated he doesn’t want Hungary to become a country of “mixed race” people.
“We are not a mixed race, and we do not want to become a mixed race either,” Orbán said. “We mix within Europe.”
Orbán has become something of a darling among American conservatives, particularly after Fox News host Tucker Carlson traveled to Budapest last August for a softball interview with the prime minister.
Last year, the group Reporters without Borders put Orbán on its list of enemies of press freedom.
For as long as I can remember (and I’m in my sixties) conservatives have been using the fear of LGBT people to hook gullible bigots into voting against their own economic self-interests. It’s worked like a charm for generations and shows no sign of letting up. This is just the latest example.
I am 86, and I can remember further back, when it was actually worse. At least, for now, we cannot be put into prison just for being gay — but I would not at all be surprised if those draconian laws returned, should the so-called “conservatives” get total control of the government. They are not conservative. They are simply bigots, and hateful ones, at that.
Texas and Florida are far advanced in accelerating their plans for genocide (at Stage 8 of the 10 stages), and other red states are at least at Stage 3, with plans to follow,
They’re coming first for little trans girls and their parents, then the trans community as a whole, and then the rest of the LGBTQ+ community.
Who will speak out for us?
And when the GQP comes for them later, will there be anyone left to speak up for them?
*and lower taxes on the wealthy and corporation, and let companies dump toxic waste into your drinking water, take away social security and reduce the minimum wage are remove worker protections and send more tax money to our government contractor friends.
The GOP hates gay people. Anyone old enough to remember the AIDS epidemic remembers how they laughed because AIDS was killing all the right people That was in the 1980s
If the GQP gets into power the first people going to the camps will be us
Pssst….Hey Log Cabin Republicans….have you gotten the hint that the GOP really will never let you be “real” Republicans and that you’ll always be 2nd class citizens to them?
Much like temporarily embarrassed millionaires, they think they’re only temporarily kept out of the club.
They don’t understand that the more power the people they bolster get the less they need the LCRs or others like them. Give the right enough power, and watch the long knives come out as soon as the gays are disposable. Homocons should really be careful what they wish for.
I want to point out a few things to those who are thinking that women / girls shouldn’t have “people with penises” in their locker room or bathrooms. Let’s take bathrooms first. I bet in the 1960’s there was a lot of talk that white women did not want black women in their bathrooms. All the black women wanted to do was use the facilities not have a social meeting, same as trans people now. They just want to use the facilities. We learned back in this time that separate was not equal. As to locker rooms the same argument applies, but not so much. I don’t know how modern locker rooms are set up, but they can be reasonably private. Showers can be smaller single occupancy showers. But that overlooks the fear and terror installed in people, kids and adults, of the human body. I told how one kid at the SDA church boarding school I went to was so scared of the “private area” that he would only shower when very few people were around and only with his underwear on. That kind of teaching about body parts is harmful and stupid. In European countries there is not a hang up or fear of the human body, kids are taught at an early age what is what, where it is, and how to be respectful of it. The responsibility is not all with the girls either, teen boys are taught how to respectfully hide or manage an embarrassing erection. But to locker rooms, what are you people doing in there, having a measuring contest of sex organs? You seem to forget the gay and lesbian kids in the room, do you think they are getting their thrills by being there. No way. A couple of boys used to clown around to hide their nervousness but really the truth was back in those days most of us hurried to change our clothes and get ourselves covered. I think we were all afraid we did not measure up to what we though men were supposed to be done there. I think that what is bothering the parents is other than the super religious families, the young people / minors are no longer embarrassed and ashamed over the body. They have been taught acceptance and no body shaming. That is why the red states are desperate to change acceptance in schools, to implement the now say gay and anti-trans bills. They want the kids to be ashamed and fearful over the human body. They don’t want sex education because they want the kids clueless and ignorant about body rights of who can touch them and how NOT to get a pregnancy they now cannot abort. Kids can be taught to use the bathrooms / locker rooms without having orgies. Look, in my day teachers had to break up the occasional fight, I am sure teachers can stop any kids from outright display of their genitals. Think of this in the hospital we used curtains on a track in the ceiling for privacy. They can be off the ground so teachers can make sure kids are not in there playing with each other. Easy single person solutions for adults and kids, if privacy means that much to you pull the curtain. This is about making trans people scary and the enemy. They are not. They are not there to attack others. With kids they are either required to have PE class or they simply want to play a sport. This is about saying anyone with a penis cannot control themselves. Hugs
The complaint filed Thursday by the Human Rights Campaign asserts that a state law preventing transgender students from accessing school facilities consistent with their gender identity violates their constitutional rights.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) on Thursday filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging a 2021 Tennessee law that prohibits transgender students from using school restrooms or locker rooms that match their gender identity.
A similar complaint was filed by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the HRC, last year. That lawsuit was dropped in February after the plaintiffs and their families decided to move out of Tennessee.
Thursday’s complaint was filed on behalf of D.H., a transgender 8-year-old girl entering the third grade in Williamson County, Tenn.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ rights groups, is suing the Tennessee Department of Education and its commissioner over the enforcement of a state law barring transgender students from using school facilities like restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court alleges that the law, signed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) last May, singles out transgender students for “disfavored treatment” and violates rights guaranteed to them under the U.S. Constitution and Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs. The U.S. Department of Education last year said the policy protects students from discrimination based on their gender identity.
The law, officially titled the Tennessee Accommodations for All Children Act, requires state public schools to provide “reasonable accommodation” for students who “will not or cannot” use a gender-specific facility.
Under the measure, a “reasonable accommodation” does not include access to a restroom or changing room that is “designated for use by members of the opposite sex while persons of the opposite sex are present or could be present.” In this case, “sex” is defined as a student’s sex assigned at birth, which the law argues is immutable.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the HRC, filed a similar lawsuit against the Tennessee law last year, but that case was dismissed in February after both plaintiffs and their families decided to move to another state.
Thursday’s complaint was filed jointly with the law firm Linklaters on behalf of a transgender 8-year-old girl entering the third grade in Williamson County, Tenn. Jason Golden, the director of Williamson County Schools, and the Williamson County Board of Education are also named as defendants in the complaint.
According to the lawsuit, the girl, identified pseudonymously as D.H. to protect her identity, had previously been permitted to use the girls’ restroom at school for in-person events while engaging in distance learning in 2021.
Once D.H. returned to the classroom earlier this year, she was barred under the Accommodations for All Children Act from using facilities aligning with her gender identity and made to use a single-occupancy restroom which reportedly has on more than one occasion been covered in human waste.
“These restroom ‘accommodations’ provided to D.H. by the elementary school are not accommodations at all,” the complaint states. “They reinforce the differential treatment and trauma associated with living under the [Accommodations for All Children Act], violating D.H.’s constitutional and statutory rights.”
In a statement on Thursday, HRC Litigation Director Cynthia Cheng-Wun Weaver called state lawmakers that backed the law “power hungry” and accused them of supporting the legislation to ignite their base.
“It is unfortunate that Tennessee lawmakers are using their authority to attack some of our nation’s most vulnerable – our children,” she said.
D.H.’s mother, identified in the suit as A.H., said she felt ashamed to live in an area so hostile to transgender young people.
“Years ago, I chose to move to Tennessee because it was known as ‘the volunteer state,’ whose citizens cared for their neighbors without hesitation – not a state that legalizes discrimination against helpless children,” she said Thursday. “Now, I am embarrassed to say that I live in a state that refuses to see anything beyond my child’s gender.”
“By filing this lawsuit, I am showing my volunteer spirit – because I’m fighting to not only affirm my child’s existence, but also the thousands of transgender and nonbinary children who live in Tennessee.”
Neither the Tennessee Department of Education nor Williamson County Schools immediately responded to Changing America’s request for comment.
Just in: @HRC announces a new lawsuit, filed on Monday, challenging Tennessee’s anti-trans student bathroom bill. Here’s the complaint, brought on behalf of a trans student and her parents in Williamson County. https://t.co/BZ291fYhmapic.twitter.com/SJ4isEhfB9
— Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) August 4, 2022
The Republican Party and its Religious Right puppet master are targeting the trans community because, sadly, to do so is a winner for them. Most Americans know shit about trans people and their lives.
The Republicans and the preachers can rake in millions of dollars — and motivate their voters to go to the polls — by playing on the fear and ignorance out there.
I started my transition shortly after you did, and while overall things have improved, the far-right nutcases and religious zealots have decided we are a convenient scapegoat, as their previous attempt (trying to scapegoat homosexual people) mostly collapsed (but they are trying to resurrect that garbage too). As much as all of us are beyond fucking tired of the bullshit they continue to spew, and tired of being targets, we need to stay strong and show the world that the hate-mongers are nothing more than delusional liars. I’ll keep standing with you April.
Ditto drag queens. All of them are icky perverts that exist only to molest children. No mention ever of the actual child molesters that, more often than not, are youth pastors or otherwise in the employ of christianity Inc.
Good. Transgender people should be able to use the bathroom and locker rooms under their gender identity. This bill, like “Don’t Say Gay” in Florida, is the gay panic repackaged and is disgraceful.
Sorry, but the whose “separate but equal ” bullshit you’re espousing was proven to be garbage over 6 decades ago. Please keep your transphobia to yourself.
This what happens when the governor and a majority of the state legislators are Evangelicals – they always go after minority groups of all types for disfavored treatment.
True. If not transgender people, then they target the homosexual people, then they target people who are not Christian, then they target people who aren’t the “right type” of Christian…. they need someone to hate so that they don’t look at who they really hate: themselves.
In the end, they’re really claiming that men can’t be trusted..
Ever.
That All men are rapists and perverts who will upend their whole life to get close to a possible naked woman. Huckabee said he would dress up just to get into the shower with school aged girls. People who pass these bills shouldn’t be allowed near women at all, without supervision. Not even their wives.
I think the purpose of these stupid laws is a shortsighted attempt to get transfolk to leave the state, but some are kids who don’t have that option until they are emancipated from their families. The vast majority of the others are people who are gainfully employed and not causing trouble, but only need to use the restroom because they are at work or out going about their business and patronizing local stores and contributing to the economy,so they can’t use the washroom at home. Their only alternative will be to use the bushes, which is creating a needless and avoidable sanitation issue.
This is another attempt to ruin public education and to instead indoctrinate kids / students with “American Exceptionalism” and conservative right wing views. There is a reason teaching is a profession, it has professional ethics and standards. This is why parents should not be setting curriculums and alternate history. This is why a lot of religious schools are unaccredited, they do not teach legitimate subject material that is required for a child to move to higher education, and to pass basic education tests. This is part of DeathSantis attack on schools and education, this is part of the don’t say gay and no CRT/ teaching accurate history including no sexual education while insisting teachers teach that the US was founded to be a Christian nation. If you think this is just a Florida problem remember DeathSantis is the front runner now for the republican nomination for president in 2024, and has raised hundreds of millions of dollars far out fund raising any other republican candidate. He is what the right wing wants for their king. Hugs
Gov. Ron DeSantis is vowing to “keep plowing forward” with plans to allow military veterans to teach in Florida classrooms, suggesting Wednesday that vets may be better suited to teaching than an education major.
“You give me somebody who has four years of experience as a Devil Dog over somebody who has four years of experience at Shoehorn U and I will take the Marine every day of the week and twice on Sunday,” DeSantis said during a press conference in Brevard County.
DeSantis made the comments defending a Senate bill last year that allowed for an alternative pathway to teaching certification for military veterans.
Just another huge block of voters, teachers, he is turning further against himself. They say if gays are five per cent of the population in Florida and they turn out , they can decide the election against Ron. Let’s all take him down
Keep in mind that Ron Desantis graduated from both Harvard Law and Yale. His children certainly won’t be taught by ill-equipped veterans rather than qualified school teachers.
This asshole went to Harvard. He knows active duty military can’t and shouldn’t teach Algebra or “Where The Red Fern Grows.” The point is to break public teachers unions and bleed public school money into the private sector. His “golly-shucks” populism is as cynical as the greed behind it is evil. He must really think his supporters are idiots. Or, at least, he’s counting on it.
…and Yale undergrad. He’s not stupid, notice how of all the red meat GQP issues, the one he won’t go near is abortion restrictions,? Last night in KS showed why. I hope he challenges the the biggest loser in the primaries. In the worst case scenario I suppose he’d be better than the orange malignancy, he does not inspire the cult the way Jim Jones Trump does.
Correct, he’s playing the same game all the Republicans do and just like them, not a single person calls him out on this shit.
No FL Dems goes online to point this fact out, hell not even a Biden admin Dept of Ed mentions it, he’s just spewing the same GOP talking points, uncorrected.
A good campaign policy, a horrible policy to implement. Of all the movies I’ve watched over the decades that have attempted to predict the future, I believe Idiocracy is the most likely to have nailed it.
This is a big reason why DeathSantis is becoming more popular than Trump in certain demographics.
Lazy anti-intellectualism along with religious bigotry, casuistry and sophistry are replacing logic, skepticism and relevance as critical thinking skills. If you own a cell phone then you are smarter than Einstein and the hatedlibs, so why bother reading shit?
I know there are some military vets teaching in schools, so I’m sure he’ll have his schools’ military vets screened for mental health issues, right? Regardless, what happens if one or more of those military vets who have mild to severe PTSD due to being in combat situs suddenly freaks out because of some loud noise, or children screaming/crying, or the classroom bell going off? What happens if said vet gets triggered and suddenly starts reenacting a traumatizing event? What happens if the vet starts treating the children like POWs?
Will these veterans know how to teach different kinds of learners? Would you have veterans do brain surgery? Teachers are professionals. Republicans are determined to dumb down the population and devalue education, and actual qualifications.
These Rethugs are deliberately trying to destroy public education.
Imagine some enlisted dink, absent any education training, qualifications, experience or certification whatsoever, trying to teach little kids how to read phonetically, or more advanced students history or civics or algebra, or high schoolers literature, chemistry, or physics.
Of course the point isn’t that they’ll be taught. They won’t be. They’ll “graduate” not knowing much of anything and thus be ineligible to seek college education.
A bunch of ignorant proles is all they’ll be. By design.
I wonder how the parents are going to like it. And this also answers George W Bush’s infamous question, “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
I’m a veteran, this is a really stupid idea. Children aren’t soldiers, and shouldn’t be taught by those whose only qualification is that they were soldiers.
“4. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.”
Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism By Dr. Lawrence Britt
“We have a real treat for you today kids. We’re going to watch a movie called full Metal Jacket and shows you how to manage the nerds and misfits trying to infiltrate your classroom”
The GOP gonna eat that shit up come 2024 and if we aint careful so will a lot of so called “independents” who are just fucking GOP and ashamed to say it out loud. Lets see if the teachers will be able to push back at all on this. He is basically telling them they are useless so they either agree with him that they are ill suited to teach or they dont. Will be telling to see how many stick with desantis after this
Please notice how the church people disregarded or disobeyed the parent of these kids. Horrible abuse in the name of religion. Being gay is not a disease to be cured, it is a inborn condition that can not be changed, and the attempt is torture against those it is done to. Hugs
CBC News has learned police, Crown investigating complaints from 18 Christian Centre Academy students
Sean Kotelmach, Coy Nolin, Caitlin Erickson, Cody Nolin and 14 other former students of Saskatoon’s Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy, allege they were subjected to exorcism, violent discipline and other abuse there. (Travis Reddaway/CBC)
Coy Nolin and his mother say they had no idea the four people in their living room were about to conduct a violent exorcism to cast out Coy’s “gay demons.”
Coy says that three days earlier, in an office at Saskatoon’s Christian Centre Academy, the school’s director had interrogated him for several hours after informants told the director Coy is gay. Coy, who was 16 years old at the time, says the director called him “evil” and “an abomination.”
Coy was suspended and told they would try to “cure” him.
“He told me I’d have to take it like a man,” Coy said.
Coy and his mother, Carilyn, say they agreed to the home visit in May 2004 assuming they would discuss the suspension.
But almost immediately after they walked into the house, the four officials from the school and adjoining Saskatoon Christian Centre church placed their hands on Coy. They began yelling, grunting and making other unintelligible sounds known as “speaking in tongues.”
“I was no longer in control. I was pushed aside,” Carilyn said.
After more than an hour, with Carilyn crying in the corner of the room, they stopped.
Coy says the director then grabbed his large wooden paddle, bent Coy over his lap and spanked him hard enough to leave him bruised and limping.
“That was one of the worst days of my life. Even now, just thinking about it, I go numb,” Coy said.
“This was abuse. This was a hate crime.”
Coy Nolin says he’s still scarred by the abuse he suffered while attending Saskatoon’s Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy, but he is now proud of his identity and finding ways to heal. (Travis Reddaway/CBC)
CBC News has learned Coy and 17 other former students have filed criminal abuse complaints. After a 12-month investigation, Saskatoon police handed the file to Crown prosecutors in April to consider possible charges, according to police emails to students. It’s unclear when the Crown will make a decision.
The complaints include frequent paddlings, many of which allegedly occurred after the Supreme Court of Canada outlawed corporal punishment by educators in early 2004.
There are also allegations of coercion, traumatizing rituals and solitary confinement.
Many of the former students — and some of their parents — have agreed to tell their stories publicly for the first time to CBC News. They shared diaries, police statements and other documentation.
They say the physical, financial, social and emotional control from school and church officials was absolute, and that it has taken years to regain their dignity and sanity. Some say they’re still struggling.
“It’s taken a long time for people to speak up. I mean, it was a cult. It was essentially a cult,” said Caitlin Erickson, the first student to come forward to police.
Caitlin Erickson was the first of 18 former students of Saskatoon’s Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy, to go to police. She says the degree of control exerted by school and church officials was similar to a cult. (Travis Reddaway/CBC)
Officials with the adjacent Legacy Christian Academy — the name was changed from Christian Centre Academy (CCA) in 2013 — initially agreed to an interview and said they’d answer all questions. The next day, they emailed a written statement and declined to answer any further questions.
“We are grieved to learn of former students who feel they were subjected to abuse during their time at CCA. We encourage and support any former student who feels this way to file a report with the police so these matters can be investigated and dealt with properly and legally,” the statement said.
Many of the alleged incidents involved leaders and staff of both the school and adjoining Saskatoon Christian Centre, now known as Mile Two Church. The two institutions have long shared a building in Saskatoon’s Lawson Heights neighbourhood, and the school’s current handbook notes they are guided by the “doctrinal beliefs” of Mile Two Church such as the infallibility of the Bible.
Mile Two Church officials declined repeated interview requests.
Erickson and other students say they’re skeptical. They say some of the same people are still working at the school and church, and that there has been no effort to apologize or make amends.
“They simply changed the name. It’s just a rebranding,” Erickson said.
Manual details ‘scriptural discipline’
Christian Centre Academy opened its doors to students in 1982, but it didn’t receive provincial accreditation allowing students to enter university or college until 1994. Like other private schools, parents pay tuition and participate in fundraising. It has also been receiving Saskatchewan government funding for the past decade.
Most of the former students who’ve come forward attended between 1995 and 2010, but there is no time limit on legal complaints of this nature involving minors.
Students and experts interviewed say all government subsidies and tax breaks for the church and school must be halted until police and prosecutors have dealt with the complaints and the government has conducted a full investigation of the school’s current practices.
They agree some key staff have left, but the former principal and school director are now teaching at other Christian schools in Saskatchewan.
“Oh my god, this makes my stomach turn. How could this happen?” said University of Regina professor emerita Ailsa Watkinson, who was involved in the 2004 Supreme Court case to ban corporal punishment in schools.
“Religion was used to torment, to discriminate. It’s cruel. This is torture. Anyone with common sense knows this.”
CBC News has obtained an 85-page, eight-lesson manual called The Child Training Seminar, written by the father of the current pastor. Students say that, during their time at the school, it was sold in the gift shop along with bibles and a selection of hand-made wooden paddles of various sizes. Students say it was used by school staff and strongly recommended for parents.
More than 20 pages are devoted to the benefits and practical applications of “scriptural discipline.”
It states “ungodly” professors, researchers and psychologists who opposed corporal punishment are “influenced by the devil” and should be ignored.
“Sometimes, spanking will leave marks on the child. If some liberal were to hear this, they’d immediately charge us with advocating child-beating,” states the handbook.
It gives detailed instruction on the types of infractions that warrant paddling, such as riding a bicycle while “forbidden.”
“Have him bend over and apply the paddle firmly. Don’t permit any wiggling around or jumping around. Don’t allow any pre-discipline howling and sniveling. Don’t let his crying and begging diminish the severity of punishment,” the handbook says.
For parents, it states fathers are the head of the household and must ensure the discipline is unemotional and consistent. It warns against using verbal discipline and says “mothers need to particularly guard against this.”
It’s unclear whether any of the handbook remains in use. The current student handbook makes no mention of corporal punishment in its “forms of discipline” section.
‘I was so scared’: former student
Sean Kotelmach, who attended the school from 1996 to 2008, said he had difficulty keeping up with the largely self-directed curriculum, which relied heavily on memorization and obedience. In his frustration, he began to talk back.
“They made me think I was stupid,” he said.
Kotelmach said he endured a punishment akin to solitary confinement as a 13-year-old. He was forced to arrive at school 15 minutes before other students, work alone at a desk in a small, windowless room for the entire day, then leave 15 minutes after his classmates had departed. He said this continued for two weeks.
He said he was also paddled multiple times. Kotelmach said he and others would “pad” their buttocks with up to nine pairs of underwear to soften the blows. If discovered, the student would be forced to remove the underwear and punishment would increase.
“Every part of me wanted to walk to the police and simply pull down my pants and show them what was done to me,” Kotelmach said. “[But] I was scared. I was so scared. I worried my parents would get in trouble for sending me to that school.”
Sean Kotelmach says Christian Centre Academy officials employed forms of solitary confinement. As a 13-year-old, he was placed a small, windowless room with only a desk for 10 consecutive school days, prohibited from speaking to anyone. (Travis Reddaway/CBC)
Later in life, medical tests would reveal Kotelmach’s dyslexia. He’s now creative director for a local marketing and media company, but said the emotional scars remain.
Kotelmach said he found the courage to file a police report last year after speaking with Erickson.
“I was tired of living with rage. I wake up in the middle of the night screaming. That’s no way to live. I want it to stop. I needed to do my part and say something,” Kotelmach said.
‘Criminal law applies to all of us’: law professor
The former students say many of these incidents, including Coy Nolin’s exorcism and paddling, occurred after the Supreme Court ruling in 2004.
In the ruling, the court limited corporal punishment to parents, and only under narrow circumstances. It must be proportional, can only be done on children between the ages of two and 12, and no implements are allowed.
It banned all other officials from doing so, and specifically mentioned teachers and school officials.
Queen’s University law professor Lisa Kelly said any teacher paddling a student after Jan. 30, 2004, was clearly committing an assault.
“That applies in any school, public or private. Criminal law applies to all of us. It is crystal clear,” Kelly said.
Kelly said any corporal punishment before 2004 could also be a concern for police and prosecutors. She said spanking, paddling or strapping a child hard enough to leave marks has long been considered by judges as excessive force.
Caitlin Erickson shared a story about her and the rest of the senior girls’ volleyball team being accused of whispering during a weekend church service in the fall of 2003.
They say that the following Monday at school, they were lined up in the auditorium and yelled at by the director, the principal and their female coach.
One by one, they were taken into a side room where one of the two male staff paddled them, they say.
“It looked like a canoe oar,” said Christina Hutchinson, the team’s captain. “Adult men doing that to a bunch of teenaged girls? It was so cruel. They were all crying, but I was so angry I didn’t cry.”
Like Erickson, Hutchinson said the school and church operated like a cult.
“Everything is based on constant fear — fear of being paddled, fear of going to hell,” she said.
They say most girls ended up with marks and bruises on their buttocks that spread as far as the back of their knees.
“I remember a week later, we were comparing bruises [in the locker room] and saying, ‘Oh, he must have been tired on you because yours isn’t nearly as bad as mine,'” Hutchinson’s sister, Stefanie, said.
She said some sessions were so vigorous that paddles broke and had to be duct-taped back together.
Erickson and other students say officials were acutely aware of the law. She said the school’s director handed out waivers in late 2003 in anticipation of the Supreme Court ban, asked parents to allow staff to continue paddling their children. Some parents refused to sign the document.
Kelly said waivers would be useless as a defence in court. A parent cannot consent to another person applying punitive physical force on their child.
One year after the Supreme Court ruling, the Saskatchewan government passed legislation banning corporal punishment in public schools. Kelly and Watkinson said this was “redundant” because the Supreme Court ruling already applied across Canada.
The Saskatoon Police Service has completed an investigation of alleged assaults and other abuse suffered by students at Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy. The file has been handed to Crown prosecutors to consider possible charges, according to police emails to students. (CBC)
Academics said corporal punishment actually makes things worse. In a 2012 meta-analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, authors found that children who were spanked, paddled or strapped are more likely to have mental health issues, are more prone to violence and have lower quality relationships than those raised in a non-violent manner.
“Virtually without exception, these studies found that physical punishment was associated with higher levels of aggression against parents, siblings, peers and spouses,” stated the summary.
One of that paper’s authors, University of Manitoba professor Joan Durant, said the accounts of the Saskatoon students are heartbreaking.
“All of those things you describe are degradation and abuse. Intentionally instilling fear, isolation — none of that is acceptable. It never was,” said Durant, author of the book Positive Discipline in Everyday Life.
‘She doesn’t have a demon — she’s just shy’: parent
In their written statement to CBC News, school officials say paddling hasn’t been used there for two decades. When asked for specifics, they declined.
They said exorcism “has never been practised in our school, and we are unaware of any instance where this might have occurred.”
Former students say that’s not true.
On top of the exorcism described by the Nolin family, Hutchinson said they also took place on school property.
Hutchinson said when she was eight years old, she was asked to say the school prayer for the class. She was nervous and froze. She said that, for a week, the teacher kept her inside during recess. The teacher would sit Hutchinson on her lap, firmly squeeze and rock her repeatedly while speaking in tongues, Hutchinson said.
Hutchinson told her parents, who told administration, “She doesn’t have a demon — she’s just shy.”
In the statement, officials said any homophobia alleged by Coy Nolin and others does not exist at the school today.
“Our position on LGBTQ issues is that all students are welcome in our school, and we strive to provide a safe place for every student to grow and learn who God created them to be…we are committed to creating an environment where everyone is valued and treated with dignity, love, and respect. Therefore, we would never discipline students for their sexual orientation or gender identity,” said the statement.
They say the school is a different place than it was even a few years ago, with many new staff and leaders.
“We would welcome conversations with any students who might wish to come and revisit the school and, hopefully, find an opportunity for reconciliation,” it said.
Caitlin Erickson, Sean Kotelmach, Coy Nolin, Christina Hutchinson and others say many of the longtime staff and their relatives remain in key positions, from the pastor to the school principal.
They say no effort has been made to apologize publicly or privately.
Students waiting for justice
The students say their anxiety is growing as they wait to hear from police and prosecutors.
It’s unclear when Crown prosecutors will decide whether charges are warranted. In an email to a student, a Saskatoon police investigator said abuse files involving only a single complainant and accused can take six weeks for prosecutors to decide on possible charges. She said this file had been passed to Crown prosecutors and a decision on possible charges could take until April 2023.
A Saskatchewan Justice official declined to give details on the file and recommended asking the Saskatoon Police Service. A Saskatoon police official said they can’t comment because the investigation is ongoing.
Former students of the Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy, say all government subsidies and tax breaks for the school and adjacent Mile Two Church must be halted until police and prosecutors have dealt with their abuse complaints and the government has conducted a full investigation of the school’s current practices. (Jason Warick/CBC)
Students say the people who committed the abuse must be held accountable, but that there were many other adults who witnessed it and did nothing. They wonder why this systemic abuse was ignored for so long.
That’s why they want the provincial government to investigate the school itself, freezing any funding and cancelling any tax breaks until all questions are answered.
In a written statement, a provincial Ministry of Education official said three on-site inspections are now conducted annually on independent schools, and the most recent one at Legacy Christian Academy occurred June 8.
It also said the Ministry of Education “has not received any complaints regarding LCA since funding for Qualified Independent Schools (QIS) began in 2012.”
Erickson says that’s not true. She shared a June 20 email exchange with Education Minister Dustin Duncan’s assistant.
Erickson emailed Duncan to say she “reached out to your office a number of times and received no response.” She identifies herself as a former student of Christian Centre Academy, now Legacy Christian Academy, and informs him of the criminal investigation underway.
“You have been told time and time again the damage these schools do,” she said before calling on the minister to de-fund LCA and other private Christian schools.
The provincial government says it hasn’t received any complaints about Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy. But former students say that’s not true, and provided CBC News with recent email exchanges with Education Minister Dustin Duncan’s office. (Kirk Fraser/CBC News)
The minister’s assistant wrote back “on behalf of Minister Duncan” and acknowledged receipt of Erickson’s email.
“The Minister’s response will be forthcoming. Thank-you for taking the time to write,” stated the email.
Erickson said she knows of at least one other former student who recently told Duncan to de-fund LCA.
‘I’m proud of who I am’: Coy
Coy and his mother Carilyn say that following the exorcism in their home, officials declared Coy would be sent away to a special school in Edmonton to be “cured” of being gay.
Carilyn said she had ignored other warning signs over the years — including officials forcing Coy and the others to attend protests against gay marriage legislation — because her extended family, friends, finances and children’s futures were all connected to the church and school.
But the exorcism was too much. She stayed up all night writing a letter to the director and placed it on the windshield of his car.
“I thought this would be a wonderful school, but this was ridiculous. I am not sending my child away,” she said.
“We left and never looked back. It was like a thousand-pound weight lifted from my chest. It was the best thing I ever did.”
After graduating from a public high school a year later, Coy Nolin spent a couple of years in Banff, terrified to admit he was gay even to his own mother.
He eventually told her in a phone call.
“I know. I love you. Come home,” she said. Coy did.
Now working in a Saskatoon department store and in a loving relationship, the 34-year-old said life is still a struggle but he has many reasons to be grateful.
“It took a long time,” he said. “But I’m proud of who I am.”
CBC News has learned 18 former students of a private Christian school in Saskatoon have filed criminal complaints for alleged abuse, including paddling, coercion, traumatizing rituals and solitary confinement. https://t.co/WLO9nqaia7
CBC News has learned 18 former students of a private Christian school in Saskatoon have filed criminal complaints for alleged abuse, including paddling, coercion, traumatizing rituals and solitary confinement. https://t.co/WLO9nqaia7
It’s been 422 days since I came forward to police about the abuse that went on at the K-12 Christian School I attended in Saskatoon. #saskatoonhttps://t.co/Hj5dxpDIpw
Caitlin Erickson was the first of 18 former students of Saskatoon's Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy, to go to police. She says the degree of control exerted by school and church officials was similar to a cult. pic.twitter.com/oPrBff5d6Y
Saskatoon police have completed an investigation of alleged assaults and other abuse suffered by former students of Christian Centre Academy. The file has been handed to Crown prosecutors to consider possible charges, according to emails to students from police obtained by CBC. pic.twitter.com/CkyH0zo6Ar
The Sask. government says it hasn't received any complaints about Christian Centre Academy since it began receiving provincial funding in 2012. But former students say that's not true, and provided CBC with recent email exchanges with Education Minister Dustin Duncan's office. pic.twitter.com/ejKUSaYOZH
The Sask. government says it hasn't received any complaints about Christian Centre Academy since it began receiving provincial funding in 2012. But former students say that's not true, and provided CBC with recent email exchanges with Education Minister Dustin Duncan's office. pic.twitter.com/ejKUSaYOZH
Scottie's Playtime 