News Release
For Immediate Release – March 24, 2016
Contact: Diane Gramley 1.814.271.9078
PA Schools Encourage Students to Deny Who They Are
(Harrisburg) — At least two Montgomery County, Pennsylvania school districts are seeking to encourage students to be someone they are not. Everyone born, except in extremely rare cases, is either male or female and that can never change, yet these districts want to affirm those who are confused about their sexuality, rather than encourage them to be who God made them. The American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA), a statewide child advocacy organization, has contacted Springfield Township School District and Lower Merion School District, expressing our concerns for their proposed policy changes.
“Lower Merion School District wants to adopt the newly minted term ‘gender expansive’ in their policies and Springfield Township School District, which has approved a first reading of Draft Policy 253, is sticking with the more familiar term ‘gender nonconforming.’ However, both are ill-advised and will create more confusion and problems than they will solve. As we noted in our communication with both school districts, students who are confused about their sexuality need understanding, but they need to be reaffirmed in their biological sex,” commented Diane Gramley, president of the AFA of PA.
Information communicated to the districts included:
1.) The World Professional Association for Transgender Health latest Standards of Care notes that gender dysphoria in childhood does not inevitably continue into adulthood. The stats are overwhelming: 77-94% of gender dysphoric children do NOT become adults with gender dysphoria.
2.) Depriving biological females and males of their right to use sex-segregated facilities solely in the company of members of their own sex constitutes sex discrimination.
3.) Federal laws known as “Title VII” (covering employees) or “Title IX” (in the education context, covering students) already prohibit discrimination based on “sex” (including pregnancy), but they only prohibit discrimination between males and females. Neither statute requires or supports the idea that males are females, or the recognition of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity or expression,” as claimed by agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”), and Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”).
4.) A policy based on trangenderism or gender expansion is behavior based and not based on immutable characteristics like race, color, sex, national origin, or constitutionally-protected fundamental rights, like religion.
Additionally, the AFA of PA email to Springfield Township School District included these observations, “Approval of Draft Policy 253 opens girls’ restrooms, locker rooms and showers to biological males. Participation in Intramural Sports — does that mean a biological male will get to room with girls when there’s an away game requiring an overnight stay at a motel? Additionally, males tend to be larger and more muscular than girls, thus placing girls on sports teams with boys who think they are girls in situations where they are more likely to get injured.”
“The move by transgender activists to obliterate the lines between the sexes places vulnerable children at risk. Those who are confused about their sexuality should not be encouraged to continue the delusion that they are, or ever can be, the opposite sex. Their “XY” or “XX” genetic markers with which they were born can never be changed. Period,” further commented Gramley.
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