Stand Up for Civility and Human Dignity
This past Tuesday night I gave public comment at the monthly meeting of the Douglas County School Board (beginning here). My opponent in the race for Colorado House District 39 did likewise (beginning here).
Neither statement is longer than three minutes. One can easily consume them in their entirety and observe the contrast all the way through. I’d like to focus on the parts of each of our remarks in which we spoke of one another.
First a little background. As I noted on August 27, in a social media post, the current representative had mischaracterized the Cass Review, which was a study that British pediatrician Hillary Cass headed to investigate the safety and evidentiary basis for medical treatment of gender incongruence or dysphoria in minors. Upon the recommendation of the Cass Review, the National Health Service of England (NHSE) imposed a moratorium on the provision of puberty blockers to minors. Under the moratorium, which has been extended to November 26 and may be made permanent at that time, such treatment can no longer be initiated in England or Ireland outside of a medical research context.
The caution that the Cass Review urged with regard to medical treatment is one thing. The current representative’s demagoguery about the phenomenon of gender fluidity and transgenderism is quite another.
Here is what the current representative said, referencing remarks I had made minutes before:
I will not continue to allow adults to lie to children and take them down the path of false narratives, woke ideologies, fake science that at best leads to gender mutilation and at worst leads them to a twelvefold increase in suicide. If you were truly based in science, you would have discussions with your teachers and counselors on the credible statistical evidence found in the WPATH Files and the Cass Report regarding harmful gender transition, which my opponent just blatantly lied about. But you don’t want to know the truth and help these children. You can force this fake ideology on your own kids, God help them, but what we will not allow you to do is lie to mine or other people’s kids. [To] lie to their faces, tell them they were born in the wrong body, or that they can change their gender is hateful, it is harmful, and it is wrong.
And here are the truthful words I spoke.
One of the parents in our county, previously referred to, posted on social media the comment that gender fluidity – or this is the gist of it – that gender fluidity is a lie. That boys cannot become girls and girls cannot become boys. And startlingly, this parent pointed to the Cass Review in the United Kingdom as support for this contention. Which is really quite bizarre, because Dr. Hillary Cass, a pediatrician who wrote that review, absolutely was diametrically opposed to what this parent said, what this parent attributed to her and to the Cass Review.
In my August 27 post I demonstrated at length the falseness of the current representative’s narrative. A single paragraph from Dr. Cass’s forward to the Final Report, in which she directly addressed children experiencing gender incongruence or dysphoria, will suffice here:
[M]edication is binary, but the fastest growing group identifying under the trans umbrella is non-binary, and we know even less about the outcomes for this group. Some of you will also become more fluid in your gender identity as you grow older. We do not know the ‘sweet spot’ when someone becomes settled in their sense of self, nor which people are most likely to benefit from medical transition. When making life-changing decisions, what is the correct balance between keeping options as flexible and open as possible as you move into adulthood, and responding to how you feel right now?
At the outset of my remarks I referenced an earlier speaker, Erin Lee. Although not a resident of Douglas County, she shared a relevant school experience in her own family in 2021. Ms. Lee’s remarks, which she delivered via Zoom, begin here. One can read a May 2022 news report about that experience and its aftermath in the Poudre School District here and a December 2023 account of a lawsuit that the Lees and another family filed in connection with the incident here. In my own remarks, I urged compassion for Ms. Lee and serious consideration of the situation that she described, details of which the Poudre School District disputes.
I leave this post with the closing sentences of my remarks which, though I addressed them to the school board directors, are really meant for all of our wider society.
I’d like for you – I know you’re doing a great job already – I’d like for you and I’d like for our community to strive to tone down the temperature, tamp it down a little bit, observe each other’s legitimate arguments in as accepting a light as one can muster. But also, and this is my personal view, to stand up for the human dignity of members of our community who are often targets of those who don't accept them. Thank you very much.