(The Daily Signal) – A Wisconsin school district addressed a 12-year-old female student using both a male name and male pronouns against her parents’ objections, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and Alliance Defending Freedom in the Waukesha County Circuit Court, the lawsuit alleges that Kettle Moraine School District violated the constitutionally protected rights of the girls’ parents and pushed the 12-year-old toward a significant life decision she was not prepared to make.
Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Kate Anderson told The Daily Signal Tuesday evening that the Wisconsin case reflects policies the legal organization has seen in states across the country, including Wisconsin, Virginia, and Washington state.
“Parents have the right to direct the upbringing of their children, and at the heart of it, parents just want information about what’s going on with their kids at school,” Anderson said. “And these policies are so dangerous because they’re allowing schools to encourage students to begin transitioning into a gender identity that isn’t in accord with their biological sex, and then not inform their parents, and in many cases lie to the parents affirmatively about what their student is doing at school.”
“When schools are blocking parents from basic information about their child’s health care, that prevents parents from doing what’s best for their kids and what, constitutionally, they have every right to do to direct the upbringing of their children,” she added.
Attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty sent a letter in May to members of the school district, highlighting that the 12-year-old girl began experiencing “rapid onset gender dysphoria” as well as “significant anxiety and depression” in December 2020.
Her parents “temporarily withdrew her from the Kettle Moraine Middle School to allow her to attend a mental health center where she could process what she was experiencing,” the letter said.
“But instead of helping her work through her questions about her gender, the center quickly ‘affirmed’ that she was really a transgender boy and encouraged her to transition to a male identity,” the attorneys continued. “In early January, she expressed to her parents and school staff that she wanted to adopt a male name and pronouns when she returned to school.”
The girl’s parents decided that “immediately transitioning would not be in their daughter’s best interest,” the letter said, and they reportedly told their daughter that they wanted her to explore the cause of her feelings before taking such a significant step.
They also asked the staff at the school to continue using her legal name and female pronouns, the letter said.
Hungary recently took a major step to protect children from having their innocence destroyed and being sexualized by LGBT propaganda in schools and by pornography in the mass media.
Please SIGN and SHARE this petition which expresses agreement and respect for the wishes of the sovereign nation of Hungary to protect its children against the onslaught of LGBT indoctrination propaganda and pornography.
Since passage of the bill the fake news outlets from Europe to America have predictably begun to fabricate outrage and, or, simply lie about the contents of the bill. And, the corrupt European Union has also now started to attack Hungary's efforts to protect children.
For doing the hard and good thing, Hungary now needs our support.
The bill, which was passed last week, specifically prohibits showing pornographic material or content portraying homosexuality or transgenderism to minors under the age of 18. Other measures include a registry of sex offenders, regulations on sexual education, and stronger policies against child pornography.
This policy is to be welcomed as a pro-active measure against the liberal and LGBT propaganda machine which is steadily encroaching on Hungary's borders, and which threatens to tear down Christian civilization altogether.
Indeed, the same week that this law was passed in Hungary, Vienna's (Austria) deputy mayor distributed "Rainbow Family" information boxes to 350 kindergartens in the Austrian capital. And, Vienna is only about 50 miles from the Hungarian border!
But, never satisfied with corrupting the children of their own countries, LGBT activists and their accomplices in the EU have been quick to castigate Hungary, claiming that the Budapest government has "discriminated" against homosexuals with their law to protect children, and in doing so, has violated EU law.
However, Hungary's Justice Minister, Judit Varga, set the record straight in an interview with Hungarian journalists, stating:
"This is one of a number of declarations declaring certain Hungarian measures to be contrary to EU law without a thorough examination. The fake news that has taken wing in these statements is completely unfounded.
In Hungary's view, the legislation has nothing to do with EU law. The issue of subsidiarity and constitutional, national identity is a matter for the Member States. Furthermore, the European Charter of Human Rights also says that a parent has the right to determine the direction of their children's development in a culturally traditional background."
And, more broadly, Viktor Orbán, Hungary's Prime Minister, had this to say about Hungary's new law:
"The current left-wing campaign against Hungary is further proof that today, the left is the enemy of freedom, because instead of freedom of speech, they want political correctness as defined by them, and hegemony of opinion instead of a pluralism of ideas.
The new Hungarian law does not conflict with any lofty ideals or European laws. The new Hungarian law simply states clearly that only parents can decide on the sexual education of their children. Education in schools must not be in conflict with the will of parents; it must at most be supplementary, its form and content must be clearly defined and it must be subject to parental consent.
Parents also rightly expect that on platforms used by our children, pornography, sexuality for its own sake, homosexuality and gender reassignment programs should not be available. These restrictions must also be defined with surgical precision. In Hungary, no one has a say in how adults live their lives. In our view, a free adult should not have to give an account of his life in front of any secular authority — only before God when the time comes."
Please SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition which supports the government of Hungary in their passage of this pro-active child protection measure banning LGBT propaganda and pornography for under-18s.
Thank you!
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'Hungary passes law against homosexuality, prime minister renews vow to ‘protect our children’' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/hungary-passes-law-against-homosexuality-prime-minister-renews-vow-to-protect-our-children
'Hungary bans promotion of homosexuality, transgenderism to minors' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/hungary-bans-promotion-of-homosexuality-transgenderism-to-minors
'EU to take legal action against Hungary’s anti-pedophilia bill' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/eu-to-take-legal-action-against-hungarys-anti-pedophilia-bill
Photo Credit: okoscso / Shutterstock.com
“But the District refused to honor their request,” the attorneys wrote, and the parents “were told that, pursuant to District policy, school staff would be required to address their daughter using a male name and pronouns if that’s what she wanted.”
The parents then had no choice but to withdraw her from the school district and to distance her from the mental health center and therapist she had been seeing, the letter said, as they were “concerned that daily affirmation of a male identity could harm their daughter.”
The letter continued:
The concerns were soon validated. After leaving the center and withdrawing from school, their daughter’s demeanor began to change. A few weeks later, she expressed to her mother that ‘affirmative care really messed me up.’ She explained that the therapists at the center did not question or help her process her feelings, but told her that, now that she knew she was really a boy, the sooner she transitioned the better because it’s easier when you’re young. They also told her she was right to be angry at her mother for not immediately allowing her to ‘be who she was.’ She now realizes this was wrong and actually fueled anger towards her mother. She has reverted to identifying by her birth name and female pronouns and enrolled in a different school district.
But the school district ignored the letter, Alliance Defending Freedom said in a press release, leaving the parents no other option but to sue.
“Our goal is to ensure that what happened to [REDACTED] never happens again,” the letter said.
The lawsuit challenges the school’s policy that allows students who are minors to change their name and their pronouns at school without their parents’ consent.
“Schools cannot override parents when it comes to decisions about their children,” Luke Berg, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said in a statement. “Students’ decisions about what names and genders pronouns they prefer are no exception. Schools must defer to parents about what is best for their child.”
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal