Topic: WorldNetDaily
An Oct. 19 WorldNetDaily article certainly does its best to make transgender teens sound scary and perverted:
Girls at a Colorado high school are being forced to allow an older boy to use their bathrooms as the result of a policy of transgender accommodation, and the girls say they are being threatened with punishment if their complaints don’t stop.
The debate is happening at Florence High School in Florence, Colo., located near Colorado Springs. Matthew McReynolds, staff attorney at the Pacific Justice Institute, told WND parents of several girls are seeking a legal remedy after their daughters were required to share bathrooms with a male who maintains his true gender identity is that of a woman.
“First of all, it’s our position that a teenage boy’s presence into the bathroom for teenage girls is inherently harassing,” said McReynolds, who is representing the families of the girls involved. “It’s inherently violative of their privacy rights. It’s also intimidating when you have a boy like this, who is not a freshman, going in there with younger freshman girls. They feel violated. They feel intimidated, and that’s been expressed to us.”
Strange thing, though: Nowhere in the article do McReynolds cite any specific, documented instances of behavior the transgender teen is alleged to have engaged in.
That's because there aren't any. The unbylined article waits until the 20th paragraph to mention the school district's response to the claim:
In an interview with The Transadvocate, a transgender advocate blog, School Superintendent Rhonda Vendetti claimed only one parent has complained about a transgender student using girls’ bathrooms:
“Nothing has actually been verified with us,” she said. “This is one parent basically bringing their viewpoint about this situation to the media because they weren’t getting the responses that they hoped they would get from the district, from parents of students at the high school, or from the board and myself. So I think it’s just an attempt to elevate the situation to a point where maybe some more attention can be drawn to that in the hope of having a different outcome. But to our knowledge and based on our investigation, none of those things have actually happened. We do have a transgender student at the high school, and she has been using the women’s restroom. There has not been a situation.
“All the students of these parents who say they feel uncomfortable just about the fact that the student is allowed to go into the restrooms at the high school, into the stalls, they don’t believe that that is appropriate. That’s where it stems from. … The vast majority of our parents are supportive of the student.”
WND made no apparent effort to contact the school district for an opportunity to respond to McReynold's claims. Instead, it quotes another PJI official as attacking the superintendent for speaking with a particular news outlet: "It is very revealing that the superintendent is seeking sympathy from transgender activists instead of addressing the serious concerns raised in our letter."
Further, that "transgender advocate blog" also talked to another source WND couldn't be bothered to look up -- the transgender teen's family:
After Jane came out to her parents, she then began the process of transition. “It’s not like one day you’re a boy and then the next you’re a girl, my daughter went through a process to become who she is. Over that summer, she fully transitioned and returned to school as my daughter instead of having to hide who she is.”
When she went to her old school as herself, Jane flourished. When asked if she had experienced any bullying at the time she said, “Just some name calling.” Jane’s mother elaborated, “Before she transitioned, we would go to shopping and when she would try to use the male restroom, they would make rude comments.” I asked her if she meant that men in the restrooms would verbally abuse her daughter before she ever transitioned because she was perceived to be female even when trying to present as male. “She was scared to use the restroom. They made rude comments, language that she didn’t need to hear just because she was trying to go to the bathroom that she thought she had to be in.”
“Since she changed, she’s comfortable with life. She’s really feminine, but doesn’t do tons of makeup each day. She’s just a normal girl. If people see her on the streets, people don’t… didn’t know, you know? Before all of this stuff happened, none of this bothered anyone.”[...]
“Jane is private about everything. She’s timid and shy and tends to be afraid to talk to people. That they’re saying that she’s going around harassing people… it’s just not true. The people who are doing these stories need to realize that the kid behind these stories has feelings and gets hurt.”
WND is virulently anti-gay -- it has even served as an apologist for anti-gay activist Scott Lively's links to a proposed law in Uganda that would permit the execution of homosexuals -- so maybe its reporters think it will pick up some sort of tranny cooties if they talk to a transsexual or even somebody related to one.
Still, the fact that WND is uncritically promoting the PJI's discredited and dishonest take on this case is yet another reason why nobody believes WND.
