Dad Furious After US Public School 'Undermined' Him, Worsened Daughter's Trans Crisis By Jared Harris
Published August 25, 2019 at 9:41am
A dad was floored after discovering his daughter’s public school not only knew about her transgender identity crisis, but actively encouraged it despite his protests.
Illinois resident Jay Keck revealed his anger in an Aug. 12 opinion column for USA Today headlined, “my daughter thinks she’s transgender. Her public school undermined my efforts to help her.”
The problem started when Keck’s then-14-year-old daughter first began thinking she was male in 2016.
Keck’s daughter, who is on the autism spectrum and has trouble forming friendships with others, was originally approached by a transgender girl at her school.
Soon after meeting the transgender student, Keck’s daughter herself began to claim she was a male trapped in a female’s body.
To Keck’s shock, staff at the school called her by her new name. According to him, the school was well aware of his daughter’s mental challenges.
“I pleaded that my daughter’s school call her by her legal name, use female pronouns,” Keck writes. Instead, he wrote, the faculty ignored his request and affirmed the young girl’s male “identity.”
To address the problem, Keck wrote, he met with the school district’s assistant superintendent, who maintained that school officials were legally required to use the name and gender identity of students’ choosing.
“But there was no law,” Keck writes, “only the Obama administration’s ‘Dear Colleagues’ letter of May 2016 that said schools need to officially affirm transgender students. Just three months later, in August 2016, a federal judge in Texas blocked the guidelines from being enforced.”
President Donald Trump’s administration rescinded the guidelines for good in 2017.
The school didn’t stop at encouraging gender confusion, either, Keck wrote.
Keck’s daughter informed him that the school’s social worker began advising her about halfway houses. The subject came as a result of the parents not supporting their daughter’s gender identity.
The social worker confirmed that he had been discussing the living situation alternatives with the young girl, Keck wrote.
“This felt like a horrifying attempt to encourage our daughter to run away from home,” Keck wrote.
He also wrote that a psychologist confirmed what Keck believed all along: His daughter’s newfound gender identity stemmed mostly from her challenges with autism. Fearing backlash, the psychologist would only make those revelations off the record, Keck wrote.
Keck’s daughter has now graduated from high school (and had her male name used in the graduation ceremony) and is now old enough to legally make life-changing decisions for herself.
Hormones and irreversible surgeries are available and easily accessible for Keck’s daughter, despite her mental condition and further gender confusion apparently stemming from it.
“No extensive mental health assessment will be required,” Keck says, “and there will be nothing I can do to stop her.”
Poster Comment:
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