Middle school cancels “gender-switch” day after parents object

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Sacramento, Calif., Nov 2, 2007 / 11:10 am (CNA).- A Bay Area Middle School has canceled a scheduled cross-dressing or “gender-switch” day after parents complained, according to an Oct. 30 Pacific Justice Institute news release. The Sacramento-based institute is a legal organization that defends parental rights, religious freedom, and other civil liberties.

Adams Middle School in Brentwood encouraged students to cross-dress – boys wearing girls clothing, girls wearing boys’ clothing – on the last day of “Spirit Week,” Friday, Nov. 2. Parents were given little notice of the event, said the Pacific Justice Institute, and only found out about it after flyers were posted at the school.

A parent of a seventh-grader met with the principal, Adam Clark, to voice her concerns about the event, and was told that it would go ahead as planned. Clark told the parent she could keep her son home if he did not want to be part of the event. The parent contacted Pacific Justice Institute, which told her she needed to enlist other parents to contact the school with their concerns. The Institute itself prepared to intervene, if necessary.

On Oct. 30, the school removed the flyers advertising the event and confirmed it had been canceled. Instead, the school encourages students to wear school colors. Clark told Institute attorney Matthew McReynolds, “We want to encourage our students to be free thinkers, [but] we felt that the overall message wasn’t coming across clear to some members of the community.”

Encouraging student cross-dressing to invite “free thinking” is not unique to Adams Middle School. A 2002 article by the Culture and Family Institute of Concerned Women for America reported how the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) encourages cross-dressing through a curriculum developed for Kindergarten through third grade.

The curriculum guide, produced by the Lesbian and Gay Parents Association and the Buena Vista Lesbian and Gay Parents group in San Francisco, Preventing Prejudice: Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Lesson Plan Guide for Elementary Schools, features a book, Jesse’s Dream Skirt, by Bruce Mark, about a boy who enjoys wearing his mother’s dresses and wants a skirt for himself. The lesson plan accompanying the book says the book’s key message is “respect means keeping our minds open. Having open minds means giving people freedom to be who they want to be.”

The GLSEN web site still offers the plan as a resource. According to the Network, “Preventing Prejudice is an instructional tool for educators at the K-5 level. It consists of sixteen field-tested lesson plans developed by elementary school teachers, including such topics as: What is a Boy/Girl?; What Makes a Family?; Freedom to Marry; and Coming Out.”

The Brentwood School District’s web site offers an “East Contra Costa Quick Resource Guide,” which lists under “Gay and Lesbian,” the Gay and Lesbian National Hotline, the Empowerment Program (which helps women in “disadvantaged positions”), and Rainbow Community Center of Contra Costa County. The center, according to its web site, “envisions a society that embraces acceptance, safety and equality for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.”

The original story can be found at California Catholic Daily.

Comments: 21

Subscriber comments:

Published by: mike
ny 02/06/2010 12:49 PM EST

I support gay rights and I think many of the people above are bigots. However, I am against promoting a cross-dressing day for a different reason. Many of the kids will be doing it as a joke and mocking gay and transgender people.

Published by: Lori Beath
Brentwood CA 10/16/2009 03:20 PM EST

This is rediculous!!! It is like the kids dressing in pajamas and wearing their clothes backwards, to me it it no big deal! I think those of you that are focused on this event as turning our youth gay need to focus on what is really going on with our youth. Address the issues like cutting, drugs, and the all time popular one of suicide. This far more serious than wearing gender based clothing.

Published by: Paige Dudek....
non,none,usa 11/13/2007 02:11 AM EST

Rate: Very Good

people these days take everything too seriously. any spirit day could be taken as a bad influence to spirit, but as soon as parents hear a gender they freak out! Adams Middle school is a greatschool, i know i go there. is it really the schools fault? i bet, if that one parent wouldnt have mentioned anything, nobody would care right now if we were cross dressing. in my opionion, people cross dress everyday and you dont see them getting aressted. cross dressing might as well be a law if someone is cruel enough to make my great school sound like a horrible one nation wide. Our school is a caring school, we do canned food drives, school fundraisers, have sports teams. and you thinkk after alll the nice things we do to the community, that we woul try to inforce that homosexuality is bad. If you lived in the town of brentwood, you would see how great it is. So When all you people making nasty comments,before you judge a book by its cover take a look at your own pages. in other words, before you call our school bad, arent you the bad person for judgin without knowing the truth? think about it!

Published by: louis ortega
santa cruz 11/12/2007 07:42 PM EST

Breaking the gender norm would of been a fantastic and liberating experience for most of the children at this school I'm sure, and I'm extremely disappointed the event didn't carry through. Challenging the hetero-normative context of sexist, homophobic, right-wing America needs to begin within our education systems with events at schools such as "gender-switch" day. Forced gender socialization is one of the most problematic and damaging obstacles for all children as they are forced into a gender binary that deprives growth potential, personal freedom of expression and a pursuit of happiness not afflicted by societies prejudices towards queer people. Stories such as Jesse's Dream Skirt and The Life and Times of Harvey Milk should, and WILL, be required reading for ALL students.. male, female, boy, girl, gay, lesbian, straight, trans and those who don't fit into any categories... we are all equal and must learn tolerance and acceptance as primary virtues of the Catholic faith.

Published by: Arianna D'Eredita
Concord/CA/United States 11/07/2007 06:45 PM EST

Rate: Very Good

I think that this Spirit Day was fine because they were not encouraging the gay/lesbian thing. If the parents would have taken just one second and thought the day over maybe they would have gotten something different out of it. What would you do or your kids do if their school was known Nation Wide as a horrible school that doesn't teach the curriculum just because of a dumb Spirit Day. It just doesn't make since that one person's voice changed the whole thing and got this school known everywhere as a bad one. It was one kid. They weren't even encouraging the whole thing. No one ever said you had to participate in this event. Other parents could be offended by p.j. day because it maybe encourages kids to stay home and not go to school. Everybody has a right to say their feelings, but make sure next time it doesn't go this far!!

Published by: Crossdressing is fun
San Francisco 11/06/2007 06:20 PM EST

Crossdressing, although not recommended as evil by most stuck up religious nuts (aka modern day Pharisees), is a great social event, as long as you don't mean it to be homosexual.

Published by: Tillie
Winchester, MA, USA 11/05/2007 07:24 PM EST

I do believe that Massachusetts including their governor and senators wins the prize for "stinking thinking"

Published by: Robert
cape coral, Fl 11/05/2007 06:52 PM EST

What lengths the left wing loonies will stoop to! I feel sorry for the parents that cannot afford a private school out there in the "left" coast. Just stay vigilant!

Published by: Suzanne
Uncasville, CT USA 11/05/2007 05:43 PM EST

It might also concern you that the topic of this article is keyed in to ads pushed by Google on this site. I notified CNA and was told they are working on it.

Published by: Lupe Guerrero
Downey, CA USA 11/05/2007 12:05 PM EST

Rate: Good

I'm outraged & disgusted!! To think that my Tax dollare are funding schools with this type of mentally, it makes me sick to my stomach!! No wonder more & more Parents are home schooling this days! that's my advised to all Parents with children!!! When will it stop?? Enough is Enough!!!

Published by: Michael
Owasso, OK, USA 11/05/2007 11:01 AM EST

I'm glad that was canceled. Dressing in school colors is school spirit related, cross-dressing is not. I'll be glad when we get rid of social engineering from our schools and get back to teaching math, English, and science. We need to have discipline back, too. I'm tired of our schools putting out a bunch of lazy, stupid graduates, who don't know how to work.

Published by: Teresa
NY, USA 11/04/2007 10:08 PM EST

Chase God away and you get satan, also known as 'the destroyer'.
You people better protest and stop the evil that once broke sodom and gomorrah. God doesn't like it when people corrupt children by telling them evil is good.

Published by: l rogers
tulsa ok usa 11/04/2007 09:16 PM EST

unbelievable

Published by: Ed R
Gbg, Pa. USA 11/04/2007 10:29 AM EST

Once again California sets the stage for gay and lesbian recruiting. 3

Published by: THERESA
BROOKYN, NEW YORK 11/04/2007 10:01 AM EST

WHEN IS THIS GOING TO END!!!!!

Published by: Barbara Meyer
Bowling Green,Ky,USA 11/03/2007 11:33 PM EST

I knew you before you were born--I created you male and female--I said go forth and increase and multiply- A man will leave mother and father and cling to his wife. etc, etc, etc, What kind of nightmare am I living in?????

Published by: Lorena
Whittier Ca US 11/03/2007 10:57 PM EST

I am glad to hear that the cross dress day was cancelled although saddend to hear that our public school elementary students must be subjected to nonsense like lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender Lesson Plans. I would like to voice my opinion and say that I do not want my tax dollars to go to things so disgusting and immoral
thank you
sincerly
Mrs. Lorena Romero

Published by: Marlene
Alexandria, Va. 11/03/2007 06:53 PM EST

God loves all people. We have gone too far. What does the Church say about Trans-gender. People who are born in the wrong body. We correct other errors.

Published by: Ann Tran
S. Boston, MA, USA. 11/03/2007 04:58 PM EST

Gay and Lesbian organizations in every conner want to destroy the good natural and traditional family structure. So they find the way to enter the school facuties to make young children to believe that homosexual issues are as good as the mom and dad in the natural family. So the faculty members who involved with the gay and lesbian work hard for them to win parents, they will drive away children from good family to support them in the future. Please help children to survive from this dangerous action. Thanks

Ann Tran

Published by: Philip Saenz
Mathis, TX 78368 USA 11/03/2007 10:29 AM EST

Don't those crazies, the teachers, know that in our free country we have freedom of expression? If a boy doesn't want to dress like a sissy, then he doesn't have to dress like a sissy. Period.... Instead of hiring crazies, why don't they hire teachers with a brain?

Published by: William A. Torchia, Esquire
Philadelphia, PA USA 11/03/2007 08:19 AM EST

This is not only a horror, but it is sick and perverted. Children at that age are expremely impressionable, and crossdressing could damage them psychologically and in their development into adolescence. Miserabile lectu.

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