The latest fracas involving a transgender student at a taxpayer-funded school involves a kindergarten boy whose parents are sending him to school wearing pink shoes and a jumper.
The unidentified five-year-old boy attends Nova Classical Academy, a charter school in St. Paul, Minn., reports Minneapolis Fox affiliate KMSP-TV.
The boy’s parents, Hannah and Dave Edwards, say they are concerned about bullying and want the school to address the problem at an instructional level.
“He has said before, ‘I feel like a girl in my heart, I feel like I have both boy and girl,” dad Dave Edwards told the Fox station. “We’re not yet sure of the person that our son is. He’s in kindergarten.”
The parents say they want special treatment for their son because they don’t want to force any broad gender labels on him.
“We don’t label him,” Dave Edwards told regional ABC affiliate KAAL. “We know from what he has shown us this far, that we are going to need some protections in place to keep him safe while he’s in public school.”
According to Eric Williams, executive director at Nova Classical, teachers have thus far read elementary school-aged students a poem concerning gender nonconformity and gender identity issues.
“At that point, we talked about girls wanting to play with boy things and boys wanting to play with girl things,” Williams told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “I would say the majority of parents are supportive of our efforts.”
However, Williams said he understands the concerns on the other side.
“Some of the parents who are opposed to that say this is going to confuse some of their own children,” he told KMSP. “What do you say to that?”
Opponents of the school’s plan to explain sexual identity to children as young as kindergarten packed into the Nova Classical gym on Tuesday for a presentation by the Minnesota Family Council, a local Christian group.
“Is it bullying when a child says my parents taught me that someone is born male or female?” Autumn Leva asked during the presentation, according to the Star Tribune. “Disagreeing with someone isn’t automatically bullying.”
A people in favor of teaching little kids all about the details of transgender politics also attended the presentation. They silently held up signs reading, for example, “We love our transgender children” and “Yes for trans justice.”
Parents who oppose transgender instruction spoke to local reporters.
“I’d have a problem with them teaching that gender is a state of mind to my children,” Paula Rothstein, the parent of two kids at the charter school, told KAAL, “because I don’t believe it.”
Another parent, Leslie Lynn, voiced the same concerns.
“Talking about sex and gender for children who are five, six years old is something that many parents, representing hundreds of kids, think is inappropriate,” Lynn told KMSP-TV.
Lynn said she is also angry about a book called “Jacob’s New Dress,” which is on offer for optional reading at Nova Classical. The book receives 4.5 stars on Amazon. “My kiddo loves pink and My Little Pony and Monster High and sparkly barrettes,” says a happy customer. A critic disagrees, saying: “This book pushes the social limits without trying to appear dangerous.”
The Edwards family enjoys the support of several radical leftist organizations in Minnesota including Gender Justice, OutFront Minnesota, and Transforming Families MN.
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