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Air Date: March 17, 2015
Host: Vic Eliason
Guest: Michele Lentz
Michele Lentz is State Coordinator for Child Protection League Action based in Minnesota. They work to protect children from exploitation, indoctrination and violence. Their main effort involves educating the public to take action regarding policies that impact children.
Minnesota is dealing with 3 policies that have come up at the local level. The first one was taken up last Fall by the Minnesota State High School League, the entity that governs competitive athletics at the high school level. They were going to force schools to adopt a policy that says that if a biological boy feels he is a girl, he should be allowed to play on the all-girls team. That includes using the girls locker room/shower facilities as well as travel with the girls team. In response, Child Protection League Action took out a full-page ad in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune alerting the public. This generated 10,000 e-mails to the Minnesota State High School League.
150 people showed up at a meeting regarding this topic. It was tabled and taken up again in December after the election. Nine drafts later it had been watered down so much, an appeals process was passed that allowed local schools to have their own policy. However, if the individual school doesn’t determine things the way the league thinks it should be, that transgender student can appeal to the league and the league will have the final say in the matter.
2 more policies have come up since that time. The Minneapolis public schools quietly adopted a similar policy based upon the same language. Michele noted that the St. Paul public schools will vote at their school board meeting tonight to pass a policy that is broader than that of the Minnesota State High School League idea. This policy would also include gender, non-conforming students which includes those students who say they are neither male nor female.
In response to public outrage, members of the Minnesota legislature have drafted HF-1546 (SF-1543 in the Senate) which says two things: You cannot allow biological males to play on female-only teams. The second part of this bill communicates that schools must keep separate boys and girls bathrooms based upon biology. In essence, the schools don’t have to do any more than what they’re already doing.
Michele encouraged people to go to the Child Protection League Action website (www.cplaction.com) where you can see information regarding the Students Physical Privacy Act. She indicated that this bill is being held up by leadership in the House so if listeners want to see this bill move forward, they must contact their legislators.
If legislators don’t act, these policies will go into effect next Fall and unless there’s some court action, more and more schools will adopt them and the normalizing of gender confusion will continue in the school system.
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Minnesota Capitol Switchboard
651-296-2146
