Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Religious right leader calls harassed trans child a liar

Allen Whitt
Earlier today,  I posted about an incident in which an assistant principal allegedly harassed a transgender boy in a school restroom. As of now, the assistant principal has been suspended.

A West Virginia high school suspended its assistant principal on Tuesday after a transgender student accused him of harassment. 
Liberty High School assistant principal Lee Livengood was suspended with pay following a complaint by sophomore Michael Critchfield, who said Livengood harassed him in a school bathroom last month, according to West Virginia's American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the child. 
Critchfield, who was assigned female at birth but identifies as male, told ACLU that Livengood approached him in the boys bathroom on Nov. 27, and said: "Why are you in this bathroom?" and "You freak me out."

And the anti-LGBTQ industry aren't happy about it. From fake news site of the American Family Association, One News Now (by way of Right Wing Watch), comes the sad fact that while the anti-LGBTQ industry's propaganda scare tactics on the transgender community mimic its attacks on gay males, the difference is that they don't mind targeting transgender children.

When these so-called morality groups and personalities linked gay men and children, the connotation was always "protecting the innocent children." But with their smearing of the transgender community, they don't mind portraying transgender children themselves as predators. Or liars.

 A religious right group in West Virginia weighed in on the controversy at Liberty High School:

Allen Whitt, president of the Family Policy Council of West Virginia, says he is skeptical of the student's claim.  
"Because for those individuals," he says, "especially students who are suffering from the mental diagnosis of gender dysphoria, if someone is prone to lie to themselves about the very nature of their biology, then they will also be likely to lie about other salacious details that may help to further their activism."

So it's not enough for these folks to label our trans kids as predators. They have to call them liars, too?

Just who are the bullies here?  Who are the predators?

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