6-year-old ‘transgender’ boy must be allowed to use girls’ bathroom: Colorado officials
DENVER, CO, June 25, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Colorado governing body has ruled that a 6-year old boy, who his parents claims is ‘transgender,’ was discriminated against when officials at his elementary school prohibited him from using the girls’ restroom.
In 2011, when Coy Mathis started elementary school, his family and school agreed to treat Coy as a girl and let him use the girls’ restroom. However, the school decided to ban Coy from his continued use of the girls’ facilities this past winter break.
The reason for the school’s change has not been made public.
Parents of the six-year-old boy filed a complaint with The Colorado Division of Civil Rights in February. On June 18, the board’s director, Steven Chavez, issued his ruling, in which he said the school’s actions were reminiscent of the pre-civil rights movement segregation attitude of “separate but equal,” and thus Mathis’s rights had been violated.
Coy Mathis before his parents began dressing him as a girl.
The ruling stated that the school was “hostile, discriminatory and unsafe” due to its handling of the restroom situation.
School administrators have the right to appeal the decision through the courts.
The Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund called the ruling “a high water mark for transgender students.”
However, Matt Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel said that this case, and others like it, makes a “mockery of civil rights.” His group has been involved in similar litigation involving a department store employee who ordered a man out of a women’s changing room.
Staver added, "It is insane to reorder society to accommodate a person's disordered thought.”
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“It is also irresponsible for the parents to further confuse this child by referring to him as a her. Biologically this child is male and no amount of subjective thought will change that reality.”
Mathis was born a triplet with two sisters, and has another brother and a younger sister. The five are children of Kathryn and Jeremy Mathis, an ex-Marine.
Mathis’s parents say they trace back their son’s female self-identification to an incident in which he, as a 5-month-old, grabbed his sister’s pink blanket.
Then, he later showed a disinterest in traditionally male toys and clothing and instead gravitated toward the toys and clothes of his sisters.
By 18 months, Mathis’s parents say he was identifying as a girl, long before he began elementary school.
Mathis’s parents say that he seems to be more outgoing since they switched gears and started treating him as a girl.
“Young children pick up on messages from their parents even during infancy,” explained Dr. Michelle A. Cretella, Vice President of the American College of Pediatricians.
“A child who expresses that he desires to be or actually is the opposite sex reflects 'confusion' of a very young child reacting to a parent or parents conveying confused messages.”
A mental health professional had diagnosed Mathis with ‘gender identity disorder,’ however the American Psychiatric Association has since removed the diagnosis from its list of disorders.
One Toronto-based psychologist, Dr. Kenneth Zucker, says that in the vast majority of cases therapy relieves psychopathology within the family and child, reduces peer social ostracism and results in the acceptance of the child's birth sex.
Dr. Zucker is the Psychologist-in-Chief at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, where he heads the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic in Toronto, Canada. He has treated over 500 children with what was formerly known as Gender Identity Disorder (GID).
Dr. Cretella told LifeSiteNews.com, “The decision in the Coy Mathis case has sacrificed science and children's health upon the altar of political correctness.”
“One's biological sex is not a disorder; allowing a child to disavow his biological sex is,” he said, adding, “No one is born transgender – this has been established by twin studies.”
Agreeing with Cretella, The American Psychological Association addresses the issue of gender identity, saying: "Many experts believe that biological factors such as genetic influences and prenatal hormone levels, early experiences, and experiences later in adolescence or adulthood may all contribute to the development of transgender identities."
Staver also pointed out that Johns Hopkins University famously abandoned its so-called sex reassignment surgery when it discovered no beneficial outcome and found that some people ended up reverting their identity to the original birth gender.
“The founder of the program who abandoned the clinic said it right when he observed that you don't give liposuction to an anorexic.”
Staver added, “You don't pretend an anoxic is obese, nor should you present a boy as a girl.”
“The Civil Rights Commission issued an absurd opinion that must be reversed.”
