Maine governor stops bureaucrats from imposing transgender bathroom rules on schools and stopping the LGBT agenda
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| English: An official photograph from the Paul LePage for Governor campaign (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The governor
of Maine, Paul LePage, has stopped his administration from promulgating new
rules that would punish schools that do not allow transgender students to use
the restrooms, showers, and other accommodations of the opposite biological
sex.
The Maine
Human Rights Commission (MHRC) and the Department of Education had drawn up
binding regulations mandating the state's schools to allow transgender
students to use the facilities and play on the sports teams of their chosen
sex.
The January
13 memo signed by MHRC counsel Barbara Archer Hirsch requires that all school
officials, and fellow students, call the transgender student by his or her
preferred name and pronoun, as well.
State
officials said they were responding to a January 2014 ruling from the Maine
Supreme Judicial Court in favor of a transgender
teenage male who sued to use the girls' restroom. The high profile legal
case dragged through the court system for five years, until the court
ordered the Orono School District to pay $75,000 to
the male,
who legally changed his name to Nicole Maines. The teen, who was born Wyatt,
has an identical twin brother named Jonas.
At the heart
of the case was the Maine Human Rights Act, which the legistlature revised
in 2005 to include gender identity as a protected victim class, alongside race
and biological sex. State officials presented a new set of administrative rules
last October, although the statute in question had not been changed.
But the
Republican governor's spokeswoman, Adrienne Bennett, said the ruling requires
the legislature, not an unelected bureaucratic board, to bring the law into
accordance with the court ruling.
“The
judiciary rightly called upon the legislature - not the executive branch - to
address ambiguity in the statute and to make the plain language of the statute
clear," Bennett told the Bangor
Daily News. "It is my understanding that the governor does not
believe it is appropriate for the executive branch to update regulations until
the legislature updates the statute, and he communicated that message to the
Department of Education."
Gov. LePage,
she said, had "instructed the Department of Education to follow the law.”
The rules
have since been presented to school districts as an official guidance, but not
legally binding mandates.
"It
frankly irks me to see this happening,” said State Rep. Mattie Daughtry,
D-Brunswick, and a strong advocate of using the state to further the
transgender cause.
"He’s
basically holding hostage rules that not only protect our students but give
clarity to our schools," Rep. Daughtry told the Maine Public
Broadcasting Network. "The court case said clearly that students need to
have access to a variety of safe spaces."
She believes
school districts must not only have legal guidance, but the threat of legal
punishment, in order to advance the LGBT movement's political agenda.
“While the
student is at school, we believe the school has the obligation to use the
gender identity the student prefers,” so it is important for educators “to know
explicitly via an enforceable rule what actions we may take” if they fail to
comply.
Rep. Daughtry
wants the rules to take effect without Gov. LePage's approval, saying she is
meeting with officials to “demand that this goes forward.”
State
advocates had looked at the new rulemaking process, not only as an opportunity
to shape the behavior of young people on a cutting edge social issue, but a
chance to gain the attention of a national audience.
Amy Sneirson,
executive director of the Maine Human Rights Commission, said, “We knew, given
the Maines case and given the fact that there isn’t a lot of information out
there to look at, that people would be watching, and that what we put out for
proposed rulemaking would be looked at in Maine a lot and in other states, as
well."
That is
apparently canceled for now, thanks to the governor.
Gov. Paul
LePage, who ran as an
outspoken critic of Barack Obama in 2010 and won a
surprising re-election four years later, has a dramatically
personal story of becoming pro-life after his abusive father beat his
mother until she had a miscarriage.
He and North
Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory filed
"friend of the court" briefs with in a federal case
the Obama administration is bringing against a rural Virginia school district
that refused to allow a teen to use the facilities of the opposite biological
sex. That case is still pending.
