Teachers unions back bill allowing adult males to shower with young girls in Massachusetts
A bill that would allow adult
biological males to shower or change alongside young girls has earned the
endorsement of two prominent teachers unions in Massachusetts.
State legislators are considering
a bill that would specifically open all public restrooms, shower facilities,
and locker rooms to transgender people.
"An Act Relative to Gender
Identity and Non-Discrimination" (H.B. 1577) would
add "gender identity" to the state's protected classes able to access
all public facilities, such as private changing areas. Lawmakers specifically
exempted "lawfully sex-segregated facilities" when it passed a 2011
ordinance granting transgender people protected legal status, but included
school restroom facilities.
"The issue with the latest
bill is not that it opens up opposite sex restrooms in the schools, because
they're already open in the schools at this point in Massachusetts," Sean
Ryan, director of communications for the pro-family watchdog groupMassResistance, told
LifeSiteNews.
"This pending legislation
opens the floodgate to adults being able to victimize children in
public facilities," Ryan continued. "Erasing the distinction of sex
and allowing men to use opposite-sex facilities is a predator's dream."
The Massachusetts Teachers
Association - the state affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA) -
and the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts announced that they
support H.B. 1577. So have two professional organizations of public school
administrators: the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents and the
Massachusetts Association of School Committees.
"Groups that should be
advocating for children's safety have turned against parents and endorsed a
legal concept that by nature puts children at risk," Ryan told
LifeSiteNews.
The group has compiled a
list of
incidents in which men have physically threatened, attempted to rape, or
otherwise sexually revealed themselves to women and girls in private
facilities.
It's not merely public sector
unions fueling the bill with compulsory union dues. Titans of the private
sector have also backed the bill.
Business members of Freedom
Massachusetts, the key group lobbying for the law,include Facebook, Twitter, Google, the United
Way, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the online backup service
Carbonite, Planet Fitness, and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, along
with dozens of other firms.
"The transgender lobbying
organization 'Freedom Massachusetts' is backed by dozens of insurance
companies, law firms, big banks and San Francisco tech companies trying to
force their values on all of us," according to the Massachusetts Family Institute, which is also fighting
the bill.
But Ryan says the teachers unions'
support calls into question the underlying quality of public schools.
"Educational development
demands that children are taught facts, not a subjective
notion advanced by radical activists that has no basis in reality," Ryan
told LifeSiteNews. "Teachers endorsing such phony concepts should make one
wonder about the quality of education in general in the Bay State."
