Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri have a middle school daughter who suffered from depression and “gender” confusion. They took her to a counselor. They alerted the school of the problem.
But the school district in Ludlow, Massachusetts, had enacted a so-called gender identity policy that excludes telling parents about “socially transitioning” children. The school began to secretly refer to the girl by a male name and pronouns. From Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the parents’ legal counsel:
The middle-school principal intimated that the school knew what was best for Foote and Silvestri’s children. The district superintendent approved of the staff’s actions as consistent with district policy. And when the parents again pleaded with middle-school staff to stop, they were ignored.
According to AFL, the school district superintendent said in a subsequent public hearing that parental rights is a “thinly veiled … camouflage” for “intolerance, prejudice and bigotry against LGBTQ individuals.” The superintendent added that parents’ concerns were “prejudice and bigotry.”
AFL filed an amicus brief in a related case in an appeals court. The court ruled against parents’ rights. AFL asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their clients’ case.
“If a school cannot dispense condoms without notifying parents, then surely it cannot treat their child as a gender identity that differs from the child’s sex without parental notification and consent,” AFL wrote in the brief (PDF). “The school is sending students down a path that could lead to lifelong infertility, mental illness, and even suicide, yet insisting that parents have no right to know.”
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