From the Salinas Valley

This is where the stapling on of the T to the LGB has been such a destructive mistake:

Two California teachers were secretly recorded speaking about LGBTQ student outreach. Now they’re fighting for their jobs

Hm, I thought when I saw the headline. Are we talking about LGB, or T?

This fall, a pair of middle school teachers from the Salinas Valley traveled to Palm Springs for the California Teachers Association’s annual LGBTQ+ Issues Conference. There, on a Saturday afternoon, Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki spoke to a few dozen people about a subject they knew well: the difficulty of running a GSA, or gay-straight alliance, in a socially conservative community.

So far so good. GSAs are a good thing, and gay kids need support.

Speaking about recruiting students, Baraki said, “When we were doing our virtual learning — we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing schoolwork. One of them was Googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus.”

Uh.

Maybe they meant “recruitment” that little bit too literally.

Shortly after the October conference, a surreptitious recording of the presentation was handed to a conservative writer known for asserting that transgender adolescents are part of a dangerous “craze.”

Guess who that “conservative writer” turns out to be. Abigail Shrier, of course. Danielle Echeverria at the Chronicle seems very confident that teenagers thinking they’re trans isn’t part of a dangerous craze. So there’s no danger at all in puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, amputation of healthy breasts or penises?

She published a story Nov. 18 headlined “How Activist Teachers Recruit Kids,” criticizing Caldeira and Baraki for actions they had seen as proper: keeping club members’ identities confidential from parents and finding a couple of potential members by viewing their online activity in class.

The trouble here is that the two are different. Suppose some teenagers are unsure about whether they’re gay or straight, and they lean toward gay and join a gay-straight alliance and later change their minds. What happens? They change their minds, that’s all. They haven’t had their breasts cut off, they haven’t disrupted their puberty with blockers, they haven’t set themselves up for health problems in adulthood. In short it’s not a problem. It may be an emotional upheaval but then adolescence is that.

Needless to say the same is not true if teenagers think they might be trans and join some school LGBTQ+ club or group or union, and proceed to the medicalization stage. Then change their minds later.

But the Chronicle wants us to think it’s all the same basic thing, L and G and T, and it’s only evil people who worry about teenagers being nudged (or shoved) into thinking they’re trans.

So the club was suspended and the teachers were placed on leave.

The controversy has roiled the small district south of Salinas and east of Monterey, alarming advocates for LGBTQ youth and marking one of a number of recent incidents in which influential conservative voices have forced the hands of local officials.

But this isn’t about left v right in any clear-cut bright lines way. Supporting lesbian and gay teenagers is one thing, and rushing teenagers into thinking they’re trans is another. That kid could have Googled Trans Day of Visibility out of curiosity or any number of other non-transitioning reasons.

On the other hand I sure as hell don’t want schools closing down gay-straight alliances or any other efforts to support and protect lesbian and gay students. It’s complicated.

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