A reader with whom I have corresponded in the past sent this letter to me. He gave me permission to publish it as long as I withheld his name:

I am a long time reader of your blog who has commented once or twice.  I am a preacher at two small theologically conservative (you would use the term “evangelical”) churches, but my day job is as an 8th grade teacher.  We live in a very red town in a very red county in a very blue state.  We deal with this issue all the time, and it’s pretty frustrating.  The problem, as far as I’m concerned, is that these students are inundated with LGBTQ ideology through social media, and they are using social media that is for the most part unknown to adults.  Meanwhile, our middle schoolers are at an age where they are legitimately trying to figure out their relationships with the opposite sex and throwing this ideology in the mix is toxic.  Add to that the huge number of broken homes where they have no positive example of what a dad and mom look like.  I agree with the commenter you published who spoke about how there is bullying against LGBT students and that is behind what motivates many teachers, but they are misguided, fighting a battle that is last generations’s battle in that regard.

Recently we had our first ever training on gender identity at the school.  Previous to this, I was at a union meeting where the issue was brought up by one of our well meaning staff members, because of the problems we were having at the middle school over this issue.  Students, as junior high kids are wont to do, are using the issue for their own ends.  They bring the issue up as a joke, or they accuse people they don’t like of being homophobic and there is no answer to it.  We have one teacher that the students are absolutely convinced is homophobic, simply because he will not permit any discussion of sexuality in his class.  We have students that will then shout at him that he is homophobic, racist (for many of them, these two terms are equal), etc.  They change their mind on a day to day basis as to what their name or pronouns are.  I have students who will put different names on their paper from day to day as they change identities and several who, when they wrote their beginning of the year essay to introduce themselves, talked about their pronouns without prompting.  Because of all the chaos this issue is causing, she brought it up at the meeting and really only got responses in support of the kids.  She brought up, though, that kids who did not agree or had different beliefs were not being treated well by their peers, but her concerns were not addressed.  She is a Christian woman and afterward we had a private discussion in which she told me she had asked admin for some training on how to deal with this issue.  I told her that if they brought someone in, only the pro LGBT view would be presented and we would be told we must comply.  It had never occurred to her that this would be the case.

Well the training did happen.  They did not tell us ahead of time what the training was, but just that someone from the Regional Office of Education would be presenting in the auditorium.  The lady who presented was a Ph.D. counselor of some kind and immediately began by introducing herself and her pronouns, and then told us she had a child that identified as non-binary and changed pronouns on an almost daily basis.  She then walked us through a very mediocre presentation meant to focus on affirming student identity, and reducing the harm from bullying and child abuse.  She did mention the danger of outing students before they outed themselves.  More than once she tried to solicit discussion, but very little was forthcoming.  Most of her recommendations were copied and pasted from State Board of Education guidance.  Finally, she showed a video on diversity and when I saw women wearing the Muslim hijab on the video juxtaposed with transgender individuals (with no apparent awareness of contradiction), I decided to speak up.

I raised my hand and said:  “In light of the State board’s materials and this video, it has gotten me to thinking that this is really hard.  In a perfect world we would be able to discuss this issue open and honestly with our students, but middle schoolers only want to have those kind of discussions when they are in the mood.  In the meantime, what is presented here intersects with so many other aspects of life:  political beliefs, religious beliefs, and other things.  And we have a lot of students and a lot of staff who have deeply held religious beliefs that seem to contradict the values that are being presented here, so I just wish we knew how to handle that because it doesn’t seem like there is really a way to do it.”

The presenter looked at me and said, “You are absolutely right.  I wish I had an answer for you.”  Afterward, a couple of other teachers spoke up in a way that affirmed the LGBTQ agenda.  One was a lady in tears who thanked the presenter for her presentation because she had a pansexual child and people didn’t know what all they had gone through.  However, after the presentation, I had three different staff members come to me privately and thanked me for speaking out.  One of them was the admin who had invited the presenter.

The ideology of the presentation was horrible, but also bad was the fact that no practical solutions to the problems we face were presented.  Suing teachers and schools, as you have suggested, will have some effect.  But you can’t sue an idea.  The ideas are coming from our universities and our media, and they’ve been coming from them long enough that they’re coming from all kinds of other places now too.  If I could do one thing to work toward solving the problem, it would be to figure out away to turn of the fire hydrant of sexuality (including heterosexuality) inundating our children, and schools, from my experience, are only a small part of that.

I also, think Christian philanthropists need to work to build an alternate education system.  The Irish Americans and others used to have this with Catholic parochial system (and protestant German immigrants built the many Lutheran schools) but these schools are now, for the most part, clones of the public schools meant for people with enough money to get out of the local public school when it is subpar.  We need schools that the average person can afford that are taught by Christian teachers who are on a mission to win the hearts and minds of the next generation to Christ.  Easier said than done, but it must be done if our way of life is to survive.

Thank you again for the work you do in exposing and informing.