(Headline USA) Democrats are responding to Republicans’ efforts to protect children from gender dysphoria.
“The T stands for transgender,” a teacher explains in a video on a Maine Department of Education website launched during the coronavirus pandemic.
“A transgender person is someone who the doctors made a mistake about when they were born,” the teacher says in the lesson plan targeted at kindergartners. “But some people, when they get a little bit older, realize what the doctors said was not right.”
That teacher has vehemently defended the ad targeting small children about gender dysphoria. It aired on both TV and radio ads.
Republicans later produced an ad accusing Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who is running for reelection against GOP former Gov. Paul LePage, of using state money to create “radical school lessons.” Within hours, the lesson disappeared from the website, and Mills’ spokesperson said the governor was on board with its removal.
We previously covered a similar move in Florida to protect children from faulty science and lesson plans regarding gender dysphoria and transgender procedures. So far, Florida Health has found that studies supporting gender reassignment care are based on experimental and biased results.
But as Democrats largely avoid direct confrontations, some LGBTQ people say they feel abandoned.
“Our lives and our existence are being used as political fodder to ramp up the GOP base, and they’re not coming to our defense,” said Deja Alvarez, a transgender woman who finished third in the Democratic primary in a heavily LGBTQ state legislative district in Philadelphia. “They’re not rallying the troops and saying, ‘Hey, we can’t stand for this.’”
Activists say more Democrats should embrace LGBT issues this election year. They don’t believe that it’s enough to celebrate Pride month. Instead, they believe candidates should place LGBTQ issues more at the center of the campaign while warning of the specific consequences of Republican victories.
Adapted by reporting from the Associated Press
