Furious parents walk out of public school meeting in Indiana in protest over transgender bathroom policy
MANCHESTER, INDIANA: Parents from the Manchester public school district in Indiana walked out of a meeting focused on gender identity after they were not permitted to discuss a transgender bathroom policy they found controversial, reports state.
During the meeting, the parents attempted to voice their concern about a policy that permits biological boys who claim to identify as girls to use the girls' bathrooms in the Manchester Elementary School. One of the parents at the meeting, Nate Gephart, reportedly pulled his two daughters out of school to homeschool them because of the policy, according to WPTA21.
"As parents, naturally, we have a problem with this,” he told the outlet. “Biological boys need to use the biological boys’ bathroom and biological girls need to use the biological girls’ restroom.” Gephart added that he and other parents at the meeting wanted to express their concerns about the policy at a public meeting last week. However, they "were told that we could talk, but we just couldn’t talk about the bathroom issue".
The parent said that the public school meeting featured a presentation about gender identity, which caused some of the parents' annoyance and they left the meeting. Reports state that the parents later held their own meeting.
The school's transgender policy was defended by the board members who stated that under the federal law Title IX, transgender students should be allowed to use restrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
Jewel Flitcraft, a teacher who identified herself as an LGBTQ community member, said: "It got a little heated. There was a woman behind me that said what the presenter was teaching was propaganda."
"There are transgender people everywhere and they wouldn’t even know if they went to the bathroom with them, walked by them, had coffee with them, served them their Starbucks,” Flitcraft said. “It’s just making judgments like that when you can’t tell who is and who isn’t."