- Protest against Pacific Justice Institute in front of the campus of Trinity Law School in Santa Ana, Calif.
It’s not enough to know what one’s against. One often actually needs to know what one is for, and then be willing to work – and sometimes sacrifice – to facilitate those things to become reality.
I publish with the blog The Transadvocate, and for the morning of Nov. 19 Cristan Williams, the editor-in-chief of the blog, and I organized and staged an action in front of the campus of Trinity Law School in Santa Ana, Calif. That law school houses an office where Michael Peffer, a senior counsel with the Pacific Justice Institute, works. Cristan, I and eight other activists from Southern California held an action at their Santa Ana satellite office at Trinity Law School.
The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) issued a press release describing a “nightmare scenario” occurring at Colorado’s Florence High School where “a teenage boy was entering girls’ bathrooms and, according to some students, even making sexually harassing comments toward girls he was encountering.” The “teenage boy” at the heart of the story is a 16-year-old trans girl. When the story was fact checked by The Transadvocate‘s Cristan Williams, the “nightmare scenario” that they claimed occurred didn’t actually occur.
“Nothing has actually been verified with us,” stated Rhonda Vendetti, the Fremont RE-2 School District superintendent, in an interview with Williams. “This is one parent basically bringing their viewpoint about this situation to the media because they weren’t getting the responses that they hoped they would get from the district, from parents of students at the high school or from the board and myself. So I think it’s just an attempt to elevate the situation to a point where maybe some more attention can be drawn to that in the hope of having a different outcome.”
With PJI’s statements of fact being debunked, they changed their talking points. “Forcing boys and girls to share a bathroom doesn’t decrease bullying, it is bullying,” stated PJI board member Tim Lefever.
PJI has taken to misgendering the trans teen by referring to her as a male, using male pronouns. Brad Dacus, the executive director of PJI, has referred to the teen as “confused,” and he and his organization believes reparative therapy is appropriate treatment for trans people.
Matt McReynolds, a staff attorney for the Pacific Justice Institute, has modified the Lefever’s talking point: “As far as harassment is concerned, the presence of a biologically teenage boy in a girl’s bathroom or locker room is inherently harassing.”
The adults at PJI have made a point of harassing this minor by pushing the story to the religious right and mainstream media, making the trans teen the focus of international media coverage for alleged harassing behavior that her school district has stated didn’t happen. The teen has been harassed and bullied by the Pacific Justice Institute that took her to the brink of suicide; she needed immediate, professional intervention.
So, Cristan and I, representing The Transadvocate as an activist group, held an action to highlight the bullying by PJI. Ten of us marched on the street outside of the building that houses the Southern California office of PJI. In our group we had two military veterans, an attorney, a minister and two trans youth. We approached a security officer in front of the school and asked if a representative of PJI would come out and tell the two trans youth that they were bullies and were “inherently harassing” other students at their high school when they used the public restrooms there. Not surprisingly, no representative of PJI came out of Trinity Law School to tell these two youth to their faces that they were bullies and harassers.
At The Transadvocate, we’re against demonizing trans youth who just want to use bathrooms to do their business, fix their hair and make-up in the mirror and perhaps even engage in gossiping. And what we’re for is calling out anti-transgender bullies; what we’re for is the recognition of the humanity of trans youth.
And probably most importantly of all, we’re for supporting this trans teen from Florence, Colo., as she’s bullied by adults who are associated with the Pacific Justice Institute.
