SAN FRANCISCO—Emily MacDonald, a trustee of Woodland Joint Unified School District (WJUSD), escaped censure during a June 28 board meeting. The Yolo Democratic Party and Yolo Pride Democratic Club called for her censure following her comments on transgender identification made earlier in the month.
Three dozen public comments poured in at the board meeting, mostly in response to Ms. MacDonald’s controversial remarks made during the June 15 meeting when a proclamation of Pride Month was passed. During that meeting Ms. MacDonald warned about the irreversible transgender procedures and cautioned about exposing children to a “social contagion.”
Rogelio Villagrana, the president of the board, clarified twice that censure was not on the table.
“If you follow the logic of freedom of speech, you’ve got to argue that a board member has a right to speak, and then the board has a right to also speak against whatever was said,” Mr. Villagrana said after hearing all the comments.
“And it’s a conversation, I guess, if you want to say that. So you can argue that only one person should be able to say, and then the other group should not be able to say something against what was said, it contradicts right?” Mr. Villagrana added.
Ms. MacDonald didn’t attend the meeting on June 28, citing business in an email to WJUSD Superintendent Elodia Ortega-Lampkin.
Ms. MacDonald’s remarks at the June 15 meeting dropped a bombshell in the community.
Reading a prepared document, Ms. MacDonald started the remarks by explaining the divergence between a lesbian/gay lifestyle, to becoming transgender, which requires irreversible surgery and a lifetime of testosterone or estrogen.
Ms. MacDonald continued, “Transgender identification has more than doubled in five years, particularly among teenage girls, who were one of the least likely demographics to identify as transgender until the last few years, when they make the largest demographic to do so by a large margin.”
“The increase has been so massive that it defies any reasonable explanation beyond at least to some degree, social contagion,” said Ms. MacDonald.
“We must act with great caution in order to protect the increasing numbers of children who are experiencing transgender procedures as a result of social contagion, without sacrificing the tiny number of individuals who would identify as transgender even without social contagion, education campaigns, and the social cache attached to a transgender identity in the present,” she suggested.
The comments upset some members of the LGBT community.
The Yolo Democratic Party and Yolo Pride Democratic Club reacted quickly by calling for the censure of Ms. MacDonald. In an email to the WJUSD Board of Trustees, the two groups labeled the remarks as “hate speech,” and demanded mandatory LGBT training for Ms. MacDonald. They also asked that she not be authorized by her peers to speak at council meetings on the corresponding subject until the training is completed.
Ms. MacDonald told The Epoch Times she has received eight letters calling her a bigot.
“I just wanted to give a voice to the people who are concerned about the transgender ideology that’s being taught in school,” Ms. MacDonald said.
“I felt like somebody [needed] to say that; that is not something that we should be celebrating wholesale all the time.”
She also told The Epoch Times that her friend’s daughter had transgender top surgery, with her healthy breasts removed, and is no longer able to bear children. “I really feel like the adults in the room did her wrong.”
“They didn’t tell her: ‘Hold on just a second, wait until you’re not a teenager anymore. Let’s think about this for a minute, don’t go chopping, chopping bits of yourself off.’ or ‘Maybe you’re not feeling so good right now, but this too shall pass,’” Ms. MacDonald continued.
“That word of caution should be in order, especially when you’re talking about children and protecting children. And I think everybody, even the people who are very upset … everybody’s there to do their best by the kids.”
“And we just have a different opinion about how that should happen,” said Ms. MacDonald.
At the June 28 meeting, Barbara, who claimed to be a lesbian and Democratic Party member, said in a voice comment she didn’t agree with the content of the letter from the Democratic Party regarding Ms. MacDonald.
“I have a niece who has undergone so called ‘gender reassignment’ medicalization, and it has not benefited her mental health at all, in fact it has deteriorated.” Barbara said, “I think it’s an abomination that MacDonald is being censured. And I hope you’ll reverse the decision about that.”
However, there were several emotional comments claiming Ms. MacDonald’s remarks hurt them and their children. Some demanded that Ms. MacDonald should resign, or else they would make an effort to recall her from her position.
Ms. MacDonald told The Epoch Times she’s not going to resign. “I’m not going to take a re-education class—I refuse!”
“A community member could request that I be censured, but I’m not sure how they could censure me for stating my opinion, I mean, that’s a pretty basic privilege that we have here in this country, and it’s a responsibility that you have as a board member,” Ms. MacDonald said.
The support of LGBT by school districts is not just a political stance; community members found clinicians of CommuniCare, a health care company offering so-called “affirming services” for LGBT communities, stationed in campuses of public schools.
The website of CommuniCare Health Centers shows it offers “resources for transgender and gender-expansive people.”
Community member Beth Bourne told The Epoch Times, “People don’t realize that students can speak confidentially for free to a clinician who works for CommuniCare.”
“They sign up kids who might be transgender with a peer mentor; they call it weekly groups where kids can attend without parents’ knowledge,” Ms. Bourne said.
“At the schools in California, they can socially transition a child.”
“Children have been told, for whatever reason, if you’re uncomfortable with your body, which most kids are when they go through puberty, that it could be [you were] born in the wrong body, and that we’re here to help you.”
“They’re triangulating the student and their parents with the school, and that triangulation is really dangerous,” Ms. Bourne said.
Once the child does not trust their parents, Bourne continued, “then the communication is going between the counselor and the student or Gender Sexuality Alliance Club on campuses.”
Woodland resident Martha Voss told The Epoch Times, “I think it’s very wrong. And especially the part about not letting parents know.”
“It wasn’t that long ago we had to sign consent forms [for kids to] take aspirin, for sports teams,” Ms. Voss said.
“It’s just ridiculous that they’re trying to do this without parental consent,” she added.
