Across the country, some young children are coming home from school confused because, increasingly, teachers are revealing details about a previously secret LGBT lifestyle, experts say.
Sometimes it’s an announcement about a teacher’s same-sex spouse that bewilders children. Sometimes it’s the revelation that a beloved teacher’s gender identity doesn’t match the exterior that students observe.
And if parents, school boards, and school administrators are uncomfortable with those details being shared with children, they can—and should—take action, said Oregon state Rep. Ed Diehl, a Republican, who’s been an outspoken opponent of transgender teachers in classrooms.
“When a teacher walks through the school door, he [or] she is giving up some level of free expression, just like any other employee,” Diehl told The Epoch Times by email. “Their job is to teach the curriculum and be as impartial as possible. And, they have a responsibility to keep the students and parents comfortable.”
If teachers try to provoke a reaction by dressing sexually, making the classroom ideological, or bringing a personal agenda to work, they should expect pushback, that “can and should take the form of discipline, reassignment, or termination,” he said.
Sharing Sex Life Details With Children
The transgender movement has clashed with parents as women dressed as men and men dressed as women have entered schools as teachers.
Not every teacher identifying as transgender mentions in the classroom that they’re actually the opposite sex, according to a survey by NPR of 79 transgender teachers.
About 29 percent of transgender teachers keep their biological sex a secret, the survey found.
But some seem to make no attempt to hide the incongruity.
In Ontario, Canada, an Oakville Trafalgar High School teacher, who goes by a newly adopted name Kayla Lemieux, taught school during the previous school years as a man.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the school and to Lemieux for comment but did not receive a reply.
The news organization also took photos of a man outside Lemieux’s residence who appeared to be Lemieux but without an oversized chest.
The Halton District School Board also reportedly discovered that Lemieux didn’t always wear fake breasts when not at school. So board members ordered school administrators to put him on leave from teaching.
In Chattanooga, Tennessee, substitute teacher Ezra Fry identifies as nonbinary, which means having a gender identity that is not exclusively male or female.
Fry, a man, taught at a Hamilton County public school wearing a long dress and sporting long, pink hair, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.
A flurry of social media posts suggested Fry told students to refer to him as “Mrs.” But Fry, who asks to be called by the pronoun “they,” told the news outlet he asked students to call him “Ezra” to prevent confusion.
As of now, Fry has been reassigned to work in a different local school, Hamilton County Schools told the newspaper.
Shortly after publication of this article and six days after being contacted for comment, a Hamilton County Schools district spokesman declined to respond to specific questions from The Epoch Times about whether certain teacher attire and behavior would be allowed, or how parent concerns would be addressed.
“Hamilton County Schools requires employees to dress professionally,” said HCS communications officer Steve Doremus. “We do not comment on hypothetical questions.”
For many LGBT-identifying teachers, “coming out” by announcing their sexuality to students is a joyful experience.
In Frisco, Texas, a homosexual teacher at Spears Elementary School gushed in a Twitter post about telling a student he had a husband after the child asked about his family.
“Last week, I came out to some of my students, and it was the best feeling in the world,” the teacher said in a video posted online.
Parental Pushback
Diehl noted that parents had taken an increased interest in urging school boards to protect their children from the sexual behavior of teachers.“I believe that parents and school boards need to stay aware of what is happening inside the classroom,” Diehl said. “Parents should be regularly checking in with their kids.”
And parents should go up the chain of command if something goes wrong at school, advised Tiffany Justice, cofounder of nonpartisan parental rights group Moms for Liberty.
“If parents have any concerns about what’s happening in their child’s life, we recommend they bring it to their teacher,” Justice told The Epoch Times.
And if teachers don’t respond appropriately, the next step is to go to the principal, district superintendent, and the state board of education, in that order, Justice said.
Some teachers have infiltrated schools to promote their views on gender and sexuality, Justice said.
“Libs of TikTok has shown us that there are activist teachers using their classroom as a platform to enforce or promote their ideology,” Justice said. “The classroom isn’t the place for that.”
A teacher shouldn’t bring his or her personal life into school, Justice added.
“I could be ‘Mrs. Justice’ with a husband or ‘Mrs. Justice’ with a wife—to my students, my marital status is the same,” she said.
She has no problem with teachers having pictures of an unconventional family on a desk, she said. But if children ask about a teacher’s personal life, the teacher should quickly redirect them.
“The teacher should reply, ‘Families look different. Now let’s get back to the math lesson,’” she said.
