A publicly-funded poster of LGBT definitions hung in public schools across Maine defines heterosexuals as “breeders.”
The poster entitled “Terminology” lists definitions for asexual, biphobia, transgender, coming out, and several other terms including one called bi-curious.
The definition of gay is “a sexual orientation and/or identity of a person who is emotionally and sexually attracted to some members of the same sex.”
But when it comes to the attraction of the opposite sex, the word breeders is used along with this definition for breeders: “A term used to refer to heterosexual couples.”
The posters were created by Out Maine, a non-profit organization with a website that shows it has an extensive partnership with public schools in Maine.
The group prides itself on being educational and lists additional LGBT terminology on its website including “nibling”—“A word you may need this holiday season,” the organization advises.
According to the Dec. 14, post, “Nibling is a gender-neutral term for niece or nephew.” Maine Out adds “so it’s perfect vocabulary to share with the aunts and uncles. Plus, doesn’t it sound so dang cute?”
The organization did not respond to inquiries about the posters. It has since changed its definition of heterosexual to “a person romantically, emotionally or sexually attracted to people of a gender other than their own.”
The poster with its original definition came to light after a parent discovered it hung outside a 7th-grade classroom used to teach health at a middle school in Gorham, Maine. The school’s superintendent or local school board also did not respond to inquiries by The Epoch Times about the poster.
While Maine, a rural New England state where families still depend on livelihoods like logging, fishing, and blue-collar trades, has evolved into a Democratic state politically, there are plenty fighting what they call a disturbing and damaging agenda in its public schools.
Maine Republican lawmaker Katrina Smith has drafted a parent’s right-to-know bill to force “hidden agendas out of the dark.”
“Schools have gone so far away from teaching basic academics that I would encourage people to take their kids out of public schools at this point,” said Smith, who beat out Democrat Pam Swift for the District 62 seat in the Maine House of Representatives.
Smith pointed to recently reported low test scores in Maine public schools to support her position. According to figures released in October by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Maine kids are now scoring below the national average in reading and math.
Smith also wants to turn the tables with a recently passed law in Maine banning sexual-orientation conversion therapy for minors.
While the bill was promoted as a way to stop parents from putting their kids claiming to be gay in conversion therapy, Smith said it is not “gay specific” and that it outlaws any kind of sexual-preference conversion including straight kids to being transgender.
She believes the law applies to another similar controversy in Maine.
The same week the Out Maine poster promoted heterosexual parents as breeders, a mother in Damariscotta, Maine told the local school board that she discovered a social worker on staff in her local school was secretly working to convince her 13-year-old girl to transition to a boy.
Amber Lavigne told the board that she made the discovery after finding a chest binder hidden away in her daughter’s bedroom. A chest binder is now a popular device in the transgender world and is used to flatten female breasts.
According to published reports, Lavigne told the Great Salt Bay School Board she learned the chest binder was given to her teenage daughter by a recent graduate who is not fully licensed as a social worker.
The person could not be reached for comment about Lavigne’s allegations.
In response to inquiries about Lavigne’s allegations, school board chairman Samuel Belknap III, in a released statement dated Dec. 19 to The Epoch Times, called them “rumors and allegations.”
He also emphasized that the school follows Maine law “to protect the rights of all students and staff regardless of gender/gender identity, to have equal access to education, the support, and services available to our public school and the student’s right to privacy regardless of age.”
But Smith said if that were the case, then the school is breaking the law because Maine’s conversion-therapy ban clearly would prohibit schools and school workers from providing services that attempt to convert a minor’s sexual preference.
“It’s a two-way street,” said Smith, pointing to the words of its very advocates including Maine Gov. Janet Mills.
“Conversion therapy is a harmful, widely-discredited practice that has no place in Maine,” Mills said when she signed the ban into law in 2019, and Assistant House Majority Leader Ryan Fecteau referred to conversion therapy as “irresponsible and harmful” and said he was proud that Maine was “standing tall to affirm that no young person needs to ‘fix’ what is not broken.”
Lawrence Lockman, a former Maine state representative who founded Maine First Project, which opposes LGBT teachings in schools, told The Epoch Times that he has seen ample evidence that most Maine parents are appalled by what’s going on in school as “they learn about it.”
According to Lockman, 300 people turned out to a public meeting to oppose pro-LGBT teachings in Oxford County, and in the Waldoboro school district, 1,000 residents signed a petition against it.
Lockman’s group is now working on a statewide campaign to oust school members with what he too called radicalized agendas. Part of the campaign, he said, is to teach candidates how to cope with the well-organized backlash of anyone who opposes them.
“The cancel culture on school boards not just here in Maine, but across the country is so extreme, that we have to provide anti-activist training so they can be prepared for what’s to come if they dare to stand up to this nonsense.”