WFFJ-TV

By:  David Deschesne
Editor/Publisher,
Fort Fairfield Journal
November 1, 2023

Following the report on Fort Fairfield School System’s Transgender Policy in the October 18, 2023 edition of Fort Fairfield Journal. I received two Emails criticizing my treatment of the subject. The first unedited E-mail Letter to the Editor and my response are as follows:

Dear Editor:

I am appalled by you and this article [Fort Fairfield Journal, October 18, 2023, page 1] that you call new or YOUR skewed view. Your information needs to be more accurate. There is no “religious cult of transgender activists.” I am baffled at where you find these pieces of information you write about. Let us look at the definition of a cult: “a small religious group that is not part of a larger and more accepted religion and that has beliefs regarded by many people as extreme or dangerous.” What is dangerous is what you write and what you believe to be true. That is what is harmful.

Students can use the bathroom they identify as under the Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Act is a state law that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. Title IX is a federal law that makes sex discrimination illegal in most schools. Most courts that have looked at the issue have said that this includes discrimination against someone because they are transgender or don’t meet gender-related stereotypes or expectations. Several other federal and state laws also protect transgender students from discrimination at school:

Title IX is a federal law banning sex discrimination in schools. The courts have clarified that that includes discrimination against someone because they are transgender or don’t meet gender stereotypes or expectations. Title IX applies to all schools (including K–12 schools and colleges) that get federal money, including nearly all public schools.

In many places, state laws and school district policies also protect transgender students from discrimination. You can find information about some of these laws or policies on NCTE’s School Action Center. Hundreds of school districts nationwide also have policies that ban discrimination based on gender identity, expression, or sexual orientation.

The Equal Access Act requires all student organizations, such as a Gay-Straight Alliance or Pride Alliance, to be treated equally. Schools cannot ban certain groups or single them out for worse treatment.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects personal information about students in school records, and in most cases, it makes it illegal for schools to share that information with others without permission from a student or (if the student is a minor) their parents. This includes information about their transgender status or medical history.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects students’ freedom of speech and expression. That includes the right to dress according to your gender identity, talk about being transgender openly, and express your gender in other ways.

To ease your mind, this was not a cover of the COVID-19 distraction. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education, under President Barack Obama, issued "guidance" to state and private educational institutions, stating that these institutions had to allow transgender students to use toilets according to their gender identity.

You state, “The transgender policy seeks to accommodate young, impressionable students who suffer from gender dysphoria by reinforcing the distorted belief in their minds that they are a gender other than the objectively verifiable gender they were born with.” Do you now have a degree in psychology or science? Do you even understand the word “gender dysphoria”? Let’s look at that definition. Gender dysphoria is included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Gender dysphoria might start in childhood and continue into adolescence and adulthood. The term focuses on discomfort as the problem rather than identity. It is a distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity.

You also state, “Transgender is an opinion bordering on a religious belief, often nurtured by online social media influencers or misguided parents.” Where is your fact-finding in this statement? I would love to see the research you found regarding this flaky statement. I know many parents who would never want their child to feel alienated by society, feel unsafe due to society's beliefs, or have feelings of depression or anxiety that often follow many transgender beings. Transgender youth have significantly increased rates of depression, suicidality, and victimization compared to their cisgender peers. A cisgender person identifies as the gender into which they were born. Why would anyone want to feel this way? Why would anyone want to be the target of society? Think these questions through.

Let me share some statistics. Overall, 1.8% of youth identify as transgender. Research shows that cisgender individuals are more apt to commit crimes against others than transgender individuals. This brings me to the question of the hour: What do you do when you go to the bathroom? Do you go in to stare and stalk those in the bathroom? Do you attempt the cock stare while standing at the urinal to pee? When you get changed up for the gym, do you look around at what you can size up to? Well, I will share with you that those who identify as transgender will go all day to school without using the bathroom. Those who identify as transgender go into the bathroom, do their business, and get out. Everyone poops and pees, so it’s vital to understand that you do something different than those who identify as transgender. Those who identify as transgender and attend PE classes with their peers will find an alternative location to change, not change, or wear their PE clothes under whatever they wear for the day at school. Those who identify as transgender remain under the radar so as not to be noticed for fear that they could be harmed.

With these convoluted truths, people like you spew hatred and violence at anyone different from you. The untruths and the sick way you portrayed this article continue to put vulnerable people at risk for violence and assaults. Who’s judgment is it not to allow human beings to be their best selves? Who’s judgment is it not to let human beings be happy? Who’s judgment is it not to allow a human being to be who they choose? None of what you even wrote impacts you personally. It’s all based on your “religious” beliefs, your “political” beliefs, and your “small-minded” beliefs.

Being born and raised in Fort Fairfield, a graduate of FFHS, and having a connection with this town, I am embarrassed by what you represent as a human being or a writer for the community in which I was raised. My dad, a well-known leader in that community, would be ashamed of what your words represent: hate, pure hate with no regard for others. May you one day see that your words and beliefs are evil and hurtful. All of that impacts so many individuals in today's society. In a world where you can be anything, be kind.

Distinctly unimpressed,
Suzanne Saucier Whitmore

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Suzanne:

I, too, grew up in Fort Fairfield and attended Fort Fairfield schools (class of 1986). I am appalled at the level of brainwashing and social disintegration the woke left has instituted against our youth for nefarious purposes via legislative edict under the guise of "human rights." You wax eloquently about the rights of those who are confused about their gender. I don’t have any problem with someone being who they want to be as long as it doesn’t impose on others. We do, however, need to acknowledge the rights of those who are not confused about their gender. Do they have rights? Or are those rights only for the chronically confused?

I was advised by MSAD #20 Superintendent, Tanya Staples that the policy was adopted by the school board in 2021. If you think that is an incorrect date, take it up with the superintendent’s office.

Religion is not limited to spiritual beliefs. The origins of the word come from the verb, religāre which means "to bind". We see the minds of people bound daily in the realm of sports, academia, medicine, science and gender ideologies where they are neatly stuffed into boxes from which they dare not stray lest they suffer the wrath of others who demand they adhere to the groupthink. I did not make the "religious cult" connection to trans ideologies out of thin air. If you had bothered to read the whole article you are complaining about you would have seen I quoted Blaire White, an actual transgender female who found that to be the case after she transitioned from a male to female presentation. In the article, I quoted White's testimony describing her experience with the trans cult community and why she was compelled to leave it. If you have an open mind and care to know her position and thoughts on the matter, you may view her monologue here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lecn2BQbttI Or, you may feel free to contain your mind in a bubble and not listen to any other opinions than those you hold dear.

I will now address all of your high and mighty talk about transgenderism being protected by "the law." When our country was founded, it was "the law" that white people could own black people as if they were livestock. It was "the law" that black people could be forced to labor at penalty of torture or death for no pay. It was "the law" that if a black slave escaped from his prison/plantation he had to be returned to his "master." This "law" was even codified in the U.S. Constitution at Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 where it states, "No person held to service or labour in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due."

As for court rulings folding gender-confused individuals into the sexual discrimination protection, I remind you that even courts can make bad decisions for political reasons. For example, in Nix v. Hedden (149 U.S. 305) the U.S. Supreme Court arbitrarily ruled tomatoes are a vegetable when in fact they are a fruit. Vegetables grow in the ground like carrots and potatoes. Fruits grow on trees and small plants like apples, lemons and tomatoes. The Supreme Court reasoned that since tomatoes are eaten during the course of the main meal like potatoes and carrots they are a "vegetable" because fruits are normally eaten for desert. The case arose from a taxation suit where under the 1883 tariff act, fruits could be imported duty free, thus threatening the profits of domestic tomato growers. As in most cases which will benefit the federal government financially, the Supreme Court did its duty, ignored facts and made yet another capricious and arbitrary ruling.

My point here is just because it's "the law", or the courts "approve" doesn't make something right or virtuous. Courts upheld the slave laws for decades even though they were wrong and destructive to fellow human beings. We should be wary of labeling anything right or just simply because the ruling political elite have deemed it to be so.

Transgenderism is at its root a masquerade; a delusion. In this edition of Fort Fairfield Journal, I'm pointing to the exact phrasing in the MSAD #20 Transgender Policy that also makes that claim (see story, page 1 of this edition of FFJ). The MSAD #20 Transgender Policy defines "Gender Expression" as what clothes, hairstyle, mannerisms or voice the person uses in order to determine their gender. It speaks nothing about what the true biological gender of a person actually is.

If during Halloween, a child wears a Scooby Doo mask, that is a cute and innocent masquerade. If that child then barks like a dog, he might get an extra candy bar. If that child then continues to wear that dog mask weeks and months after Halloween, only uses barking to communicate with his family, teachers and peers, then commences to peeing on car tires it is no longer cute; it is a problem that needs to be corrected. Wearing a Scooby Doo mask and peeing on car tires does not make a person into a dog regardless of how much they believe it. Under your paradigm, correcting that errant behavior would be “evil and hurtful.” But, I disagree. Parents and teachers should not be reinforcing errant behavior that will ultimately cause society to break down.

Perhaps societal breakdown is the goal.

We're not just talking about transgenders "peeing and pooping" in the bathrooms. Fort Fairfield school's policy also allows for biological males to get undressed in the female locker rooms. Over the years, many a young, teenage boy has certainly fantasized about that. This official school policy, backed up by "the law", now provides an opening for them to do just that. What's next? Teenage boys and girls who “identify” as husband and wife sleeping together in hotel rooms during overnight school field trips? Or how about live, in-person coitus demonstrations between students “identifying” as husband and wife on how to "make babies" during sex-ed classes? Where is the limit to the Left’s depravity?

You end your missive with a plea for me to one day see that my words and beliefs are "evil and hurtful." I'm not sure what is so evil or hurtful about reporting on a school policy to let parents know what's going on in their school and explaining it in a way they can understand.

Furthermore, how about the “evil and hurtful” effects on young, impressionable children who look to responsible adults for guidance only to be continually misled and brainwashed about their gender?

As for me changing my mind and believing the transgender lie, don't count on it. That would be like admitting 2 + 2 equals 5, or 3, or any other number the masses use government to compel us to believe. I've already literally read that book and watched its subsequent movie; things don't turn out so well for the citizenry in that scenario.

David Deschesne
Editor/Publisher,
Fort Fairfield Journal

To read the second letter to the editor on this subject, click here.