Missouri should ignore the Obama administration’s edict barring discrimination against transgender students even if that means sacrificing education funding, says Missouri Rep. Mike Moon.
In a letter addressed to education commissioner Margie Vandeven, Moon, who represents a rural district west of Springfield, says being transgender is “a behavior inconsistent with natural law” and calls on Missouri to reject federal rules protecting transgender students from discrimination at school.
“If we, as a society, are intent upon instructing and training our children on the difference between right and wrong, we must stand against decrees from the federal government or any other entity forcing us to do otherwise,” Moon says in the letter, obtained by SLM.
See also: Potty Police: Missouri Legislator Files Bill to Ban Gender-Neutral Bathrooms
Earlier this month, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education sent a directive to every public school district in America requiring schools to ensure equal treatment for students regardless of gender identity. The letter requires schools to allow students to use the bathroom that matches that student’s declared gender as defined by the student and/or student’s parents, even if that gender is different than the one labeled on their birth certificates.
U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill came out in support of the federal protection for transgender students, calling it “a solution looking for a problem.”
“To me it’s kind of common sense,” McCaskill told Missourinet. “I’m not aware of any problem that has occurred because of transgender people using the bathroom with the gender they are identifying and living as.”
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Moon’s letter, published Monday, takes the opposite approach by equating transgender people to the mentally ill by citing research from a controversial psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
“In the professional opinion of Dr. Paul R. McHugh, Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry and former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, transgenderism is a ‘mental disorder’ that merits treatment, sex change is ‘biologically impossible,’ and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder,” Moon says in the letter.
McHugh’s research has been roundly criticized and discredited by the LGBT community. One of the groups McHugh publishes under, the American College of Pediatricians, is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The federal edict requiring equal treatment for transgender students specifies that “there is no medical diagnosis or treatment requirement that students must meet as a prerequisite to being treated consistent with their gender identity.”
Here’s Moon’s letter:
Contact Lindsay Toler by email at LToler@stlmag.com or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
