If a middle school in Northern California had on its events schedule a cross-dressing, gender-shift day encouraging children to attire themselves as a member of the opposite sex, wouldn't you expect liberal media members across the fruited plain to be all over the story?
Yet, according to Google News and LexisNexis searches, not one press outlet, including those near the situation in California, thought this matter was at all newsworthy.
Fortunately, as announced Tuesday by the Pacific Justice Institute, the event was canceled (emphasis added, h/t NB reader Bill):
Following parent complaints, a middle school on the outskirts of the Bay Area has reversed course and canceled a cross-dressing or "gender switch" day.
The mother of a seventh-grade student at Adams Middle School was alarmed when she heard that on the last day of the school's "Spirit Week," students were being encouraged to dress like the opposite sex. Perhaps even more disturbingly, parents were given virtually no advance notice from the school and found out about the event after flyers were posted throughout the campus. When this parent met with the principal to express her concerns, she was told the event would continue this Friday as planned, and she could keep her son home from school if he did not want to participate. The parent contacted Pacific Justice Institute on Monday, which advised her on enlisting other parents' support and communicating with the school. PJI also began laying the groundwork to hold the school accountable to the public if it did not reverse course by Tuesday.In a 180-degree turnaround, the flyers posted about the gender switch day had disappeared by Tuesday morning, and the school confirmed that the event had been canceled. The school is now encouraging students to wear school colors on Friday. Parents expressed relief that their middle-school students would not be pressured to cross-dress or be subjected to a sexually-charged school environment.
The reader should be advised that middle school in California means sixth through eighth grades. My daughter entered such a school at the age of eleven.
Would you like your eleven-year-old to be encouraged to cross-dress?
Yet, what makes this story even more fascinating - and the media's boycott more confusing - is this school isn't anywhere near San Francisco, Berkeley, or Marin.
Brentwood until recently was a farm/bedroom community fifty miles inland from San Francisco which prior to the recent growth explosion in this area had a population of only 9,000 in 1990.
As real estate in communities more proximate to the Bay Area employment centers such as San Francisco, Oakland, and Silicon Valley became too expensive, Brentwood experienced a population boom bringing its residents total to 40,000 in 2005.
Unlike many towns in Northern California, two-thirds of the adult population is actually married, and the incidence of divorce in the community shockingly low. The residents are also mostly white collar, with an average household income of almost $100,000 per year.
With that in mind, Brentwood is by no means the epitome of a liberal, Northern California town. Quite the contrary. As such, the lack of attention given to this fascinating story - even by Bay Area media - is quite confusing.
After all, depending on your political leaning, it would be easy to make this town a poster-child either for rampant homophobia in the suburbs, or growing tolerance for sexual-preference discussions in our public schools.
Think about it.
