As we told you in yesterday’s email about Josh Alexander, which can be read BY CLICKING HERE, Josh Alexander was “banned” in January, 2023 from his high school by his principal, Derek Lennox, via a “Notice of Exclusion” because of politics.

His treatment has exposed the fact that school staff are now guided by gender ideology in their day-to-day decisions.

Josh is guilty of truth telling the biological facts of life of male and female, thus challenging gender ideology (ironically, Josh’s views are those of not only established scientific fact but also are in accord with the teaching of the Catholic church, and Josh is not even a Catholic).

Moreover, Josh embarrassed the principal and school board through organizing a protest in November of 2022, a protest which revealed the reality of the takeover by gender ideology, that is, that the Principal was permitting biological males to use the girls’ washroom.

While Josh has been "punished" by the principal for his actions, we noted an eerie official silence from those ultimately responsible for what goes on in the schools of the Renfrew Catholic board: the top bureaucrat, Director of Education, Mark Searson. the elected school trustees for this school board, and in particular the Chair of the Board, Trustee Bob Shraeder of Pembroke.

Yesterday, just after we sent out an email informing tens of thousands of Ontarians about Josh’s plight, the board released a public letter similar to the one they sent to individual stakeholders in December. Good for you! Your public pressure is working! Unfortunately the letter did not announce that the board was taking any action, so we have to keep up our request that they do something to assist Josh. 

TODAY

On the contrary there has been no mention of Josh’s predicament in the official minutes of the board and no attempt to remedy the situation through any change to official board policy.

This silence is shameful.

PAFE has had a number of off-the-record discussions with more than one of the elected trustees, and we pieced together the following:

• No one from the board has mentioned a written bathroom policy. The Chair of the board referred to board “practice” in his letter to a stakeholder inquiry of Dec. 7, 2022, reproduced above and a similar public letter released on February 14.
  
  
• The board is allowing a “practice” wherein scientific teachings about sexuality—that washrooms should be closed to the opposite sex—are being trumped by Human Rights concerns.

The board’s problem is that it has bought into the terminology of gender ideology by allowing the gender ideologists’ term “gender” to be substituted for “sex” in its “practice.”

Philosophical background

If instead one works from the premise that there are two sexes, and that gender is a construct that cannot be abstracted from one’s sexuality, then a person’s sexual identity must reference their sex.

Briefly, sex is a combination of the person’s genotype (such as XX, XY, XXY, etc.) plus the hormonal expression of that genotype.

In situations in which chromosomal or hormonal abnormalities occur through a failure of normal sexual development, a person may live as the opposite gender.  In this case gender refers to the self-concept claimed due to a person’s adoption of the lifestyle of the opposite sex, but it can never be a totally separate concept from the person’s complicated biological heritage. These intersex abnormalities make up a tiny percent of the population.

The case of gender dysphoria should be understood similarly. There are situations in which a person has the feeling that they are the opposite gender, but the biological reality is that their body is chromosomally coded as their original gender. 

In neither case does it make sense to say that the lived gender identity has no reference to biological sex.

In these cases, “gender” should not trump biology, as Josh Alexander said. Both concepts are still at play with respect to the person’s identity. The number of students in this situation are again small, but appear to be growing.

According to this scientific binary view of sex, the small number of trans students can be reasonably accommodated in single-use stalls.

The Renfrew Catholic board needs to take action to remedy Josh’s situation!

The Renfrew County Catholic board would be well within its rights to oppose admitting opposite-sex students into washrooms, as long as transexual students are accommodated another way, through single-use washrooms.

There is no need for them to give into the use of the terminology of literary studies that gender can be abstracted from sexuality, thereby trumping safety and modesty concerns with Human Rights concerns.

The silence must be broken now! The board owes transparency on this to their stakeholders.

PAFE demands that the board face the fact that there are insoluble contradictions in its bathroom practices. It should recognize that it need not kow-tow to government pressure to admit students to the washrooms of the opposite sex.

We call on the board to establish a written policy that references a scientific understanding of sex and proclaims boldly that washrooms are to be single-sex and closed to the opposite sex, with the addition of single-use washrooms established for students who are living as the opposite gender.

ACTION ITEMS:

Please sign our PETITION asking for Justice for Josh by CLICKING HERE!