Schools Denies Transgender Teen His Rightful Crown-Another Case of Bigotry Sanctioned by Our Schools

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MUSKEGON, Mich. (WOOD) - Some Mona Shores High School students say administrators stole the homecoming king throne from the rightful winner -- a transgender senior.

The controversy is playing out in the school's hallways, and on Facebook.

Some classmates believe the crown belongs to Oakleigh Reed -- who was born as Oakleigh Marie, but who now goes as Oakleigh Marshall, or Oak for short.

In fact, friends have started a Facebook page, titled, "Oak is My King."

"It's the senior class that votes for their representative," Reed said. "What they did was taking away the voice of the senior class."

Assistant Superintendent Todd Geerlings said the issue is simple: The ballots gave two choices -- vote for a boy for king and a girl for queen.

Facebook Support Page- Oak Is My King

Already ten thousand people have supported this child's cause.

Just for balance,

Facebook Page for those who agree, Oak is NOT my King

Of course, the ACLU rightfully would like to talk to him, and Oak is willing to sit down and discuss the case with them. A snippet from the link below follows:

ACLU Says It May Be Interested In Case

Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the ACLU's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Legal Project, said he took an interest in the case after seeing 24 Hour News 8's story on Reed , which aired Sunday.

"It raises some concern about how the school has chosen to treat people based on gender," Kaplan said.

The school does have a nondiscrimination policy, and the student is living 100 percent as a male, even planning to go for the sex change after he turns 18.

His mother is angry, and confused as to why the school would take away her son's rightfully earned crown.

This seems to be another example of narrow minded adults callously disregarding the rights of their students when it comes to gender issues. Schools have had an abysmal track record in protecting the rights of students who have alternative views on gender and sexuality, many of those cases discussed right here on ATS.

I think any adult unwilling to show the bare minimum of human respect and dignity to any of the students should be terminated and never be allowed to work around children again.

I am glad to see over ten thousand supporters of Oak, and I hope that the ACLU takes up this cause and wins.

When will our children be able to attend STATE MANDATED education without being hideously discriminat4ed against by their OWN TEACHERS and SCHOOL ADMIN??

So we have a female pretending to be a male and winning a Crown?

Forget the ACLU, let's let the EEOC (Olympic Committee) decide this one, as I'm sure this has come up before. Got to keep things fair. Can you imagine the runner up having to live with this the rest of his life?

reply to post by Carseller4

He is not pretending to be a male, he is a male, is living as a male and will have his physical body corrected when he is of age.

how do you live 100 percent as a male, without a sex change operation? There's this little thing called biology that just can't be ignored. Even with a surgical knife, I think the inner hormones are still not changed, but this person hasn't even had the sex change operation! Maybe if he'she would have had a sex change operation that would be one thing, but this is a girl pretending to be a boy because he'she felt like it? And now they want people to respect this decision? I would tell this person that if you respect yourself you wouldn't need to force other people to respect your view of your self. I hope he/she wins this case, just because I'm always for the under dog, but I don't have much sympathy for this person if they lose. And, I'm also not surprised the ACLU is interested. Americans are being treated as terrorists but hey, a girl pretending to be a boy didn't win the prom king at her high school, let's make a federal case over it.

Originally posted by hotbakedtater
reply to post by Carseller4

 

He is not pretending to be a male, he is a male, is living as a male and will have his physical body corrected when he is of age.

If he/she/it is a male why would his/her/it's body need to be corrected?

I say get the EEOC involved and let their ruling stand.

The choice to correct their physical body is personal, and has no bearing on how one sees their gender.

The Olympic Committee has nothing to do with this topic, if it is a topic you want to discuss make a new thread for it.

I'm with the OP on this one. It's a teenage thing. Fussy adults should keep out of it. They voted for him to be king of the prom or whatever it was and so he should have been crowned. Transgender should have nothing to do with it. He's obviously very popular with his peers. Good on them. Poor dues to the people with the rule book and all it's fine print.

I think the part that outrages me the most, as a mother and as an older person who loves young people, and realizes our youth is our future, is the fact that it is almost always the ADULTS and Schooll Admins who are perpetrating these kinds of nasty incidents upon the students, and we as parents are forced by mandate to send our kid to school.

What is worse is that this poor kids mother and father pay taxes so some nasty bigot adult that gets paid with those tax dollars can inflict cruelty upon the child the law says they must send to school in the first place!!

In this case from all I am reading, it is squarely the school adults who are worng, and the students support Oak.

It is way past time that those who make their living working with children and take our tax dollars to work with children first and foremost TREAT Our children with DIGNITY and RESPECT, no matter what.

Anything less we are failing our youth.

So HE has a vagina?
2nd

Does a vagina define how one idientifies as a gender?

Our genetalia are physical parts of a body that houses who we are. Vaginas have no gender humans do.

Frankly, I think it is a bit odd that while so many people wish to extol the modernity of sexual gender perceptions, this particular argument revolves around the fairy tale custom of kings and queens for school dances. This custom, particularly in United States schools, where the notion of monarchy's and the divine right doctrine was rejected several hundred years ago, is far more disturbing than whether a girl thinks she's a boy.