Here is an email I just sent. If you are a local who supports trans* kids in our schools, please know a concerted effort to deny these kids participation in school sports as the gender they identify is underway by the right-wing Child Protection League.
If you’d like to write them but are at a loss for words, please feel free to use any of the below language yourself. You can find the addresses of the board here: http://www.mshsl.org/mshsl/aboutMSHSL.asp?page=5
SUBJECT LINE: Please support trans kids in Minnesota’s school athletics
Dear MSHL Board,
I am writing to you out of concern for our state’s most vulnerable students: transsexual kids. Transsexuals have the highest rates of suicide, the worst health outcomes, and the highest rates of murder and abuse of any other subsection of our society.
As a mom with two children in Minneapolis public schools, I feel passionately that we need to keep these most vulnerable of children safe. Accepting them — as they are — and integrating them into our community is the best way for us to ensure their safety. We also need to model for our children that we care for ALL students in our schools, and that all are welcome.
Minnesotans have always placed strong importance on acceptance and tolerance, on community, and on a live-and-let-live philosophy.
A vote this Thursday to allow students to compete in sports based on their identified gender rather than the gender we assigned them at birth is a vote supporting those traditional Minnesota values, and a vote to keep more kids happy, healthy, and alive.
Most sincerely,
Haddayr Copley-Woods
[identifying information about my kids and their schools removed]
That’s a nice letter but I have to say, it drives me crazy that you use an asterisk and there is no footnote or link or anything to explain it.
Perhaps you should google trans with an asterix, then?