Former teacher, Carolyn Burjoski, is taking legal action against the Waterloo Region District School Board after being censored in a public school board meeting because she raised concerns about the age-inappropriateness of library books for children.
Trouble started when she turned to a book called The Other Boy by M.G. Hennessey and a scene that depicts a meeting between Shane, a transgender boy (born a girl), and a doctor. He voices excitement about starting on testosterone and when the physician says it would mean he likely wouldn’t be able to have children, he says, “It’s cool.”
As Burjoski remarked that such books make it seem overly straightforward to take cross-sex hormones, Piatkowski interjected to warn she may be violating the code.
The teacher said the book was misleading “because it does not take into account how Shane might feel later in life about being infertile. This book makes very serious medical interventions seem like an easy cure for emotional and psychological distress.”
At that point, Piatkowski told her he was “ending the presentation.”
The human rights code bars discrimination based on gender identity and other grounds in the areas of housing, employment and providing services.
Article contentThe widely used “affirmation” approach to children who identify as transgender has raised some concerns in several countries, and not just among obvious critics. Two leading psychologists in the transgender medical community, one of them a trans woman, complained in a recent article about sloppy and dangerous assessment of young people presenting as trans, with overly hasty resort to hormones.
In a statement, Burjoski said was relieved by the ruling.
“It is a significant victory and vindication, not just for me, but for everyone who dares to voice their valid concerns publicly,” she said. ”I hope this decision sends a strong message to school boards that the weaponization of human rights codes against concerned citizens is an undemocratic abuse of the code.”
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December 2, 2023 at 10:59 am
tildeb
From the judge who awarded $30K to Burjoski for having to deal with the legal suit brought by the Board (paid for by the taxpayer) to throw her case of defamation out:
“The chairman of the board acted with malice or at least, with a reckless disregard for the truth. He had made an embarrassingly erroneous and arbitrary decision to silence a legitimate expression of opinion and he was widely criticized for it. It is not a stretch to infer that, realizing that, he tried to justify himself with the public by assassinating the plaintiff’s character. (snip) I find it regrettable that the defendant who is trying to shut down debate is an arm of the government.”
No guff, eh? This is called ‘bullying’ and is used widely by invertebrates in all kinds of institutionalized positions of authority to silence any and all dissent no matter how well grounded in reality and justified by overwhelming evidence that dissent may be.
It’s not some right wing conspiracy to say that many on the left today unthinkingly go along with and support the very worst ideological collaborators who, in turn, kowtow to the very worst kind of anti-liberal, regressive, and highly bigoted ideology busy undoing all the social advancement we have made regarding REAL tolerance, REAL equality, REAL diversity. To those who go along with the bullying and name calling of dissenters, to those who believe the lies they spew about the character of the dissenters, to those who donate money and time, to those who attend the demonstrations called for by the mob, you are as much a part of the anti-Western problem today as these spineless and cowardly administrators. Shame on you.
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