Up to now, this has been a Maine story, but it may now be going national (National Review anyway. Fox next?)

Would you trust the care of your child to this man? Woman? his employer does, and tells parents to shut up about it

Maine mom demands investigation after school counselor secretly gives daughter a chest binder

The Maine Wire, published by the conservative Maine Policy Institute, which is an excellent organization, has been covering this story for a couple of months, just as Maine’s two newspapers handful of tv stations have been ignoring it. It’s pretty sick. Too lengthy even to summarize here, but do read the NR’s coverage, or the Maine Wire’s.

… Lavigne would later learn that earlier in the year, without her knowledge, her daughter had been reassigned to a new social worker at Great Salt Bay Community School in Maine. This social worker, she learned, had been advising her daughter about gender transitioning. He had provided her daughter with the chest binder, telling the girl that he wouldn’t tell her mother, and she didn’t need to either. She also learned that school personnel had been involved in socially transitioning her daughter, referring to her by a new name and by male pronouns.

No one had bothered to notify Lavigne.

Lavigne demanded answers, but for the most part, she said, school district leaders and school-board members have been defensive and evasive. She is now represented by lawyers from the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, who argue that the school’s actions are unconstitutional and violate Lavigne’s rights as a parent to direct the education, upbringing, and health care of her child.

…. ‘This is Happening Everywhere’

While she has received support from local Republican groups, Lavigne said she is no religious fanatic or right-wing culture warrior. Rather, she’s a Democrat who runs a mental-health-services business in Damariscotta, a small coastal town in Maine  best known for its oysters. Her business has worked with transgender clients over the years, she said.

“I’m a pretty open-minded person,” she said, though she said that’s not how she’s been portrayed by school leaders. Lavigne also has two young sons who are four and one.

….Last fall, Lavigne’s 13-year-old daughter started eighth grade at Great Salt Bay Community School, which she’s attended since fifth grade. Although she’s struggling with her gender identity now, Lavigne said that when her daughter was young, she was a girly-girl who liked painting her fingernails and putting on makeup.

“That’s one of the most bizarre things about this,” she said. “I wanted so badly for my daughter to be an athlete, because I was an athlete; I was a wicked tomboy growing up. I’m like, she’s going to be a basketball superstar. I couldn’t get this kid to pick up a frigging baseball and throw it at me to save her life. She was into tutus and My Little Ponies.”

But she said her daughter’s girliness started to fade when puberty hit. She presented more as a tomboy, Lavigne said. Lavigne described her daughter as “a little quirky,” and said her friend group includes other “quirky” kids. She said she was fine with that, but she was surprised to learn that some of her daughter’s friends, even as tweens, were exploring their sexual identities.

“The first time I really started to hear her discuss gender ideology in general, she started talking about a friend being pansexual, and another friend being polysexual. I’m like, why are we talking sexual right now? You’re 11,” Lavigne said, adding that at 11 she was “more concerned about getting a game of pickup basketball going than I [was] about the boys in my class.”

When asked if she thought her daughter’s gender confusion could be related to a social contagion, Lavigne said, “110 percent.”

….. If her daughter gets through her childhood and still feels that she is a boy, Lavigne said she will support her decisions, because “it’s my kid.”

“If she at 18 starts taking testosterone and decides to mutilate her body, am I going to express to her some concerns? Absolutely,” she said. “Am I going to write my kiddo off? Never in a million years. This is my baby girl. At the end of the day, I’m not going to destroy my relationship with my child to be right.”