CO: Conservative Parents Disrupted a Trans Girl’s Field Trip, But That Wasn’t Enough
Crusading conservative parents got a trans girl transferred out of a room she’d been assigned to share with their daughter and two other girls. Now they’re determined to make national news out of their cruelty.
by Evan Urquhart
Reading between the lines it’s clear that the only thing 11-year-old K. E. M. did wrong was trusting Joe and Serena Wailes’ daughter. The misplaced trust the girl showed in confiding that she was trans to the daughter of the conservative Christian Waileses is at the heart of the latest right-wing media smear story over something that almost happened: The Wailes’ daughter, D. W., was assigned to room with K. E. M. and two cis girls on a school field trip, but when her bunkmate confided that she was trans D. W. raised a fuss. The cis girl and her conservative parents ultimately got the hapless trans girl re-assigned to another room, but that’s not for the family of crusaders who want to ensure that transgender children are forcibly outed on all future field trips.
This story first appeared a week ago on the Heritage Foundation’s pseudo-news website, the Daily Signal, in an piece by Mary Margaret Olohan, who specializes in anti-trans smear stories. The story included a letter by conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom to the superintendent and school board of Jefferson County Public Schools which told the story from the family’s perspective and demanded that in the future parents would be able to opt their children out of rooming with transgender students on field trips.
Here’s an excerpt from the letter, describing how the Wailes’ daughter became uncomfortable after the transgender girl confided her identity. At no point does the letter suggest the transgender girl behaved inappropriately towards D. W. or any other student, and the two girls did not end up sharing a bed together.
screenshot from the Daily Signal
In other words, the only student who could even remotely be said to have been harmed was K. E. M., who had to switch rooms despite having done nothing. Some right-wing news outlets, however, have changed the story in a way that makes it more salacious. Both Fox News and the Daily Mail claimed in their headlines that the two students were forced to share a bed, something that never happened.
screenshot from Fox News
screenshot from the Daily Mail
The facts of this story aren’t particularly flattering to the Christian parents, who are engaged in a media crusade against an 11-year-old girl who made the mistake of trusting their daughter with her private medical information. Last Friday they appeared on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” talk show. One major talking point has been that, in rearranging the room assignments, those in charge of the field trip asked the family to respect the trans girls’ privacy. Respecting the privacy of trans students appears to be the primary point of contention by the ADF in light of the fact that the family’s got everything they asked for from the school during the field trip. (It is unclear whether the school considered reassigning the cisgender girl to a different room, or why they ultimately decided to reassign the child who’d done nothing, rather than the child who complained about her room assignment.)
The Daily Signal did not reach out to the school for comment, however later on some outlets did so, including KDVR, a Colorado Fox Affiliate, as well as a reporter for the Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s “Crisis in the Classroom” According to a statement both organizations received from the Jeffco Public Schools, room assignments may have been made without knowing the student was transgender.
screenshot from KDVR’s website
The ADF’s letter makes the argument that conservative parents and students have a privacy right to the medical information of transgender students, and that their religious belief that trans girls are really boys trumps any privacy or safety concerns on the part of the trans students. Articles on the right that have relayed the story have insinuated that a trans girl sharing a bed with a cis girl is inappropriate in situations where two cis girls sharing a bed wouldn’t be, but without making any direct argument for why this might be the case. To date there has been no evidence presented that trans girls pose a danger to their cisgender counterparts, on field trips, in bathrooms or lockers rooms, or in any other context.
