“As long as I am on this earth, I am going to teach children what I feel they need to know.”
These were allegedly the words of Mt. Lebanon School District first-grade teacher Megan Williams, who earlier this year told the mother of one of her students that she would continue teaching about gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning to 6- and 7-year-old students—even if doing so goes against the parents’ wishes, according to a lawsuit filed in Pittsburgh federal court on June 8 by three mothers over the matter.
The lawsuit targets the school district, as well as Williams, senior administrators, and school board members over what the parents say amounts to “grooming”—a term used to refer to how adults psychologically create emotional bonds with children to lower inhibitions.
According to the mothers’ lawsuit, Williams showed students a video called “Jacob’s New Dress” to their children last fall, telling the students that her child had worn an “Elsa dress” for Halloween. When one of the moms raised concerns about this at a parent-teacher conference, Williams told her there was a misunderstanding and that the confusion was about Halloween—but then continued to teach the children about gender dysphoria anyway, the lawsuit states.
“Williams had private conversations with this young boy, discussing with him the similarities between the boy and her transgender child, again suggesting that the boy might want to wear a dress, at other times commenting to him how the boy and her transgender child had similar interests and the same favorite color, and telling the child that he could be like her transgender child,” the lawsuit states.
“Williams explained to this young boy that ‘doctors can get it wrong sometimes.’ In the course of these private discussions, Williams also told this young boy that she ‘would never lie to him’ and, if the subjects they were discussing came up at home, to say ‘I heard it from a little birdie.’”
The lawsuit argues that this behavior amounts to grooming.
“In other words, upon information and belief, while having private discussions with this young boy about topics related to gender dysphoria, she told the child not to tell his parents about the discussions,” the lawsuit states. “Williams’ ‘grooming’ of this young student is unconscionable.”
By Ken Silva
