All parent Nick Morabito wanted to do when he appeared before the Ottawa Carleton District School board was to express concern about teen boys who identify as female sharing an unsupervised non-gendered washroom with adolescent girls.
It took him two tries before he could get his message out at a board meeting this past week.
In the interim, he became the target of relentless bullying on social media by radical activists and even the board’s own trustees.
His message made perfect sense.
He told trustees the current policy — which allows students who self-identify as female to use unsupervised bathrooms and change rooms — could lead to abuse.
He’s concerned that the “added risk” could leave students concerned for their safety and feeling violated in their personal space.
He added that this is layered on top of the already considerable issues of safety, which have been ignored by board administrators. Teachers have told him that drug deals, underage sex, violence, intimidation and vaping is occurring in these washrooms.
Removing the officers in schools program may have “amplified” such safety concerns, he said.
He said rights to washrooms and change rooms are not being applied fairly across all students — that choosing one group’s rights over others as the policy does, is actually against the Human Rights Code.
“I’m coming to you from a place of sincerity and empathy not from transphobia, hostility, bigotry or any of the labels that have been hurled my way,” he said.
This common sense four-minute message could not be delivered without adhering to a set of rules provided by board chairman, Lyra Evans, a transgendered trustee.
She walked out of Morabito’s first attempt at delivering a deputation on March 7, shortly before rabid masker and trustee Nili Kaplan-Mryth cut him off 35 seconds into his talk.
Kaplan-Myrth claimed at the time his deputation created “an unsafe environment for people who identify as gender diverse.”
There was considerable uproar in the days and weeks following his original deputation and the activists seized on it to invent an issue and to dismiss him as transphobic.
“My wife and I are so Liberal minded…all I had were some issues with the policy and how easily abused it can be,” he told me this week.
“I refuse to believe this is representative of the trans community.”
After Morabito wrote both Evans and Kaplan-Myrth a very respectful e-mail on March 22 about wanting to speak at a subsequent board meeting, the rabid masker responded that because he tagged Rebel News in one of his social media posts, “that was all we need to know” about his “intentions going forward.”
Kaplan-Myrth claimed that she did not call recess to the March 7 meeting on her own but “with the support of senior staff and colleagues.”
She added in her highly confrontational e-mail to him, dated March 23, that there were people present in the room who took videos to share with “anti-trans organizers and hate-fuelled media outlets” – proof of his intention to speak of “transphobia.”
Despite her angry and outrageous assumptions, he wrote a very professional and respectful e-mail back to her.
Evans also wrote him on March 23, setting out rules for what he could and could not say when he turned to the board on March 28.
Using the word “delegate” repeatedly in the wrong way in the e-mail, the often highly unprofessional chairman told him he was not permitted to use any “derogatory or derisive comments” – for example, likening trans to “groomers” – or ask the school board to “violate human rights laws.”
The latter Evans suggested would be asking trans students to be treated differently than non-trans students.
The great irony in that statement is that Evans wanted non-trans students to be treated differently and unfairly.
Morabito was also told he could not name any individual or make remarks about them – an attempt no doubt to protect the out-of-control vitriolic Kaplan-Myrth.
To add to Evans’ attempts to control the narrative, hundreds of activists turned up at the meeting Tuesday night.
They were professional protesters in search of a cause, in my view.
Despite having his own free speech resoundingly attacked, Morabito said he felt sorry for the “misguided people” who spewed pure hatred and B.S. about him, not even knowing what he intended to say or what he was about.
What he found even more “embarrassing” was that this put a spotlight on an already dysfunctional board and that no trustees stood up to stop Kaplan-Myrth’s out-of-control behaviour.
He’s 100% right.
I’d also ask where the hell is Education Minister Stephen Lecce and our Premier Doug Ford?
Are they content to continue to let these boards spiral out of control, become an international embarrassment nd destroy public education?
I just shake my head and think, it seems they are.
