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A school district meeting in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, unleashed fierce debate among parents and community members while deliberating the local implementation of new Title IX rules.
“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that you guys are even considering letting bathrooms and locker rooms [be] coed. I don’t care how they identify or whatever kind of delusion people live in, whatever kind of mental disease that they have, boys are boys and girls are girls. It’s simple and basic. It’s always been that way, and that’s why we have separate bathrooms,” Josh Vienola, a member of the local Moms for Liberty Facebook group, said during the Aug. 14 meeting.
“I don’t understand what’s going on with you guys that we’re even considering this. You guys need to [say], ‘No, absolutely not,’ and come back to reality,” Vienola continued.
His response to the school board members came after the input of Kora Novy, self-proclaimed director of Oshkosh Pride, who fanned the preliminary flames of the debate by labeling the discussion as a “roadblock.”
“What is this fight really about” Novy questioned. “You don’t get to impose [your] beliefs on anybody else, and that’s actually what religious liberty is, it’s that you’re right to believe that is protected but the other person that identifies as something also has a right to be protected.”
The LGBT activist said they are “paying attention” and will “be involved in this conversation if it keeps on going,” echoing the sentiment of another local, TJ Hobbs, and their concern over local Title IX compliance.
Laura Ackermann, chapter chair of Winnebago County’s Moms for Liberty, an organization that one of the school board members labeled “extremist” during the heated exchange, also chimed into the debate, focusing her concerns on potential discomfort female pupils might have over the changes that Title IX would incite.
“The old Title IX was two paragraphs, and it was meant to protect girls and women in sports and education. The new policy, the new regulations are 1,500 pages,” Ackermann said. “Moms for Liberty want all children protected. … What the risk is with the new policy is it does potentially, in some instances, put the transgender student above the girls. That’s what the argument is around changing Title IX from being protecting girls to now including the transgender population. Not that they shouldn’t be, but there are other policies to protect them.”
“If a transgender person wants to go into the opposite bathroom, under this law, you must let them. If a girl complains because they’re not comfortable with a male naked in their locker room, she has no recourse under this new policy,” Ackermann continued.
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Referencing a lawsuit she sent to the board, Ackermann said that if a girl is “offended” by a transgender student using the girls’ bathroom, they are asked to use a separate restroom, but the same question “cannot” be asked of the transgender student.
Ackermann went on to say that the Oshkosh area schools are currently in compliance with Wisconsin state law 118.13 and said that she found current policies were “both state and federally compliant.”
The Oshkosh area school district has yet to respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
