South Western’s elected school board is making some strange decisions.

For the last two years, they’ve fixated on which bathrooms LGBTQ+ kids use. In 2023, officials in this Hanover-area district played musical chairs with school bathrooms in a misguided attempt to appease the loudest bigots among them — ending up with five different types of bathrooms.

After a low-turnout school board election in which several far-right members joined their ranks, they hired a Christian law firm, decided to begin banning books and reopened the bathroom issue. Board President Matthew Gelazela, who was elevated to his post after previously serving as the board’s most vocal bomb-thrower, pointed to Red Lion’s discriminatory policies as something to aspire to.

Now, upon the advice of that law firm — the Harrisburg-based Independence Law Center — the board approved spending $8,700 to cut windows so passersby can look into the so-called “gender-identity” student bathrooms.

  • ngwoo@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Conservative Christians increase their involvement and within a year the children’s bathroom has a viewport for pedophiles installed.

  • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    This won’t help much, hard to tell much just by someone’s face. What we need here is a window specifically for viewing the children’s genitalia. And then we need a dedicated monitor to watch all the children use the bathroom.

    John, the repressed religious fundamentalist, has already volunteered. We’ve designed a room where he can monitor the genitalia from the holes we’ve cut, and we’ve also installed cameras inside the urinals and toilets with a feed that goes to the monitoring room, in case anyone tries to defeat our system.

    The monitoring room has no windows or cameras in it, and the door locks from the inside, so, I think we’ve finally solved the problem. Consider the liberals owned!

  • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    They go on and on about how they don’t want the dangerous transgenders in the bathroom, but now anyone can peek in to confirm… What, exactly? It’s not like the windows are in the stalls, so just for them assume someone gender? “You look too feminine, no boys room for you. Sorry, too masculine, no ladies room.” What’s next, strip searches? Wtf is it with them and the bathroom…

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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      17 hours ago

      What’s next, strip searches?

      Hardly “what’s next”. This has been a fixation by conservatives since since the Obama Administration

      Aimee Toms was washing her hands in the women’s bathroom at Walmart in Danbury Friday when a stranger approached her and said, “You’re disgusting!” and “You don’t belong here!”

      After momentary confusion, she realized that the woman next to her thought — because of her pixie-style haircut and baseball cap — that she was transgender.

      • shuzuko@midwest.social
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        12 hours ago

        Longer than that, even! Circa 2003/04 my 14 year old ass was getting chewed out by shitty Karens because they couldn’t fathom the idea of a young teen girl sporting a pixie cut and wearing baggy metal tees, skate jeans and vans. I’ve actually resorted - more than once - to showing my used menstrual products as proof. Well, more as a way to harass them back, but. You know.

        Joke’s on me, though, I guess, since I’m actually genderfluid lol.

        • Nougat@fedia.io
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          5 hours ago

          I’ve actually resorted - more than once - to showing my used menstrual products as proof.

          That’s metal.

  • Juice@midwest.social
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    17 hours ago

    The only way to stop a bad guy with a window in your child’s bathroom to watch them pee, is a good guy with a window in your child’s bathroom to watch them pee

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        1 day ago

        I’m betting there is some sort of legal prohibition against creating a mixed-gender restroom, and the way they are getting around it is by declaring only the toilet stalls to be restrooms. With the window into the area of the sinks, that area is a public space, and can’t legally be considered part of the restroom.

        So long as the toilets are in actual rooms with floor to ceiling walls and actual doors (not the bullshit stalls we typically use in the US), and those rooms don’t have windows, this isn’t as terrible an idea as it initially seems.

        • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          They have already created gender neutral restrooms, according to the article these windows are not in those.

          There’s 2 stalls visible in the picture. The walls are not floor to ceiling, the doors have larger gaps above and though it isn’t visible, I expect also a gap below. It’s not clear if there are vertical visibility slits on the sides of the doors. But they’re clearly just stalls really.

          But it doesn’t really matter how the stalls are, the way that we know that this is targeted spite and bullying, is that windows are being cut only in a specific subset of the restrooms. They’re trying to shame and intimidate the kids that are in those restrooms.

          • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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            1 day ago

            Possible.

            It’s also possible that the stalls do provide an adequate degree of privacy, coming very close to the floor, and sufficiently high enough to prevent people from seeing inside. They certainly don’t look like the stalls my school used.

            Frankly, if their intention is to shame and intimidated, I’m rather surprised they are going to this much effort, when they could just not do anything at all.

            Do we know that the other, gender-neutral restrooms are similarly communal? Is it possible that they are single-user facilities with sinks, and need only appropriate signage to make them inclusive?

            • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              I’ve stopped giving USA republicans the benefit of doubt years ago, Trump’s first year in office was enough to convince me. I’ve accepted that they are comically evil and that they have no redeeming qualities. So if I see something that is comically evil, then I’m not going to invent possibilities of why it might not be as bad, because in my experience it will turn out that after a little digging, it’s actually worse.

              Also the administration was given the opportunity to justify or explain their actions by the reporter, and they chose not to, most likely not because they didn’t want to, but because they couldn’t do so in a matter that did not make them appear like spiteful bigots. There’s no point in inventing possible defenses for them if they could not provide them themselves.

              • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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                1 day ago

                Republicans don’t have five types of bathrooms. Republicans have two. That alone should tell you that the Republicans aren’t actually in control here.

                What is actually happening is that the Republicans are trying to get rid of the “gender inclusive” restroom, and revert it to boys only. They don’t want 5 kinds of restrooms. They want two.

                After reading some more, it turns out the Republicans are claiming the area outside the stalls is a “changing area”, and the law prohibits coed changing areas. Be “inclusive” of more than one gender in a “changing area”, and you violate the law.

                Changing areas don’t have public-facing windows. Areas with public-facing windows aren’t changing areas. Without the window, the Republicans get to make it a boys-only room. With the window to the sinks - not the toilets - it is not a changing area, and the Republican argument fails.

                • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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                  17 hours ago

                  Seems reasonable and likely, but that’s not what people here want they want an enemy they can pretend is pure evil so they can feel good about themselves

            • Valmond@lemmy.world
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              19 hours ago

              It’s also possible…

              As someone so eloquently said; maybe one if my pigs just shat a gold nugget (gotta check that out, right)

              • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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                1 day ago

                Read up on it some more, from a less biased source. The Republicans want this to be a boy’s room. The law prohibits coed changing rooms. Be “inclusive” of multiple genders in a room that qualifies as a “changing room”, and you violate the law.

                Changing rooms don’t have windows. Put in a window, and the area can’t be considered a changing room. Since it isn’t a changing room, the Republican argument fails, and they don’t get to get rid of the gender inclusive restroom entirely. You still have privacy while you are using the toilet. You don’t have privacy while you are washing your hands.

                So in this case, you might want to figure out where your pig has been eating and stake a claim.

    • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      They’re so concerned about what’s going on inside children’s pants that they now was to watch them in bathroom.

      Sounds pretty fucking weird to me

  • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    After a low-turnout school board election in which several far-right members joined their ranks, they hired a Christian law firm, decided to begin banning books and reopened the bathroom issue.

    Fucking VOTE you dumb sons of bitches!

  • forrcaho@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    You’ve always got to show up for those school board elections now. Every. Single. Time.