Transgender Child Controversy; A 14-Year-Old Girl Mowed Down By A Hit-And-Run Driver
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: A 6-year-old has sparked controversy at a day care center in Katy, Texas. The child`s parents, both man, say their son is transgendered. They have asked the children`s lighthouse school not to call him a girl anymore and to treat him like a boy. The owner agreed, but two employees did not and they were fired.</s>PINSKY: These two employees who were fired are now suing. Back with Sam, Tanya, Mike. Joining me, Ryan Sorba, head of the Young Conservatives of California. And, Sam, you got some more details on this.</s>SCHACHER: Yes. One of the women, Madeline Kirksey, she is a Christian author. She was fired as manager because she would not go along with the decision to treat the little girl as a little boy. She cited her religious belief and said it was her duty to protect the girl from bullying.</s>PINSKY: Tanya, you are laughing.</s>ACKER: I just think it is a challenging legal position. I mean, when I hear a teacher say, "I am going to override the decision of parents, I am going to override the decision of my bosses, and I am going to do what I think is right for the child." I mean, how would we feel, for instance, if instead of being a Christian author, it was a Muslim author. What if there were a Muslim teacher that says, it is against my religion --</s>SCHACHER: Yes.</s>ACKER: -- for me to teach girls who do not wear head scarf? We would see this case very differently.</s>PINSKY: It is almost like -- what was her -- Davis? What was her name? The license girl --</s>SCHACHER: Kim.</s>ACKER: Kim Davis.</s>PINSKY: Kim Davis.</s>CATHERWOOD: The truth to be told is that we got to remind ourselves, regardless of how you feel about transgender issues, regardless of how supportive you are of this young girl`s decision and her parents` decision, it is America, and if you are derelict of duty, your boss can fire you. I mean like for whatever they want, you know.</s>PINSKY: Let me bring in Andy Taylor. He is the attorney representing the fired daycare workers. Andy, what are you guys asking for?</s>ANDY TAYLOR, ATTORNEY FOR FIRED TEXAS DAYCARE EMPLOYEES: Well, first of all, you know, we are not talking about a college age kid. This is a 6- year-old little innocent girl. I mean, she has been there four months as a girl. I will use fake names, but everybody knows her as sally. And, then on Monday morning, she comes in and her parents say, she is Johnny. My client, who is 48 years old, has been in this business educating children for 27 years. She got the highest certification you can get in the state of Texas. And, warning bells went off. She said, "That is going to hurt this child. She will be ridiculed. It is going to confuse the other kids." And, the parents are going to learn about this for the first time in the Caroline. That is exactly how not to handle a transgender student.</s>SCHACHER: But, at the same token, because I am really good friends with a number of trans males and females who knew at a very young age that they identified as male or female. Would not this be also a great opportunity to educate the children and the parents on what really it means to be trans and to teach empathy and to teach tolerance?</s>ATTY. TAYLOR: Well, think about it. I think the point that you are making about, would not it be a good opportunity to educate, that is the parental authority issue. The parents of these little 6-year-old kids are the ones, who have the authority and should be given the license to be able to talk to their little children about an issue like this. We would not want condoms being handed out at preschool.</s>SCHACHER: Oh my God.</s>ATTY. TAYLOR: That is not an issue that they are ready for.</s>PINSKY: Well, sexuality -- whoa, whoa. Wait. Right.</s>SCHACHER: Sexuality and gender are different.</s>PINSKY: Sexuality and gender are very different.</s>CATHERWOOD: It is not even relevant. Also, I mean kids are going to ridicule other children especially at that age for a lot of things that their parents impose on them. For instance, plenty of parents feed their kids junk, and I would not agree with it as an educator if I was. But, if they are overweight, they are going to get made fun of. And, I think it is a little bit irresponsible to assume that an educator has the right to decide what is morally OK for the children that she educates.</s>PINSKY: Hang on. Tanya, I see you shifting around, here.</s>ACKER: I do --</s>PINSKY: You have all kinds of mixed feelings.</s>ACKER: I am having a really hard time reconciling what I heard Andy say on the phone. I mean I can appreciate the representation he is providing his clients and how he wants to protect the rights of these other parents. But, what about the rights of the parents of the trans child, who have made a decision about how they want her to be raised? It sounds as if Andy is suggesting that his clients can overrule those parents and defer the others. And, I do not get it.</s>PINSKY: Let me quickly bring in Jessica Taylor. She is the first transgender airline pilot to retain her FAA medical status. Jessica, I do not know if you have heard this conversation. Did you hear much of this?</s>JESSICA TAYLOR, FIRST TRANSGENDER PILOT: Yes, absolutely.</s>A PINSKY: OK.</s>TAYLOR: And, I think you are right on in the sense that, you know, there is two different issues here. We are dealing with HIPPA. This is a health care thing. This is a medical privacy thing. So, when we talk about a student that has come out as transgender, we are not talking about a sexual orientation, which I think everybody kind of lumps these things into.</s>PINSKY: Right. Stop . Stop and break that down. So , when the attorney mentioned condoms, it was out of left field. It was bizarre. It is more like saying, I identify as a tall person or a short person. I identify as a boy, right?</s>JESSICA TAYLOR: See -- you are right on track right there with that.</s>PINSKY: Yes.</s>JESSICA TAYLOR: He is, basically, trying to lump us in with that LGB kind of silent "T" where it is a sexual orientation. This is a medical issue. It is covered by HIPPA. Somebody that is employed with this employment agency or with this company comes out and starts spreading my medical information about my medical information about my child or even myself to other employees as well as parents, you have overstepped the bounds now, and now we are into a legal issue.</s>PINSKY: Yes, sir. Put that mic up. You are ready to go.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Actually, she brought up exactly what I was going to bring up. As a health care provider, I mean HIPPA plays a huge part in it. And, there is a difference between identifying versus going through the actual transition. So, I mean --</s>PINSKY: The other thing I would ask is how far do the schools have to go to accommodate? You know what I mean? That is sort of what is at the core here.</s>SCHACHER: This is a private school, though, too. So, they are serving the parents, and the parents are serving their child. That is what it is about here. It is not -- These two employees have no right to infringe their beliefs, which I respect their beliefs. I do not agree with them. But, they cannot infringe their beliefs on their students.</s>PINSKY: Ryan.</s>RYAN SORBA, HEAD OF THE YOUNG CONSERVATIVES OF CALIFORNIA: Dr. Drew, gender dysphoria is a legitimate psychiatric category. I would argue that the teachers at that school are not even qualified to deal with students, who have gender dysphoria. And, so I do not think that teachers are out of line at all.</s>PINSKY: Wait, wait, wait. You are saying --</s>SORBA: I think the teachers are --</s>PINSKY: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Ryan, Ryan, Ryan. You are saying they should not be even dealing with it.</s>SORBA: Of course. And, that is what the teachers are saying is we want out of this situation. We do not believe we understand what is going on. We better leave this to the professionals. And, we need to let this student be with the professionals that he needs to see because according to the American Psychiatric Association --</s>JESSICA TAYLOR: You mitigate that --</s>SORBA: It is illegitimate --</s>JESSICA TAYLOR: No, you mitigate that responsibility, and you decide to do it yourself as an uninformed individual? You think that is the right act as to take it to the people yourself?</s>SORBA: And, how much more informed are you? How much more informed is the owner of the school? How much more informed are the members of the media commenting on it every single day?</s>CATHERWOOD: But, Ryan. That is not --</s>ACKER: Exactly. That is not their position.</s>CATHERWOOD: The reason they were fired --</s>ACKER: That is not their position.</s>CATHERWOOD: -- is because they on their own personal moral and ethical beliefs refused to call her a boy.</s>SCHACHER: Right.</s>ACKER: That is right.</s>SORBA: But, you do not have -- have a moral, ethical point of view.</s>ACKER: Ryan, but you are suggesting that these teachers said, "We do not think the school should take this tack because we are worried about whether or not they are going to do it sensitively."</s>PINSKY: Yes, rightfully so.</s>ACKER: That is not what the teacher said. The teacher said, "We do not think we should do this because it is against our religious faith." This is a situation where these teachers are saying, "My religious faith gets to trump the parents` decision."</s>PINSKY: No. No. Wait. No. Wait. No, that is not --</s>ACKER: Now, the parents -- the teachers --</s>PINSKY: I do not think it is quite what it sounded like. But, I think it is quite what he said. Andy, are you still there? Andy, the attorney.</s>ATTY. TAYLOR: If they want to know the basis, I can tell them because it is in writing.</s>PINSKY: Sure.</s>SCHACHER: Please.</s>PINSKY: Go ahead.</s>ATTY. TAYLOR: This educator -- yes, she is a Christian and has strongly held beliefs. But, it is much more fundamental than that. She sees this little girl every day for the last four months. She is the one who knows that even though her parents said she is a boy, she still insists in going in the girl`s rest room. She also knows that when they played football last week, and she got hit she said, "I do not want to be a boy anymore. This hurts." And, so, it is not as simple as that this child is ready to be a transgender. I do not know if she is or is not. That is not the issue.</s>PINSKY: OK.</s>ATTY. TAYLOR: Who should be triaging this position? And, it is the parents and the school working together. And, everybody should have accommodation and equal rights. You do not put one over the other.</s>PINSKY: OK. Hang on.</s>JESSICA TAYLOR: Do you know what gender dysphoria is? You just described it to the absolute DSM standard. Somebody who does not conform to what their birth gender is. Gender non-conforming, male to female, female to male. Somebody does not know where they stand in our community. And, you are criticizing this child for trying to figure out where they fit in the gender spectrum?</s>SORBA: Nobody is criticizing the child. They are criticizing -- actually the men who are the parents of this child is two men. And, a lot of people have postulated that it might be that because this little girl was raised by two men, that she might intermittently identifies as a boy.</s>PINSKY: No. No. No.</s>JESSICA TAYLOR: No. No. We are exploiting --</s>SORBA: We do not understand -- development -</s>JESSICA TAYLOR: We are exploiting somebody`s private medical disability.</s>SORBA: They made it public when they went to the school and said, "We want you to publicly identify our child as the opposite of their biological gender."</s>JESSICA TAYLOR: That is what anybody who is transgender is going to do. That is what anybody who is transgender is going to do.</s>CATHERWOOD: From a legal standpoint, though, I mean you would know it is a private school. Cannot the owner of the private school just say, I am firing you because you suck?</s>SCHACHER: That is what they did.</s>PINSKY: You know, I am going to talk to the school next. I got to break - - I got to break right here. We will get the word from the school. Later, an officer open fire on an SUV as it barrels towards him. All caught on a body cam. Stay with us. Look at that.