The Massachusetts Board of Education has outraged parents around the nation after announcing a proposal to accommodate transgendered students in a way that would essentially make schools gender-neutral.

Fox News’ Todd Starnes is reporting that the Massachusetts Department of Education issued directives for handling transgender students that include allowing students to use the bathrooms of their choice and play on any sports team that corresponds to their perceived gender. Students who protest could face punishment.

The Department defines a transgender student as one whose assigned birth sex does not match the “internalized sense of their gender.”

“A student who says she is a girl and wishes to be regarded that way throughout the school day and throughout every, or almost every, other area of her life, should be respected and treated like a girl,” the guidelines stipulate.

“The responsibility for determining a student’s gender identity rests with the student.  One’s gender identity is an innate, largely inflexible characteristic of each individual’s personality that is generally established by age four…As a result, the person best situated to determine a student’s gender identity is that student himself or herself.”

The guidelines will also prevent teachers or school administrators from telling parents which gender their child identifies with, which amounts to allowing children to be one sex at home and another in school.

Students who are against sharing a bathroom or locker room with a member of the opposite sex will have no recourse but to accept the situation. As the guidelines state, being uncomfortable about it “is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student.”

In fact, the guidelines go so far as to say that any student who refuses to refer to a transgendered study by the name or sex they identify with could face punishment.

The Massachusetts Family Institute was quick to condemn the new rules.

“Fundamentally, boys need to be using the boys’ room and girls need to be using the girls’ rooms, and we base that on their anatomical sex, not some sort of internalized gender identity,” said Andrew Beckwith, the institute’s general counsel.

Beckwith told Fox News the new policy has a “very broad standard that is ripe for abuse.”

“The policy allows students to have one gender identity at home and another at school,” he said. “And it refuses to let teachers and administrators tell parents what gender their child is at school.”

This is in addition to the myriad of conflicts that will arise with boys being allowed in girls rest rooms and vice versa.

Gunner Scott, of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, praised the directive and told Fox he believes punishing students who refuse to acknowledge a student’s gender identity is appropriate.

“The reality is that it’s about creating an inclusive environment for all students to learn,” Scott said.

Parents see things much differently, however, and say the new guidelines actually give transgendered students more rights than other students.

“It doesn’t treat all students the same,” said Bill Gillmeister, of Brookfield, Mass. “It has a greater preference to gender-identifying children. That concerns me a great deal.”

Lawsuits are inevitable, he added. “It will either be the girl who didn’t get a seat on the basketball team because some boy got it or some boy who wanted to use the girls’ room but was denied access.”

Beckwith and others say the education department is using a loophole in the anti-discrimination law to create a “stealth bathroom bill.”

“It’s affecting students as young as kindergarten,” he said.

In his opinion, Massachusetts is trying to create gender-neutral schools.

“They’re encouraging schools to eliminate all gender based distinctions,” he said.

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