Representatives of the Minnesota Child Protection League have been hitting the conservative radio circuit in order to drum up opposition to a policy that would create a more inclusive environment for transgender students in Minnesota schools. The Minnesota State High School League is poised to adopt a policy that would provide schools with a framework for including transgender high school students in extracurricular activities including athletics. MNCPL has published two full-page ads in Minnesota newspapers and sent out mailers in Greater Minnesota which LGBT groups have characterized as anti-transgender.

On Saturday, MNCPL representative Marjorie Holsten appeared on Sue Jeffers program on News Talk 1130 KTLK (Jeffers is a board member of Education Liberty Watch, the organization that sponsors the Minnesota Child Protection League. Jeffers did not disclose that in the interview).

Holsten: Now, we’re not talking reality here. Now, if you are a biological boy or girl, it’s whatever you feel like you want to be and that is the policy that they want to have. And our organization, Child Protection League Action found out about it. We took out a full page ad in the Star Tribune shortly before the hearing on Oct. 1st and more than 10,000 people called in to the State High School League to athletics directors and members saying, ‘No, you will not impose this on our students’ because having such a policy like this would allow a boy who says he — “You know what? I feel like a girl. I want to be on the girls’ team to actually be on the girls’ team,’ and then after the girls play their game, he can shower with them and if they go on some trip, he will share a hotel accommodations. That’s what this policy allows and there’s no protection for the other girls who don’t like the idea of showering with a boy.”

Jeffers: I don’t like that idea and I think its horrible, Marjorie. Who is behind pushing this sort of agenda?

Holsten: Well the State High School League members of it are actually pushing it and OutFront Minnesota seems to be the biggest force behind it because they’ve been sending a number of emails encouraging people and the latest email even said that if you need to be bussed into the hearing that’s coming in on Dec. 4, they will make arrangements so they can bring a whole group of people in to support the policy. And that’s one of the reasons, Sue, I greatly appreciate you bringing me on the show today to encourage those of us who oppose the policy to show up on Dec. 4 to say, ‘No, do not impose this on our students.’ This is going to affect all high school students not just those who are a part of the state high school league.

Later in the interview, Jeffers and Holsten claimed that for many, being transgender is a phase.

Jeffers: You know? I posted an article on Facebook a few weeks back that talked about many children and transgender people who realized once they started to make the change, what a horrible mistake they had made and how the — I don’t know who — basically just shut them all up and they were not allowed to get out and tell their story. And I found it so interesting that research had shown 70 to 80 percent of the children who had expressed transgender feelings lost those feelings by the time they were adults.

Here’s that post:

It’s a link to anti-LGBT “journalist” Stella Morabito of the Federalist, a conservative online magazine. Morabito has written a series of articles claiming that transgender people regret having gender confirmation surgery. Some do have those regrets, but Morabita doesn’t get into the factors that contribute to someone regretting gender confirmation surgery. Instead, she conflates statistics to put forward a point of view that being transgender is wrong, many who have transitioned regret it, and those people are threatened by the LGBT community when they talk openly about it.

An example of Morabito’s conflation of statistics: “[A] national survey of more than 6,500 transgenders that asked the question, ‘Have you tried to commit suicide?’ Forty-one percent answered, ‘Yes.’ One need look no further for compelling evidence of widespread transgender and sex change regret.”

Morabito doesn’t link to the survey, but the National Transgender Discrimination Survey reported identical results. Nowhere in the survey was confirmation surgery regret mentioned. That’s a conclusion Morabito imposed on the survey results.

On the Sue Jeffers show, Holsten agreed with Jeffers assessment. Holsten added that a trans-inclusive policy, one that trans students have testified would reduce their depression, should be blocked because transgender people have high rates of suicide:

Holsten: It’s just spontaneous, it goes away. So why are we now making this permanent? And then when you look at the people who actually do have the sex change operations, the suicide rate among those people is 20 times greater than the suicide rate among the normal population.

Jeffers: Wow.

Holsten: Why would we want to encourage something that is so dangerous?

Jeffers and Holsten then got a call from “Julie”

Julie: Hi. Am I on the line? I got an email from a friend of mine who said that he talked to one of the representatives of the high school league, and you know, expressed his concern about it and this individual said that the issue was being blown out of proportion: what we are saying is going to happen isn’t going to happen, that this vote is just going to be used as a policy recommendation… recommendation to the high schools and its really that schools then develop their own policy, so would you comment on that? Is that accurate?

(The caller probably already knew Holsten’s answer to that question. According to Holsten’s Facebook page, the caller was Julie Quist, a board member for the Minnesota Child Protection League)

Holsten: No, that is not accurate because this is a policy that schools who are members of the state high school league are now going to have to implement this policy. It doesn’t say schools will be able to do whatever they want. It says they will be able to apply this policy that once they’re there the transgender person gets to participate on the team and there’s very little discretion left to the schools.

Julie: People who call in and talk to their representative… it sounds to me like they are going to be getting some information that is just not true and they probably should be aware of that.

Holsten: Right, that’s the bottom line. The high school league will come in and tell the schools this is how you will comply with this policy.

A week earlier, on Nov. 24, MNCPL’s Michele Lentz appeared on AM 980 KKMS’ On the Way with Ridgeway to talk more about locker room showers.

Ridgeway: This is absolute insanity having transgenders showering with the opposite sex.

Lentz: What happens when you have a biological boy playing on the team of biological girls?

Ridgeway: And then also going to shower with them. The whole thing is insanity where a very small, not even a percent, I don’t know what the transgender numbers are in Minnesota. It’s nothing, and we are jumping overboard to take care of men and women who want to be the opposite sex which they are not and then we are talking about the vast majority of kids that are in school that are not trans that are going to have to go along with this. It’s insanity.