In an interview with KDJS AM 1590 News Director Bev Ahlquist on Apr. 10, the Minnesota Child Protection League’s Julie Quist gave an overview of a presentation the group is giving around the state, led by anti-LGBTQ activist Barb Anderson. Anderson was slated to give one such presentation at the Spicer American Legion a week later called “Gender Fluidity and Other Fables: Understanding the Harm of the Transgender Movement,” in response to efforts by the New London-Spicer school board to pass a gender-inclusive policy for area schools.

The Minnesota Child Protection League has a long history of promoting falsehoods about LGBTQ youth in Minnesota. Quist managed to fit most of them into a single interview.

In the interview, Quist made numerous errors of fact, assertions unsupported by research, and falsehoods about LGBTQ youth. Because the misinformation was so frequent and so contrary to the contemporary knowledge base with regard to transgender and LGBQ youth, The Column has transcribed the entire interview with notes correcting Quist’s errors.

Julie Quist: The point that Barb makes in her presentation is that the, you know… gender is something that we are born with and that if we determine what we are based only on our feelings, we going into a very dangerous area that we’re teaching our children that our feelings are always what govern what we do and who we are. Our feelings really change, in fact, and our feelings often deceive us. So what is taking place in the world of, you know, the gender activists is to create the idea among all people that really everybody is being required now in these policies to accept that it isn’t that we are that there s a spectrum of genders and we can decide whoever we are and then everybody has to change their reality to affirm that.

Fact-check: Gender is not “something we are born with,” and that’s backed up by the standard definition of gender. From the Merriam Webster dictionary, gender is “the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.” Gender norms shift and change within time and culture such as hair length, clothing, and societal roles. Dress such as skirts for women and pants for men was a gender norm in the Victorian era that carried sanctions for those who violated those norms. That many women wear pants in 2016 without sanction shows how fluid gender expression is over time.

Quist: But we have you know we have a lot of evidence you know that your feelings really aren’t what should guide you in life they are indicators and you need to subject them to a reality test and uh so we look at for example the example of an anorexic and an anorexic person is slender and looks in a mirror and he or she sees someone who is fat, and so that is the reality that that individual feels, the children many children who suffer from anorexia people die from anorexia, because they don’t have a grip on reality and so that’s a good example of how we want to teach our children to accept the reality help them work through false feelings and with compassion and love but we don’t have everybody affirmed to that person yes, you may look slender but you really are fat and so that’s the problem we are dealing with with gender fluidity. It’s a very dangerous. It’s actually distorting the language and deconstructing the very nature of sexuality and harmful, very harmful to children.

Fact-check: Gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia are two very different things, and Quist attempts to conflate them and attach the stigma associated with mental illness. “Transgender and Christian” author Austen Hartke describes the difference:

In short, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, or BDD, is a disorder in which your perception of your body does not align with reality. People with BDD are caught up in a cycle of obsessive thoughts about one or more parts of their body which they believe to be noticeably flawed–the word “dysmorphia” itself means “malformation.” Eating disorders fall under the BDD umbrella. Someone with an eating disorder, then, perceives a part or parts of their body to be overweight, and the obsession over that fact pushes them into a disordered relationship with food.

Transgender people, on the other hand, are diagnosed by the most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM V) with gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is not a disorder, and is now recognized not as a condition, but as a symptom. The word “dysphoria” means a sense of restlessness, anxiety, dissonance, or distress, and is the linguistic opposite of a sense of euphoria. Trans people experience this sense of distress when they contemplate the difference between the reality of their body, and the way they believe their body should be in order to align with their sense of self.

So, to sum up, body dysmorphia causes someone to believe their body *is* a certain way, while gender dysphoria is a sense that the body *should* be a different way. People with BDD are not able to see the difference between the way their body is and the way other people see their body; transgender folks are uncomfortably able to see the way their body really is, and the way that reality conflicts with their internal experience of their gender.

Gender dysphoria is not considered neuroatypical (or classified as a mental illness) by any mainstream professional organization. Diagnosis of gender dysphoria is still subject to debate, and professional organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association have retained the diagnosis in large part because diagnosis is still the primary means that transgender people can access gender affirming health care.

Host: How did this come about and why are you having a meeting in Spicer?
Quist: Well, I’m not sure that i can answer “Why spicer?” But I can tell you that it’s happening in many districts around the country and there are other school districts in the state who are also looking at changing their policies to reflect this. It’s really started — the father of the transgender movement is Alfred Kinsey. He’s somebody who did research that has been debunked as fraudulent and he actually coined the idea that gender is not fixed it’s fluid and — the research that he has done it was — he‘s actually called the father of the transgender movement. He believed that all sex acts are equally legitimate including pedophilia, incest, adultery, prostitution, groups sex, bestiality, sadomasochism. It goes on and on. And he’s described by Dr. Judith Reisman who is an author and researcher. As a sexual psychopath — actually — he devised the false sexual continuum and that has been picked up by people and is actually now being taught as fact in many of the, you know — just a lot of all over and it’s flawed research. It has been completely debunked and yet his junk science that is behind the transgender movement and that’s basically where it come from it’s been picked up by people who have an agenda to make this something everybody must believe and accept and if you don’t you’re demonized and you’re you know you called names like haters and bigots because you don’t want your children subjected to this kind of thing.

Fact-check: Nobody has ever called Alfred Kinsey the “father of the transgender movement.” Literally no one. Ever. Except for Julie Quist. The only mention anywhere of “father of the transgender movement” is by Americans for the Truth About Homosexuality, a group designed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. That group names Dr. Harry Benjamin as the “father of the transgender movement.” Benjamin was actually one of the first physicians to help transgender people medically transition and is credited with developing the Benjamin Standards of Care which were groundbreaking at the time, but have come under criticism. Judith Reisman, who Quist cites as a source, is a controversial anti-LGBTQ figure who has laid most of the ills she perceives in society at Kinsey’s doorstep. In fact, Quist’s source filed suit against the Kinsey Institute for defamation after the institute pointed out her flawed research. It was thrown out of court with the judge blocking Reisman from refiling the case.

Quist: And for them to incorporate into their thinking… this goes all the way down to kindergarten even pre-school where they are teaching this. Gender and sex by definition are in the dictionary and what you know gender says it’s two sexes. It’s male and female. Gender and sex should not be separated. Scientists and doctors understand sex is defined biologically; it’s based on anatomy, chromosomes, hormones, but there’s this new sexual philosophy that one’s gender doesn’t have to have any relationship to one’s biologically determined sex and instead it’s just based on what you think you are and what you wish you are, and you know? It gets very, very dangerous thinking because whatever is promoted, whatever is affirmed, whatever is not dealt with properly, you get more of… you get more confusion you get more dangerous activities and maybe if you want I can go into some of how that is harmful to children. Would you like me to go there?

Fact-check: Here Quist again confuses “sex” with “gender.”

Host: Yes that would be good. I don’t understand why anyone would listen to that man, you know?
Quist: You know, when it’s presented as a class at the university or medical school, it’s presented as an expert and people have a tendency to just, you know, receive and accept whatever is presented to them as experts. Many people aren’t used to questioning, you know, whether what they are being taught as experts is actually true. I would say — I would point, for example, to the American Psychological Association which is, you know, put out there, are the final authority on what is true about psychology and mental illness. And that organization is actually been taken over and is really not completely run but quite, quite significantly run by, you know, gender radical thinkers. So they have, you know — transgender has always been considered a mental disorder and it was always treated as such and people went for help if they were dealing with that they went for counseling and what they have done in the last couple of years is changed the definition of transgender from a disorder to what they call a dysphoria and dysphoria basically means that they have a problem integrating into the rest of the culture because of what they are, so it doesn’t — it softens it. It’s not able to be treated so much as a mental disorder so much as a culture needs to change to allow them to be more accepted. And that’s really, really radical and so you report the APA, the American Psychological Association says this and therefore it must be true. It’s absolutely false and this so-called professional organization I would say most counselors and psychologists and psychiatrists actually don’t agree with that, but that is their professional organization.

Fact-check: No data exists on how many “gender radical thinkers” run the American Psychological Association, if any. And the American Psychological Association did not change anything regarding gender dysphoria. The American Psychiatric Association did when it recently changed “gender identity disorder,” which was adopted in 1980, to “gender dysphoria” in 2013.

The APA notes:

A psychological state is considered a mental disorder only if it causes significant distress or disability. Many transgender people do not experience their gender as distressing or disabling, which implies that identifying as transgender does not constitute a mental disorder. For these individuals, the significant problem is finding affordable resources, such as counseling, hormone therapy, medical procedures and the social support necessary to freely express their gender identity and minimize discrimination. Many other obstacles may lead to distress, including a lack of acceptance within society, direct or indirect experiences with discrimination, or assault. These experiences may lead many transgender people to suffer with anxiety, depression or related disorders at higher rates than nontransgender persons.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), people who experience intense, persistent gender incongruence can be given the diagnosis of “gender dysphoria.” Some contend that the diagnosis inappropriately pathologizes gender noncongruence and should be eliminated. Others argue that it is essential to retain the diagnosis to ensure access to care. The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is under revision and there may be changes to its current classification of intense persistent gender incongruence as “gender identity disorder.”

Quist’s idea that being transgender “has always been considered a mental disorder” is also a false assertion. In the United States, prior to colonization by Christian Europeans, gender variance was celebrated in many Native communities. In other cultures both in the past and in other parts of the world, cultural systems name and celebrate — rather than medicalize or criminalize — more than two genders. The assignment of gender variance as a “mental disorder” is a relatively new creation brought about mainly by Western Christian colonization. Even conservative religious cultures in the Middle East recognize gender variance as a part of the human condition.

Quist: And the next step for them is that they are doing the same thing to other mental disorders. For example, they call them mental disorders, actually. I’m not sure how I would characterize but pedophilia for example — they are trying to water down the definition of pedophilia as something that normalizes it basically. And that would along with Alfred Kinsey’s understanding that children are sexual from birth and that you know they need to express themselves healthy expression of their sexuality, who involve getting them sexually active as early as possible, just coddlers even, and I know this sounds extreme, it is extreme but this is actually what their adopting now they are in the process of trying to normalize that by the APA.

Fact-check: It might sound extreme to Quist — because it simply isn’t true. Again, the American Psychological Association doesn’t make changes to “mental disorder” classification. The American Psychiatric Association did accidentally change pedophilia to “sexual orientation” in a new version of its diagnostic manual. It released the following statement in 2013: “In fact, APA considers pedophilic disorder a ‘paraphilia,’ not a ‘sexual orientation.’ This error will be corrected in the electronic version of DSM-5 and the next printing of the manual. APA stands firmly behind efforts to criminally prosecute those who sexually abuse and exploit children and adolescents. We also support continued efforts to develop treatments for those with pedophilic disorder with the goal of preventing future acts of abuse.”

Part of Quist’s confusion likely stems from a press release from the anti-LGBTQ American Family Association which blamed the American Psychiatric Association’s error on the American Psychological Association. The latter released a statement correcting the record in 2013:

A news release sent Oct. 30 on behalf of the American Family Association mischaracterized the position of the American Psychological Association with respect to pedophilia. The American Psychological Association does not classify mental disorders or publish the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, as the release incorrectly stated.
The American Psychological Association maintains that pedophilia is a mental disorder; that sex between adults and children is always wrong; and that acting on pedophilic impulses is and should be a criminal act. The American Psychological Association has worked for many years to prevent child sexual abuse and will continue to do so.

Quist’s assertion that professional therapeutic or medical organizations are trying to “water-down” the definition of pedophilia is false.

Quist: So people, the thing that I hope that people can understand is that this is… this seems so odd and extreme thinking and we’d like to just shut it out and say we can reject that, that is just totally not okay, but here we have it. It’s in our schools and that is being pushed from actually our department of education, which is also run by this philosophy and that’s what is so dangerous to all of us is that they are coming in and training our teachers. They are training our administrators that this is what is true and you must teach this. There’s no law that requires them to teach that but that is what they are being told and so we are faced with an incredible war against our kids and it’s very hard to come to grips with how… What we have to do to protect our children from this onslaught of thinking which is just coming upon us and the first thing we want to do is we want to inform people about what gender fluidity is what the transgender movement is really about, and you have to understand that in the policy and I have looks at the policy that’s being proposed there, in New London-Spicer. In the policy, they define their understanding of things along this… specifically the lines of gender fluidity. That means that there is no fixed sexual gender. I mean they for example they define… they use the word that biological sex as assigned at birth, and so that language is really important. They really take control of the language and they manipulate the language so that it means something different than what we think it means, you know, sex isn’t assigned at birth. It’s identified at birth and it’s a world of difference between those two words, but when you assign something, it’s fairly arbitrary.

Fact-check: The law that is in effect is Title IX. The Department of Education has said that gender identity and expression are part of the ban on sex discrimination outlined in Title IX. It’s a new interpretation and is just beginning to be tested in court, and the Department of Education has begun to enforce that interpretation against schools that discriminate based on gender identity or expression.

Quist’s claim that the New London-Spicer policy means there is “no fixed sexual gender” is one we cannot evaluate since the term “fixed sexual gender” appears to have been invented by Quist.

Quist: It could be this, it could be that and it could be it’s wrong so it can be changed later. It’s your biology doesn’t determine who you are. It’s what they’re basically saying and that’s right in the definition. The other things that they put in there is it’s all geared toward not just transgender but gender nonconforming, and there, you know, okay, what’s a gender nonconforming? It means… Well many of us would think maybe what that means is if a girl is a tomboy and she likes to do boys things and she’s a, you know, she doesn’t like to wear dresses and you know she is just a boy kind of girl. That would be gender nonconforming. Well, there’s a lot of that and it’s always been the case and there’s nothing basically wrong with that, but that’s not what they mean by gender nonconforming. Gender nonconforming means that you can be anything you can be bisexual, you can be no sex, you can be changing sex, you can be “it.” Just anything goes that’s what gender nonconforming means.

Fact-check: Here Quist confuses gender identity with sexual orientation. Gender nonconforming people can be bisexual, but it has nothing to do with their gender identity. Gender nonconforming means, according to Welcoming Schools, “A person who has or is perceived to have gender characteristics and/or behaviors that do not conform to traditional or societal expectations of their biological sex. Gender nonconforming people may or may not identify as transgender, lesbian, or gay. Children express their gender nonconformity as early as two or three years of age. They strongly communicate through their behaviors and interests, that they “are” or they “want to be” of another gender. Not all gender nonconforming children grow up to be gender nonconforming adults. Gender nonconformity does not determine sexual orientation.”

Quist: So when you have a policy that requires everybody to affirm and integrate this kind of thinking into the curriculum, into the training of the teachers, into training for parents — that’s part of it: Reach out to the parents and teach them what’s really true which is that gender nonconforming is fine. It’s okay. It’s good and if a child doesn’t.. isn’t anything you know.. haha.. If he wants to be whatever he or she wants to be, we have to affirm it. And again we go back to the example of anorexia: no we don’t affirm whatever people feel. Children feel lots of things that are not positive and we help them along. They feel insecure. They feel weak. They feel stupid. They feel a lot of things that we as adults say no, that’s not reality, that’s what you think but the reality is that inside you is a strong, secure, loving person. And we try to bring that out of the person. We help them along. What this does is, it — I mean where do we draw the line and say what you feel on this is something everybody must affirm but what you feel on something else is something nobody else should affirm? Where Is that line? How does that even work?

Fact-check: Quist again incorrectly compares body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria.

Quist: Well, I guess let me just say that when you’re getting into what are the consequences of this to the children when they’re confused you have young people who let say that you’re a girl and you decide that you want to be a boy and if you start taking hormones this is encourages and affirmed and it becomes the thing, you know. Children are very affected by whatever is the thing that’s going on. It’s the rage. If this is the thing which in a lot of respects it is becoming or has become a thing, you know. Bruce-slash-Caitlyn Jenner, you know, put it on the front pages that you can be a woman if you are a man and then you put yourself into these stereotypic — it’s just funny. It’s that for so long we’ve been told, “Don’t stereotype boys or girls or men or women they don’t have to be just this and they don’t have to act this, they don’t have to dress this way,” and yet what this does is it feeds into all the stereotypes you know a girl is somebody who is defined as a stereotypical feminine and you know hair and the dresses and the whatever. It’s just so contradictory. At first we’re not supposed to have these categories and then when we choose these categories. It’s like jumping into stereotypes.

Fact-check: There is no credible research demonstrating that transgender youth are transitioning because “it’s the rage.” In fact, transgender youth continue to face some of the highest barriers to medical care and safety in schools, and experience significant disparities on a number of measures.

In a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, MD, medical director of The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has this to say:
“Scientists and health care professionals have tried to understand the nature of the relationship between transgender experience, gender dysphoria and mental health morbidities for decades. Routine timely and appropriate treatment for transgender youth may contribute to structural change and, ultimately, the waning of related negative mental health issues and the behaviors that can put youth at risk for sexually transmitted infections, violence, substance abuse and incarceration.”

Quist also assumes that all transgender people transition into gendered stereotypes; this is a conflation of gender identity and gender expression, two different things. As many transgender writers have made clear, this is not the case and there is a vast array of gender expressions among transgender and gender nonconforming people.

It’s an interesting line of questioning for Quist who used to be a feminist in the 1970s, but has decried feminism for decades. She married Allen Quist, a religious right Republican who ran for governor and courted controversy when he told a paper that women are “genetically predisposed” to be subservient to their husbands.

Quist: So okay, you have a girl who decides that she is feels like a boy and so she really thinks she’s a boy they start binding their healthy breasts in denial of that female identity and it’s hormones so they won’t develop properly I just want to tell you some of the dangerous health risks of things like breast binders — that’s what they call it breast binders. There’s tissue injury. There’s bruising and fractures of ribs. There’s lung collapse. There are special problems. Low blood flow to the heart and the result of that can be heart attack. Decreased lung capacity. The lungs are only functioning about 30 to 40 percent. There’s decreased blood flow to the lymph nodes in the breast areas and this can cause clots. It can cause damaging situations. It can lead to lymphatic cancer because bacteria builds up and clogs the lymph nodes. It can result in permanent loss of sensation to the breast and chest area. These are some of the things that are the physical real consequences of our young girls deciding that, “I’m going to be a boy. I’m going to take hormones. I’m not going to develop and I’m going to put binders on and everybody is supposed to affirm this extraordinary dangerous, very dangerous sort of activity.”

Fact-check: There are no statistics on lung collapse, heart attack, or other health risks due to binding.

The source of information related to lymphatic cancer (and much of Quist’s other “dangers”) appears to be from a comment on a now defunct message board for transgender men. That comment has been picked up by anti-transgender websites to argue the dangers of binding. Dr. Hugh McLean, a well-respected and trans-affirming physician on Toronto details the risks to ribs, lungs, and heart by using incorrect binding techniques. Correct technique reduces the risks.

The dangers of binding are certainly over-stated by Quist. There is a long history of breast-binding including corsets in the Victorian era, flappers in the 1920s, Catholic nuns until at least the 1930s, and modern minimizer bras for women with large breasts.

It’s not, according to research, an “extremely dangerous sort of activity.”

Quist: And you get, you know, to the guy, you know, they decide they want to be, you know, a woman and so they’ll take the hormones and hormones are extremely dangerous. They have not been approved by the FDA, you know, you can order them online from anywhere in the world and there… And they take this stuff and nobody is telling them this is dangerous… haha this is really dangerous. Don’t do this to yourself. So, you know, how do they present this to people?

Fact-check: Quist is incorrect. Hormone treatment has been found to be safe with few long-term side-effects. A recent study of more than 2,000 patients found few complications. In fact, hormones are used as a treatment for many health issues, and while they have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for gender affirming care, they are safe when taken under a physician’s care.

Quist: One of the things that Barb will talk about methodology for training teachers and it’s called — and they use it with children too — they use a gingerbread cookie, haha, cutter model and they call the genderbread person. And so you know the gingerbread model… I mean it appeals to young children, you know, the gingerbread boy. They call it the genderbread person and they use this model and identify four different definitions of who you are, one of whom would be your gender. That is actually your sex which is defined is — not defined — that is assigned at birth and then you have your gender identity which is how you think you are, what you think you are, and then you have your gender expression which is how you actually you know show who you are and all of these different levels of your gender define, you know, you can be any and all combinations of who you are.

Fact-check: Quist is correct. The genderbread cookie model for teaching the concepts of sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation has been used by many groups including in Minnesota, although its past is suspect and may have been plagiarized from transgender activists.

Quist: So let me just give you an example somebody who is a biological male can feel like they are a woman, but they are… they express themselves as a male or female and then they can be heterosexual or homosexual. So many people think that if you are transgender, you are a homosexual, that you are attracted not to the opposite sex but the same-sex and that’s not true and that’s one of the things that is so offensive about saying that transgenders coming into bathrooms and changing areas. It’s because no nobody… Just because they think they are this other person doesn’t mean that their not aroused by… If it’s a man that is aroused by a woman or girl so you have adolescent boys, you know, who can go into changing areas — and this is happening — going to changing areas of the girls and you know he never claims that he’s attracted to women and girls but yet I’ll give you an example, the public school — the public high school in Virginia, Minnesota has a 9th grade boy who said that he was a girl and he was talking about it quite a while and then he pushed that he wanted to play in the girls, as a girl, on the girls basketball team and after a lot of pushing, he was allowed to do that. So he plays on the girls basketball team, and he was accorded a changing area, private bathroom that he could change in if he wanted to which I think he was using and then he actually went on the marching band. He tried out for the girls marching band, and he actually participates — he’s on that team as well, so he’s working — he’s um functioning, I mean he’s participating as a girl, and then one day he decided that he had a right to be in the girls changing room, and so he went in one day while there were about 5 girls, you know, partially clothed and he went in and he pulled down his pants in front them and started changing and the girls who know this boy, you know, were just horrified and they ran out. It was reported to the administration and the administration said, “well I don’t know if there’ anything we can do about this.” It’s still up in the air. They are looking at what they are going to do as a policy. They don’t know exactly what they are going to do.

Fact-Check: Virginia, Minn., has no girls marching band. The school has a marching band, but not one dedicated to girls. Despite her comments earlier in the interview, Quist at this point seems to recognize that gender identity and sexual orientation are separate aspects of a person’s experience. Quist’s logic in this part of the interview would suggest that her organization also wants gay, lesbian, and bisexual students banned from bathrooms and locker rooms because they are attracted to the same-sex. That’s a concept she’s also been tweeting lately:

Wait till they find out transgenders are still heterosexual. What are guys doing in women’s bathrooms? https://t.co/wpsM0DLyn5

— Julie Quist (@truesome) April 9, 2016

They are being falsely told as is the New London-Spicer school district that federal law requires them to allow boys to change in the locker room if they are transgender and in fact no federal law requires school district to grant students access to facilities that are dedicated to the opposite sex but this is what we are being told as fact, and I understand there’s been a lot of information that’s been put out in the newspapers, letters and the principal and superintendent and so forth that states specifically that, but it is not true and there — and that’s one of the things that we’ll be addressing at the event on the 18th is it’s just the laws… there is nothing in federal law that requires this but what they are going on is references to the federal Department of Education through it’s Office of Civil Rights has put out guidelines that say that it is required but the US Department of Education can issue guidelines… those guidelines do not have the force of law. All court cases to date have ruled that school districts have the authority to limit use of sex specific restrooms to members of specified sex. The executive branch of government — and that would be the Department of Education. That would be the Office of Civil Rights — isn’t the legislature, it’s the executive, cannot make law. Only the legislative branch of government can make law, and so we have actually we have the executive branch of government putting out information that has never been passed by law and it has never been adjudicated in the courts. To say that this is so… people are being deeply misinformed about what is required and what isn’t and so, you know, the school districts, many of them… and then that’s what happens is happening in Virginia, although there’s a lot of education going on there as well. In fact, there are court cases that can be brought against a district if they force girls to disrobe in front of people of the opposite sex. And because they are protected from this sort of thing by state and federal law, so we open ourselves up for lawsuits coming from you now the families of girls and boys.

Fact-check: As noted above, “Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity and OCR accepts such complaints for investigation. Similarly, the actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of the parties does not change a school’s obligations.”

At least two school’s in California have been under investigation for denying transgender students access, and in both cases the issue was resolved in favor of the youth.

Two weeks after Quist’s interview, a federal court did determine that Title IX protects transgender and gender nonconforming students.

Host: Unbelievable. It really is.
Quist: Well, it is unbelievable and that’s what’s really hard to talk about. If it wasn’t in your school, you wouldn’t… I mean nobody would have asked us to come in and give this presentation, and nobody would really pay much attention to what I’m saying here, but it is hitting our children right there, I mean it’s too bad that it has to be that… go that far. It’s actually a bill that has been introduced in the legislature that requires that, you know, all public facilities and private employers provide separate bathrooms and changing facilities to both men and women, separated by sex. It’s just, you would — think it would be a no brainer, but that is a very simple law. It — I mean the legislation — it’s out there. There’s a hearing that is actually coming up on that bill, for next Tuesday, but the… our governor in Minnesota has called that bill hateful and the people who think it’s a good idea to protect our children and our girls as, you know, bigoted and hateful because we’re not — we’re discriminating — they redefine all of the language and when you redefine the language you take control of the narrative so it’s called discrimination. If you want to keep out members of the opposite sex you’re being discriminated against — well they say actually it’s not members of the opposite sex. It is — we are bringing in girls — these people are actually girls and not really boys. Well, you’ve taken control of the language that isn’t true and nobody has… As I said before nobody has said that these boys are not physically attracted to the girls, and the other thing is when you are talking about gender nonconforming you are talking about people who change who they think they — they can change on a dime. There’s nothing in there that says how in your policy, I should… but the New London-Spicer policies, there’s nothing in there that defines what a student has to do, go through in order to qualify for being considered the other sex. They are… I mean it doesn’t go through that. I mean if that’s who they think they are, nonconforming means you can be anything and everything.
Host: Well, I hate to stop you here but we are running out of time, but the meeting on what date was it again?
Quist: Apr 18, and I think it is at the New London, excuse me, it’s at the Spicer American Legion at 7 o’clock. So it’s, Barb Anderson does great work and, you know, she’s coming there to make it and I, you know, I think that people just need to know more about what we’re dealing with and challenge… I think that’s the big thing, you can’t just, you know, people redefine language and you just accept. We can’t just accept that because the implications are so huge for our children.
Host: They definitely are. Well thank you Julie.
Quist: Well, thank you for having me on.

Fact-check: Dayton didn’t actually say the bill was “bigoted and hateful” and he didn’t call anyone names in relation to the bill. He did say he was appalled and that it was “about pandering to their extreme base” and that the bill is homophobic. He did call a similar bill in 2014 “hate-mongering.”

Here’s audio of the interview: