Oregon teens, adults clash during walkout over transgender policies

GRANTS PASS, Ore.  — Students and adult counter-protesters clashed outside an Oregon high school during a walkout concerning treatment of transgender students.

Police detained several people, including a student who they said spit on a counter-protester and a teen who tried to intervene in another student’s arrest.

Students at three Grants Pass schools left class Tuesday to protest a school board vote to reinstate former North Middle School assistant principal Rachel Damiano and former science teacher Katie Medart.

Damiano and Medart were fired in July after an independent investigation found they used district resources to promote a movement they dubbed “I Resolve.” The school board reversed course and reinstated them last week.

The movement’s website says teachers should not be required to use a student’s preferred pronouns or preferred name, even if the parents endorse it, and that bathrooms and locker rooms should be assigned based on students’ anatomy and not their gender identity.

Ahead of Tuesday’s planned student walkouts, the Grants Pass Police Department sent officers to the high school and middle schools at the district’s request. The crowds at the middle schools were small and peaceful, the department said.

At the high school, several adults from religious groups showed up to demonstrate against the students, and the crowd was estimated at 200 to 300 people, the Mail Tribune reported.

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The walkout’s organizers told the paper that the “I Resolve” movement is disrespectful and potentially harmful to students.

One counter-protester told the Mail Tribune: “I think kids believe this is trending — ‘oh, I’m going to be transgender, too’ — and ‘they have to let me call myself the other gender.’ The culture is very wicked. I believe there are two genders. That is it. End of story.”

In a high-profile Virginia case, a teacher won reinstatement this week after being suspended for declaring he would never use a transgender child’s preferred pronouns. That teacher, Tanner Cross, had said that acknowledging a person is other than their biological sex is “child abuse” as well as a sin.