“I received a phone call from the principal over at the elementary school, forewarning me; letting me know that I was going to be receiving an email with sexual harassment allegations against my son,” Rosemary Rabidoux, a parent of one of the accused, told Fox 11 News last week.
“I immediately went into shock. I’m thinking, sexual harassment? That’s rape, that’s inappropriate touching, that’s incest” Rabidoux continued. “What has my son done?”
But none of the concerns Rabidoux had were at issue. Instead, her 13-year-old son, Braden, was accused of using incorrect pronouns to address another student at Kiel Middle School.
“(The investigating principal) said he’s being allegedly charged with sexual harassment for not using proper pronouns,” Rabidoux said. “I thought it wasn’t real. I thought this has got to be a gag, a joke – one has nothing to do with the other.”
Now her son and two other boys are being charged by school officials with Title IV violations, which prohibits gender-based harassment.
“It’s plural. It doesn’t make sense to him. I said so, I told him to call them by their names.” Rabidoux said.
Now the parents are calling on the charges to be dismissed through an attorney with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
“It’s not sexual harassment under Title IX, under their own policy, under federal law, and it’s probably a First Amendment violation. Almost certainly, if that’s their theory, that solely using the wrong pronoun, that that would be a First Amendment violation,” said Luke Berg, the attorney representing the boys.
Remind everyone, remember to study English well, to avoid a catastrophe.