Progressive orthodoxy mandates punishment for even highly reasonable suggestions
The Oregon high school track coach fired for recommending a separate division for transgender athletes wants his job back.
John Parks (pictured) was terminated following his suggestion, and due to complaints from the Portland Public Schools athletic director who alleged Parks had tried to stop “a specific student-athlete” from competing in the state track meet.
It didn’t matter that Parks specifically noted he “supports transgender athletes and does not want them to be excluded.”
The Lake Oswego School District somehow justified Parks’ termination via its policies against “hazing, harassment, intimidation, bullying, menacing, cyberbullying, teen dating violence or domestic violence.”
With the assistance of the Liberty Justice Center, Park sued the district in July for violations of his First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights.
The Center recently filed a motion asking the court for an “expedited hearing and […] a preliminary injunction to restore [Park] to his positions at the school.”
“Coach Parks’s letter to the [Oregon Student Activities Association] on its transgender athletic policies was protected speech under the First Amendment,” the Center wrote in its motion.
“His speech that he expressed to the OSAA did not occur within the scope of his official coaching or teaching duties and was made in his capacity as a private citizen. It was about a matter of public concern—OSAA’s transgender policies. Lake Oswego High School’s interest in the efficiency of its track and field program did not weigh against Coach Parks’s free speech rights. Indeed, the record shows that his letter to the OSAA caused no disruption to the track and field program.”
In the motion, Parks noted he was never given an opportunity to respond to the “false allegations” against him, nor to confront Portland P.S. Athletic Director Marshall Haskins. He also said administrators never showed him any evidence of how he violated district policies.
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The motion also includes numerous declarations from parents in support of Parks.
“I observed John Parks displaying upstanding character and acting in a non discriminatory manner while coaching [my daughter] and other athletes on the Track and Field team,” wrote one.
Conservatives should try the progressive ‘colonizers’ playbook
Given that even highly reasonable suggestions such as Coach Parks’ can cost someone his livelihood, those worried about the preservation of women’s sports can perhaps try a different tack: Use the progressive post-modern terminology playbook.
For example, the contemporary left-wing academy is fond of denouncing alleged “colonizers.” The term often has been used over the last year during the Israel-Hamas War — pro-Palestinian activists claim (erroneously) that Jews “colonized” present-day Israel.
And the term’s inanity literally knows no bounds. The (in)famous anti-racist Ibram Kendi used it to describe whites who adopt black children. The University of Oxford’s History of Science Museum funded a project about how milk — yes, milk — is “colonialist.”
And remember the professor who claimed being “super straight” on social media is “colonialist”? Fun times, indeed.
(Speaking of milk, intellectual bigwigs take “colonialism” so seriously they actually accepted what turned out to be a bogus research paper on how milk “colonizes” coffee. “Milk in the coffee can with critical glasses be seen as a drink-based colonization,” wrote Stockholm University’s Arvid Haag. “The hot and strong coffee cools and is rounded off in taste with the help of the milk, which thereby controls and domesticates the coffee.”)
So here’s an idea: If you’re fed up with biological males who pretend to be women playing alongside — and especially against — actual women, try referring to these athletes (and their enablers) as “athletic colonizers.” If you’re worried about any consequences, keep in mind teachers recently were told at a recent professional development that “resistance to colonialism is not terrorism.”
MORE: School district investigates track coach over ‘racist’ comments, unclear what she actually said
IMAGES: KATU/X
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