Utah governor says school board member who questioned a student's gender ‘embarrassed the state’
Utah’s Republican governor and lieutenant governor are urging the State Board of Education to take action against a conservative board member whose social media post questioning the gender of a high school basketball player incited a tirade of threats against the girl.
Natalie Cline, who has previously come under investigation for inflammatory comments about LGBTQ+ students, singled out the Salt Lake City athlete in a since-deleted Facebook post that falsely insinuated the girl was transgender. Cline later apologized for provoking a firestorm of vulgar comments after she learned that the girl was not in fact trans.
But the school board member defended her initial suspicions, saying that a national push to normalize transgender identities makes it “normal to pause and wonder if people are what they say they are.”
Many Republican politicians have successfully spread fear about transgender individuals to garner support for athletic bans and bathroom restrictions that threaten to push trans people out of community spaces. The sponsors say such policies are needed to protect women and girls. But as laws banning trans girls from girls’ sports have spread across Republican-led states, false accusations such as this have threatened the safety of both trans and non-trans youths.
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