TLDR; Scroll to the bottom of this post and send urgent emails to the County Council and our Annapolis delegation demanding that MCPS issue a high school diploma to Jane Doe (we don’t know her true name).
Forced conversion and assimilation is a topic that comes up in most histories of conquest and colonization. Canadians have been struggling with their past injustices against First Nation peoples and the Canadian Indian residential school system. In its 2015 report Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission of Canada highlighted a motivation for the residential schools.
Underlying these arguments was the belief that the colonizers were bringing civilization to savage people who could never civilize themselves. The ‘civilizing mission’ rested on a belief of racial and cultural superiority.
The United States had its own system of American Indian boarding schools.
The horrific phenomenon for forcing people to think a particular way isn’t limited to white colonists. Moslems have an extensive history of jihad; Chinese communists are sending Uyghur Moslems to re-education camps; the list is too long and too depressing to expand further.
Here we are, in the year 2025, and Montgomery County Public Schools denies a high school diploma to Jane Doe because she refuses to take a “mandatory” class in LGBT health. According to the petition at citizengo.org:
Jane excelled in every academic standard with a 4.76 weighted GPA and received a 1450 (96th percentile) on her SAT. The only thing standing between her graduation and her collegiate goals is her refusal to bow to an agenda that rejects her faith. MCPS is withholding not only a diploma but also Jane’s future.
First of all, I wish I had her courage when I was in high school.
Second, someone needs to explain why denying a diploma over a class in LGBT health is different from any of the examples of forced assimilation listed above.
Third, complaining to the Board of Education is useless. The members of that board have a long, long history of greed, disenfranchisement, red-lining, and prejudice.
1. Sign the petition In Defense of Jane at citizengo.org.
2. Write to the members of the County Council demanding that they instruct MCPS to issue Jane her diploma. If those elected officials know they are being held accountable for the school system they fund, they will indeed act.
3. Write to the Montgomery County Delegation in Annapolis demanding the same.
Jane, and her parents, thank you for your courage.
(Lead image: Suspected re-education camp housing Uyghur Moslems, Xinjiang, China)
