Liliana, a student at Rochester’s Hart Middle School, had stayed up late on a school night. Not to gossip with friends or cram for a test, but to ask that the adults sworn to protect her at middle school would actually do their jobs.

“At school, we have a biological boy using our bathroom, and staff blocking off our bathroom, restricting girls from entering as this biological boy uses our bathroom,” Liliana told the Rochester school board.

Rochester and Rochester Hills are tony communities in Oakland County. Once upon a time, a home in a rich, outer-ring suburb was a guarantee of safety and good schools for your kid.

Neither is true anymore. 

The problems of the southern border might come knocking on your door, posed as DTE Energy employees. The problems of Detroit might come, guns blazing, to your splashpad. And now, the perversions of the queer movement might come to your kid’s classroom, school library, and restroom. 

There is a distinction to be made here between people who are themselves gay, or lesbian, or trans, and the queer movement, which promotes these lifestyles to children, like the drug pushers DARE warned us about. 

If someone lives and lets live, they are the former. If they spent a month celebrating their choice of sexual partners, they’re part of the latter. 

“Encountering a boy in the bathroom makes me feel uncomfortable and unsafe,” Liliana told the school board. “I shouldn’t feel uncomfortable using the bathrooms at school. No girl should ever be uncomfortable because there’s a boy in the bathroom alongside of them. We need a solution that ensures the privacy and safety of all students. 

“I’ve seen something, and now I’m saying something. I expect you to do something,” Liliana said.

If the queering of public schools is happening in rich Rochester, where parents have the means to fight back, versions of it are happening in every school district in Michigan.

When your kid comes home from school and says “nothing” happened, don’t leave it at that. Probe for details. You’ll find there’s a whole lot of something behind all that nothing. Your kid might be suppressing it because to say so may mark him—or you, if you speak up for him—as an enemy of the state.

The adults in charge are the people whose help they’ll need to get into college someday. Who can risk honesty? 

That Liliana spoke up despite every reason not to—despite every instinct of a child to avoid the adult world until absolutely necessary—says the situation is dire.

Having seen and said something, Liliana left the microphone. She retreated back to what’s left of her childhood. 

When the adults who run Rochester Community Schools were kids, boys used the boys bathroom, and girls used the girls bathroom. English teachers taught pronouns; the math teacher didn’t ask for them. They escaped 12 years later with an education.

An education is all Liliana wants. 

Instead, she finds authority figures telling her to disregard her own gut feelings and to accommodate the boy pretending to be a girl. It’s easier for teachers to play house with kids than teach them. So that’s what a lot of teachers do now. 

It’s a shame Liliana was too young to speak up in 2018. Back then, when Brett Kavanaugh had a U.S. Supreme Court nomination to bugger, “Believe All Women” was the media mantra. 

Liliana did what every parent tells their kid to do before sending them to preschool. Speak up if anyone makes you feel uncomfortable. Tell a responsible adult. They’ll take care of you.

Liliana did her part. Will the responsible adults at Rochester Community Schools do theirs? 

James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.