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They're Flaunting It

Bishop O'Dowd High School Rallies for Transgendered Teacher

By Phil Sevilla

A transsexual teacher has received the support of staff and some parents at Bishop O'Dowd Catholic high school in Oakland. On March 11, O'Dowd principal, Basilian Father Donald McLeod, and approximately 140 parents (out of over 900 parents in the school) met to rally for Lisa Newman, a long time teacher and coach at O'Dowd. Newman notified Father McLeod in April 2002 that she intended to undergo sex change surgery and hormonal treatment. Newman told the parents' group that she has undergone the "sex reassignment" operation and has legally changed her name to Tim Newman. Parents were given petitions and sample letters to send to the chancery to pressure outgoing Bishop John Cummins to approve the renewal of Newman's employment contract at Bishop O'Dowd, which was due to be decided in early April this year.

Newman's "sex change" is not the only scandal currently facing Bishop O' Dowd. In February, Alameda police charged popular basketball coach and math teacher, Mike Phelps, with several counts of child molestation over incidents which allegedly occurred 36 years ago. Phelps has been on administrative leave. With such a scandal, and the clerical molestation crisis, one O'Dowd parent (who requested anonymity) thought that the school would not want to touch the "transgendered" teacher issue "with a ten-foot pole. But instead," said the parent, "they're flaunting it. I can't get over that!" According to this parent, O'Dowd teacher Father Benjamin Owen had his students write a two-page letter on transsexual Lisa Newman. About Newman, the parent said, "I think it would be appropriate [for her] to resign and go about doing her business; and if she's such a great teacher as everybody says she is, then I'm sure she can get a job somewhere else. It's turned into a political agenda."

The 23 members of the committee of parents who have joined with Father McLeod to lobby for acceptance of the transsexual teacher are a small minority of parents at the school. On March 4, they sent a letter to all the parents to publicize the March 11 open meeting and to seek their support. Less than 17 percent of the school's parents attended. Part of the March 4 letter spoke glowingly of Lisa Newman's performance, her honesty, and portrayed the transsexual teacher's decision to undergo "gender transition" as a "highly personal, medical matter having no bearing on his [sic] tenure as Science Department Chair, teacher or coach."

It appeared that many of the parents at the meeting were not Catholic. The first speaker, Ariel Pearl-Jacobvitz, lectured the audience that Newman's decision was a personal choice and that the issue was about the "inalienable right of the individual to make those choices without fear of consequence." She further declared, "we should all be in the vanguard of the protection of a person's human and civil rights." A glowing testimony followed from one of the parents, reminding the audience that Lisa Newman, now Mr. Tim Newman, has been at O'Dowd for twelve years as teacher and coach.

Following wild applause from the audience, Newman took the podium to tell her story -- how she grew up in a conservative family and from a very young age felt she was male. She mentioned that she has been counseling students and that her transition to being male was complete. After Newman's story, the moderators opened up a controlled question-and-answer period and invited Father McLeod to address the gathering. McLeod said there is no clear-cut scientific facts on transsexualism but that the scientific/medical community was moving in the direction of treating transsexuality as a medically diagnosable treatment. McLeod said that, as far as he knew, there was no Church teaching on transgendered persons. This declaration was followed by widespread applause. Before leaving the podium, Father McLeod offered his theological perspective on transsexuals. "God don't make junk," he quipped. "He made humankind in His image and likeness. Ultimately what gender is chosen is between the individual and God. God may have made one huge mistake in creation. He limited His power. Humans were given the freedom to choose. We use our intellect to choose. He took a risk." These ruminations were followed by another round of applause.

After John Kupski, the sole dissenting voice in the audience, was discouraged from speaking at length (he had quoted Matthew 18:6 about the corruption of young souls), a self-proclaimed Jewish parent stood up to say she was proud to be a member of the Bishop O'Dowd community. She had been afraid at first that the school would be conservatively Catholic. "This issue," she stated, "is about education. We need to educate people. Thank you, O'Dowd." Clapping followed. Another woman got up and stated she was a Protestant minister. Implying a superior understanding of Scripture, she preached that everything was created with immense diversity. "Why don't we understand diversity in humans?" Another round of applause from the audience. Yet another woman, who identified herself as conservative, stood up and cautioned that no one should judge Lisa Newman. This was followed by more clapping.

Shortly after this, this reporter was called out of the meeting for audio taping it and asked to leave (or have the police called on me). Witnesses who remained at the meeting later told me that, after I left, Father McLeod announced that their attempt to keep this quiet was "blown to smithereens." John Kupski told me that he was able to challenge the audience at the end of the evening to consider the real spiritual ramifications involved and to decide whether they were Catholics. If they were, said Kupski, they needed to live the Catholic faith. "I stated that, from what I had heard that evening, they were not living our faith," said Kupski.

A few days later, I sent an e-mail message to Father Paul Vassar, vicar general of the Oakland diocese, and to the current chancellor, Sister Barbara Flannery, requesting answers to three questions: what was the bishop's position on hiring transsexual teachers and coaches? Did he intend to renew Newman's contract? Did the diocese pay for her very costly sex alteration surgery and therapy? Sex change procedures can cost between $20,000 to $50,000 according to websites that deal with transsexual issues. (Newman indicated to the audience during the March 11 meeting that neither the diocese nor the school had paid for her medical expenses.) I received a response from Father Vassar, who declined to answer any questions and referred me to Father McLeod. I called Father McLeod and left two messages, but he did not return my calls. Then I sent him an e-mail message requesting answers to the same questions I sent the chancery office. McLeod's reply was curt and evasive: "the questions you ask relate to personnel matters that you, as a practicing journalist, should know are privileged and not subject matter for the public media. On this basis, I am sure you can appreciate why I must decline to respond to any of them. Sincerely, Rev. D.J. McLeod, CSB."

Has the Church, as Father McCleod indicated at the March 11 meeting, not addressed transsexualism? The Vatican in 2000 sent Church leaders a confidential instruction stating that sex change procedures do not change a person's sex. According to a January 14, 2003 Catholic News Service report, "the Vatican text defines transsexualism as a psychic disorder of those whose genetic makeup and physical characteristics are unambiguously of one sex but who feel that they belong to the opposite sex. In some cases, the urge is so strong that the person undergoes a 'sex change' operation to acquire the opposite sex's external sexual organs. The new organs have no reproductive function."

And what of the claim often made that sex change helps a person realize his true "gender"? In a letter to the editor, responding to a March 22, 2001 article in USA Today about a recent study that suggests transsexuals have brains with characteristics of the opposite sex, psychologist Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, said, "what is the real gender of such a person -- that of the brain or the sexual organs? Perhaps the best step to take would not be sex-change surgery, but treatment to modify the problematic neurons in the brain. Is it really a better solution to amputate a man's genitals, excavate an artificial vagina, implant false breasts and put him on artificial hormones for the rest of his life? All this attention to sex-change surgery makes the issue seem like a clear-cut matter of liberation. But the remodeling of the body can have devastating consequences. Many transsexuals, in my opinion, remain tormented and regret having consented to surgical mutilation."

In a March 22 interview, Nicolosi told me that, "according to Church teaching, 'Tim' Newman is still a woman. The popular argument is, 'I am man in a woman's body and so I am going through the surgery. I am changing my body to correspond with my internal sense of myself' -- and that is a very popular misunderstanding. The fact is these are very seriously disturbed people. They are fundamentally disturbed in their gender identity and surgery is not going to correct the person's problem. This is a profound sexual identity confusion. Surgery merely colludes with their delusion. These are people who went through a very painful trauma as a child where they renounced their biologically derived true gender and adopted, out of a high anxiety situation, the opposite gender identity; now they are going through a very expensive and long term and torturous mutilation of the body to force the body, in an artificial way, to conform to their distorted self image. I don't think it really solves the problem, and to present a transgendered person to students as an example of what is normal and natural is a profound injustice to the students."

Typically in female-to-male sex reconstruction (also called gender reassignment) surgery, a hysterectomy and oophorectomy (removal of uterus and ovaries) are done, as well as a bilateral mastectomy (breast removal). Possibly a phalloplasty (construction of a penis) will be performed, as well as major hormonal therapy, including testosterone doses that suppress menstrual activity in female-to-male subjects.

A thirteen-year Dutch study in the 1980s revealed positive medical effects of gender reassignment treatment. However, according to one researcher, Professor Doctor Gooren, feelings of loneliness and serious psychological problems remained prevalent after gender reassignment. The researchers were also concerned about the side effects and long-term effects of cross-gender hormone treatment.

With regard to the spiritual aspects of the transsexual problem, in a March 13 interview, Father John Harvey, the director of Courage, a Catholic outreach ministry to sexually dysfunctional persons, strongly emphasized the objective moral evil of suppressing the sexual functions of the body. "The [sex change] operation will not lead to anything productive -- it is against nature," explained Father Harvey. He thought that because the teacher at O' Dowd was violating the moral law, the scandal to the school was a real sin and the school has an obligation not to consent to rehiring the teacher.

One Bishop O'Dowd parent agreed. "Maybe I'm being selfish," he said, "but my feeling is our children need to be protected. They need an advocate. The priority is the school; the school comes first. Start with the youth. Many will walk away from the faith because of the corruption."

His wife said, "this woman, Lisa Newman, will always be a woman, and she will always battle the way God made her. She will have to take hormones the rest of her life." The problems at Bishop O'Dowd, said the parent, derive not only from bad religious instruction but from Father McCleod's "lack of leadership with the teachers. The teachers are screwing up," she said, "and the families are the ones suffering. He [McLeod] doesn't return your phone calls. He just wants you to go away.

"It is so evil what is going on, so incredibly bad," continued the parent. So we're writing a letter to Cardinal Ratzinger and the Holy Father with copies of Bishop O'Dowd correspondence. This has to stop now!"

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