Texas school district nixes 'cross-dressing day'
By BOBBY ROSS JR.
Associated Press
Note to boys in the tiny Spurger, Texas, school district: Put away those high heels and pleated skirts. Instead, wear black boots and Army camouflage to school Wednesday.
A parent's concerns prompted the district 150 miles northeast of Houston to scrap its annual "TWIRP Day" -- when boys dress like girls and girls dress like boys-- in favor of "Camo Day."
TWIRP stands for "The Woman Is Requested to Pay," and for years Spurger schools hosted the day during Homecoming Week to give boys and girls a chance to reverse social roles and let older girls invite boys on dates, open doors and pay for sodas.
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"It is outrageous that a school in a small town in East Texas would encourage their 4-year-olds to be cross-dressers," Liberty Legal Institute attorney Hiram Sasser said in the release.
Tanner T. Hunt Jr., the school district's attorney, called Sasser's statement "inflammatory and misleading." Hunt said the district never planned or conducted a "cross-dressing day."
"They are a tiny little East Texas school district," said Hunt, a Beaumont attorney. "It never occurred to them that anyone could find anything morally reprehensible about TWIRP Day. I mean, they've been having it for years, probably for generations, and it's the first time anybody has complained."
Delana Davies, a 33-year-old mother of three, said she contacted Superintendent Angela Matterson on Tuesday after reading a school notice about "TWIRP Day."
Davies, whose 9-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter attend Spurger Elementary, said she viewed the day not a silly Homecoming Week activity, but as an effort to push a homosexual agenda in a public school.
"It's like experimenting with drugs," said Davies, who also has a 2-year-old daughter. "You just keep playing with it and it becomes customary. ... If it's OK to dress like a girl today, then why is it not OK in the future?"
After speaking with the Liberty attorney, Matterson agreed to exempt Davies' son and older daughter from attending school on Wednesday. However, district officials later decided to scrap "TWIRP Day" altogether and replace it with "Camo Day," where students will wear camouflage clothing.
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In Spurger, Davies said she will dress her son in camouflaged overalls and her daughter in a camouflaged T-shirt and denim skirt for "Camo Day."
"I'm happy that it's turned out like it has," she said. "But I don't want them pushing it on me again in a few years."
was the irony of trading 'gay-day', as it seems to be understood by this parent, for 'military day' lost on this school board?