GUEST COMMENT

02second&flume

In

by Melissa Daugherty melissad@newsreview.com

judgment. I encourage all families to develop and nurture similar environments and relationships; every person deserves to be loved and accepted as they are.

by Melissa Daugherty melissad@newsreview.com

of our community and from across the nation has been astounding. This has been an unexpected and undeserved journey; I have been libeled, slandered, defamed and silenced. I have feared for the safety and well-being of my own children, our students and staff, and for myself.

It is new to me to live with such fear, yet another way in which I am privileged. Fear is nothing new to LGBTQ+ community. For those who are transgender, especially those living in homes where being transgender is considered a choice, shameful, and a sin, fear and its consequences are ever-present. The Trevor Project’s National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health 2020 found the following:

• One in three LGBTQ youth have been physically threatened or harmed in their lifetime due to sexual orientation and/or gender identity.

• Over 60 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth reported engaging in self-harm in the previous 12 months.

• More than half of transgender and nonbinary youth have seriously considered suicide.

• Transgender and nonbinary youth who reported having pronouns respected by all or most people in their lives attempted suicide at half the rate of those who did not have their pronouns respected.

Additionally, The Trevor Project’s May 2023 Research Brief: The Relationship Between Caring Teachers and the Mental Health of LGBTQ Students found that feeling that teachers or professors cared a lot or very much about them was associated with 34 percent lower odds of attempting suicide in the previous year for LGBTQ youth, aligning with previous research that has found that the presence of supportive school staff is associated with lower rates of depression and seriously considering suicide in the past year.

One of my guiding principles in working with students is to treat each one as I would wish my own child to be treated in similar circumstances. I treated this child with dignity, respected their wishes, and honored their privacy while building empathy for their mother.

When a child divulges information about their identity, I offer support in sharing this with their family. If they are not ready to disclose, I work with them to progress toward this sharing if they feel safe doing so. As a counselor and a humanist, I offer acceptance and unconditional positive regard, a safe space, and containment without

Every allegation in the lawsuit is false except one: It is true that I did not inform the mother of this child of their decision to use a chosen name and pronouns at school. Professional ethics prohibit me from outing any person against their will unless safety requires it. In addition, the California Department of Education’s antidiscrimination policy, which CUSD observes, protects students from such violations of privacy. It is imperative that individuals lead and fully control the process of sharing their identity with others. I did not transition or encourage a transition for this student; I did support this child as they shared their requests with others.

On July 11, 2023, Senior U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez dismissed the case against CUSD.

I begin each weekly social-emotional classroom lesson with gratitude, and I’d like to practice that here: I am thankful to live in California and work for CUSD where LGBTQ+ youth continue to be seen and protected. I am forever grateful for those who supported me over the past six months—a special shoutout to Matt, Savvy and River who walked through the darkest of days beside me. And a tremendous thank you to all the advocates and allies among us who lead with love and empathy and engage their privilege to advance the lives of others.

To all LGBTQ+ youth: You are worthy, you are loved, there is hope. For those needing support during a crisis, text “START” to 678-678 to reach a counselor. Ω

A futurist I am not.

I was in middle school when Back to the Future Part 2 came out in 1989, and I specifically remember a scene in which Marty McFly, who’d transported to the year 2015, sees his future self talk in real time to the person on the other end of a call on what I’d then have described as a television phone.

“That’s so cool, but it won’t happen in my lifetime.”

I said those words with utter confidence.

Little did I know that “video telephony” had been in the works for nearly the previous half-century. This was a few years before everyone and their sister had an AOL account or had even heard the term World Wide Web.

While I had a pretty vivid imagination as a kid, I was always a skeptic. Scoping out situations and especially people and their motives is something that has protected me countless times and no doubt aided me as a reporter.

While I was dead wrong about the aforementioned advance in communications, and I’ve certainly learned my lesson, I largely remain and encourage others to be skeptical. In fact, based on today’s emerging technologies, I’d say having a questioning mind is more important than ever.

Of utmost concern to this journalist is non-human intelligence—one of the many existential issues facing humanity—which is being used at a much faster pace than I’d anticipated.

First it was the deep fakes. Now it’s ChatGPT and other AI apps designed to seemingly write like a human. These technologies are more than a bit terrifying, considering how some people will believe anything.

Take, for example, the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021. The thousands of brainwashed, impressionable Americans who stormed the Capitol that day were convinced to do so by a small cadre of radicals, including the then-president, who spread the lie about the election being stolen.

Let’s also not forget Pizzagate back in 2016: That’s the conspiracy theory accusing certain high-ranking Democrats of being sex-trafficking Satanists who drank the blood of children in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor. Then, of course, hitting closer to home, back in 2018, was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claim that Jewish space lasers burned down the town of Paradise.

To the average person, those ridiculous—and in MTG’s case antiSemitic—conspiracy theories are immediately dismissable. But to the QAnon crew and other folks who tend to place stock in such whackadoodle scenarios, they are often a call to arms.

My point? What happens when AI is co-opted by better organized nefarious forces in an effort to deceive the masses? It might be a lot easier than one would think in a Republic that at times feels like it’s held together by a bare thread.

In the near term, humans using AI to get people to turn on each other seems like a much more plausible danger to society than—bear with me on this one—the tech going completely off the rails and attempting to exterminate humans a la Skynet in Terminator II. Although, I’m not sure I’d blame the robots when they realize the biggest threat to Earth—climate change anyone?—and therefore their own existence is mankind.

In all seriousness, I do realize that AI can also be used for good. It can quickly analyze data for improved medical treatments, for example. But it needs to be regulated and everyone should be extremely cautious using it.

Indeed, be skeptical of everything online—whether you read it, hear it or see it—and learn how to property fact-check. Because AI can be used to do a lot of harm, and it’s not going away.