Wisconsin Watch, a self-described “nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news outlet,” is, much like ProPublica on the national level, a progressive outlet masquerading as a straight-shooter. While this is a free country, the outlet’s reporting as if it is the last word on a subject is morally objectionable, as the Watch’s priorities originate well outside the political center.
Part of the “Global Investigative Journalism Network,” sponsored by the left-leaning Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations, among others, Wisconsin Watch also enjoys local donors such as the Joyce Foundation ($200,000), whose stated purpose is to effect “Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform” as well as to foster journalism that “shines a light on conditions we hope to change, policies we endorse, and success stories that present solutions to problems.” In other words, these are ideological nonprofits paying journalists they hope will write about pet interests under the guise of “nonpartisan, nonprofit.” But for charity’s sake, let’s assume that there aren’t strings attached.
The vast majority of Wisconsin Watch reporter Phoebe Petrovic’s investigation into “anti-LGBTQ+” policies at Wisconsin private schools — Christian schools — relies on left-wing advocacy groups for sourcing. You can read the whole thing here.
The report begins by interviewing Nat Werth, a controversial 2019 graduate of Sheboygan Lutheran — a Missouri-synod Lutheran school.
Petrovic writes:
As Werth was preparing to graduate, he drafted a valedictory speech in which he planned to come out as gay and critique homophobic Biblical interpretations as archaic, mistranslated or misconstrued. Administrators canceled his remarks.
Sheboygan Lutheran is a private school that receives public funding through tuition vouchers, which currently subsidize nearly 40% of its students. Administrators ignored repeated requests by phone and email for an interview. When a reporter recently again asked Executive Director Paul Gnan for a comment in person, Gnan smiled and said: “Absolutely not.”
As I wrote two years ago, Werth attempted to make about himself what should have been a speech about the whole of his graduating class. The school administration was well within its rights to deny him the platform to make a selfish speech. But of course the whole thing blew up into a circus.
Werth told Petrovic that “I’m not against school choice. It’s that everybody has human rights and that they should all be protected no matter what, especially the rights of kids who go to private and parochial (voucher) schools in Wisconsin.”
In other words, Christian schools should do what the government tells them to do, even if it’s against their deeply held beliefs about natural law and order.
Petrovic then turns to Suzanne Eckes, an education-law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for comment.
She writes:
Suzanne Eckes, an education law professor at University of Madison-Wisconsin, argued that language casting gay or transgender identities or behavior as sinful, even without policies codifying the perspective, “has a discriminatory intent behind it.”
She also pointed out how some policies, although not explicit, could result in LGBTQ+ students being treated inconsistently from others. For example, some schools specifically ban all sexual contact outside of a straight, cisgender marriage.
Note: Sexual contact outside of a “straight, cisgender marriage” is a universal prohibition on student sexual contact, because high-schoolers aren’t getting married, gay or straight.
Personally, the most troubling bit of the piece is when Petrovic reports that Beverly Yahnke, a guest speaker hosted by Sheboygan Lutheran, seemingly joked about sibling abuse during her “Transgenderism and Sexualization in Our Schools” presentation in April (held outside of school hours and free to the public, which Petrovic fails to mention):
In a striking moment, she also argued that children should go through natural puberty, without blockers, “to discover what it feels like to be a man, to feel their shoulders broaden to take out their little sister and smack her against the wall.” When an audience member reacted in shock, Yahnke added: “In playful jest, of course.”
It’s worth noting that Yahnke had visited Sheboygan Lutheran before, in 2020, and delivered the same speech minus the roughhousing part. She instead riffed about beards, an admittedly safer play. But, hey, at 35 minutes into a presentation before the clergy of apathy — high-schoolers — I’m sympathetic to getting a rise out of the crowd. It also happens to be true that pubescent boys are ogres discovering new strength with underdeveloped brains, which is why we pit them against one another in whatever sport is in season. Off-the-cuff jokes rarely read well on paper.
Petrovic did not indicate if she reached out to Yahnke or her organization for comment.
(2020 video for reference)
Further citations include the Trevor Project (queer advocacy group) on bullying stats, the Southern Poverty Law Center (a left-wing smear outfit) on which doctors can be authorities on transgenderism, TransLash (a revolutionary transgender zine that has partnered with the public teachers’ union the National Education Association) on the insidiousness of right-wing voucher programs, and GSAFE (which organizes LGBT clubs at schools) on the extracurricular nature of Gay-Straight Alliances, or Gender and Sexuality Alliances.
Wisconsin Watch isn’t nonpartisan in a way that a layman would understand the term; rather it’s nonpartisan because there isn’t a party far enough to the left to earn its support. The publication uses the deceptive presentation to advocate progressive policies while using whatever activist outlet is at hand to lobby for unmaking successful programs like Wisconsin’s voucher system — a program that allow kids to attend excellent schools and focus on their studies instead of intersectionalist priorities.
Sheboygan Lutheran was a bitter crosstown foe of my school, but on this matter they did nothing wrong and a whole lot right. The public should use Wisconsin Watch‘s reporting as a lesson that there are elements of the Left that would rather see kids fail than see them learn outside of the progressive orthodoxy.