Cross-dressing dad sparks uproar

By Stephanie Simon

Los Angeles Times

St. Louis, MO - The fourth grade field trip to the state Capitol was going well: The kids gaped at the rotunda, peeked in the Senate chambers, listened politely to a lecture on how a bill becomes law.

Then someone noticed that the parent chaperon with the gorgeous hair and tasteful makeup was a dad.

Most of the kids on the trip, apparently, either did not notice or did not care that a classmate's father was dressed as a woman, in jeans, a sweater and nice shoes. Most of the teachers seemed equally untroubled.

But when the fourth graders returned from Jefferson City, MO., that afternoon in mid-October, the parent chaperon who had spotted the "cross-dressing dad" alerted some friends. Word spread quickly through the Francis Howell School District in the middle-class suburb of St. Charles. The resulting tumult has not yet subsided.

Alarmed, outraged and indignant, several parents demanded that the school board look into the matter. They found a receptive audience in board member Lisa Naeger, a mother of two who recoiled at the thought of her 9 year old being exposed to a transgender adult on a field trip.

"I don't think it's fair to the kids or to the parents," Naeger said. "Parents have a right to make the decision about how their children are to be exposed to these issues. It's crucial that we make a stand."

Naeger has proposed a new policy that would require parent chaperons to wear "gender appropriate" clothing for school functions. It's unlikely, however, that such wording would survive a court challenge. In 1985, a federal court struck down an obscure (and rarely used) St. Louis ordinance that banned anyone from dressing in clothing "not according to his or her sex" while out in public.

Naeger expects the board to make a decision by mid-January. She is not optimistic that her colleagues will back her request. But a handful of fired up parents is not willing to let the matter drop.

The parents have asked the district to let them know whenever the father in question visits Castlio Elementary School so they can withdraw their children from class. They are pleading for a dress code that would require all adults who interact with students to "dress in what a 9 or 10 year old perceives as normal clothes for a man or a woman," as mother Patti Hight puts it.

The father has not been identified. Sources who know him said that he has dressed as a woman at work for at least six years. Actively involved in his daughter's education, he has volunteered in their schools, attended their concerts and conferred with their teachers while in woman's attire - without any backlash, until now.