Wisconsin Teacher’s Assault on Students

MADISON, WI – School administrators allowed a male science teacher in Madison Metropolitan School District to show a personal “transgender coming out” video to every class of K-5th grade children at Allis Elementary School.

The male teacher also instructed all of the students to call him by a woman’s name, an invented title of “Mix” instead of “Mr.,” and to call him by false plural pronouns. Liberty Counsel sent a records request to the school district to begin uncovering the full extent of this teacher’s inappropriate activism in the classroom. As set forth on his personal Facebook, Mark Vincent Busenbark, who claims to be “transgender” and/or “non-binary,” had long anticipated showing the video to every elementary grade child present at school on May 16, 2019. Busenbark now calls himself “Vica Steel,” and states the purpose of the video was so “all [the children] can know who I am and who I am becoming.” In his video, Busenbark dresses as a woman and states that people who respectfully disagree with him on the issue of “transgenderism” are motivated by “fear” and “hate.” He reads a book to the children entitled, “They Call Me Mix.” The book includes the statements, “‘BOY or GIRL?’ Are you a boy or a girl? How can you be both? Some days I am both. Some days I am neither. Most days I am everything in between.” The book also states, “As a kid, I never felt like just a girl. I never felt right knowing everyone was deciding and agreeing that I was a girl.” One illustration shows a child sticking her tongue out at an adult who is giving her a dress to wear.

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During the video, Busenbark also showed the students scary, ghostlike figures that represent “hateful” people that do not support “transgender” ideology. At the video’s conclusion, Busenbark then “requests” students to call him by a woman’s name, inappropriate plural pronouns, and the invented title of “Mix.” He states, “And now, let me introduce myself, anew…. I am going to take my wife, Stella Steel’s last name, and I am going to use, not mister, not miss, but ‘mix.’ So you can call me, ‘Mix Steel.’.. And for my pronouns, you can call me ‘they,’ ‘them,’ and ‘their.’” Busenbark has no legal authority to require students entrusted to his care to call him “Mix” or by incorrect pronouns, nor to manipulate them with the idea that they must obey him or be seen as “disrespectful” or “hateful” or “not loving.” His video has already had a confusing effect on children. One teacher emailed him that a kindergartner said, “I feel the same way at times” as “Mx. Steel.” Another teacher said that because of the video, other children “just accepted” a girl’s claim that “she is a boy now.” “It is outrageous that school administrators would allow a male science teacher to expose children to propaganda that promotes confusion about basic biology, and to instruct students to address him by a false name, title and pronouns,” said Liberty Counsel’s Founder and Chairman Mat Staver. “These impressionable students do not exist to validate Busenbark’s sexual identity. Parents send their children to school trusting that they will be taught academic curriculum, not become participants in a teacher’s play acting,” said Staver.