Kennebunk Select Board member Leslie Trentalange suggested during a school board meeting last week that concerned parents who don’t want transgender-identifying males in girls’ sports or restrooms have “pedophilic tendencies.”
[RELATED: Kennebunk Teacher Who Hoped Charlie Kirk Would “Rest in Hell” Resigns…]
“Their obsession with what private parts are sitting in between the legs of our students is nothing less than creepy, and should absolutely be raising eyebrows in and around our school district,” said Trentalange during the October 20 RSU 21 school board meeting.
“Their obsession with genitalia points not to caring for the students in this district, but perhaps to an underlying guilt for their own pedophilic tendencies. There is a registry for that,” she added.
School Board Chair Matthew Stratford briefly interrupted Trentalange’s tirade, calling her comments inappropriate, but she spoke over his interruption to finish her statement.
Then she stated of Stratford’s criticism that “I don’t think that was inappropriate, and I stand by my comments.”
Trentalange, who serves as the Kennebunk Select Board’s vice chair and one of its liaisons to the RSU 21 School Board, began her comments by clarifying that she was speaking on her own behalf as a community member but did not disclose her position on the board.
Select Board Chair Miriam Whitehouse confirmed to the York County Coast Star that the board has received multiple complaints in response to Trentalange’s comments, demanding that she resign or face censure. Whitehouse also claimed they have received letters in support of Trentalange’s inflammatory insinuations.
“Leslie is a valued member of the Select Board,” Whitehouse told the outlet. “Her remarks were not a reflection of her role on the board, nor did she intend to speak for the Select Board.”
“I understand that members of the public sometimes do not see us separately from our official Select Board roles, but we do not give up our rights as citizens when we decide to serve on the Select Board,” she added.
When she spoke to the Coast Star on Thursday, Whitehouse could not confirm whether Trentalange’s comments would be discussed at the upcoming board meeting on Tuesday.
“Accusing her constituents of being sex offenders is one of the worst charges someone can make,” local resident Melissa McCue-McGrath wrote in a letter to the board provided to the news outlet.
“Even prisoners go after pedophiles in jail. This is a dangerous assertion,” she added.
The Maine Wire reached out to Whitehouse and Trentalange for comments, but they did not immediately respond.
The agenda for Tuesday’s meeting does not include anything addressing Trentalange’s statements, but it does indicate that the meeting will begin with an executive session discussion with the town attorney regarding the rights and duties of board members.
Kennebunk’s RSU 21 made headlines last month when one teacher expressed a hope that the assassinated conservative commentator Charlie Kirk would “rest in hell.”
School boards across the state have become a venue for contentious and heated debates in recent months, as they must decide whether to follow the federal Title IX antidiscrimination standards and designate sports and private spaces by biological sex, or whether to follow the policy of the Maine Principals’ Association, the Maine Department of Education (MDOE), and Gov. Janet Mills by allowing biological males into girls’ sports and restrooms.
Multiple school boards across the state have already voted to adopt the federal standards and have faced no repercussions from the state.
