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Dear John,

Dolls with removable, interchangeable genitalia. Built for children as young as four. By a public university.

I wish I were making this up. But it's real, and it's happening in Minnesota right now.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota's Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health, Dianne Berg and G. Nic Rider, built these dolls. They call them "MyGender Dolls."

The university says the project is privately funded, meant only for licensed professionals. Federal officials disagree. The U.S. Department of Education calls it taxpayer-funded and has opened a formal investigation into whether Minnesota schools violated parents' rights.

Here's the part that makes my blood boil: parents learned about this the same way they'd learn about a stranger's press release, from a news report. Not a permission slip sent home in a backpack. Not a single word from the school.

A decision this intimate, how a child as young as four comes to understand their own body, was drawn up on a whiteboard in a research lab and rubber stamped by a state bureaucracy, with parents shut out of the room entirely.

No district has confirmed plans to bring these dolls into a classroom, and the researchers themselves say it won't happen this year. But a spoken promise is a puff of smoke; it disperses the moment the wind changes. Nothing stops the university, or a future administration, from reversing course tomorrow. No parent should have to lie awake wondering if their child's classroom is next.

Officials insist schools won't get these dolls. Yet the product's own website says plainly that it is intended for counselors and educators. Educators. Read between those lines and the destination is obvious.

If we let this slide, these dolls will not stay locked in a research cabinet. They will slip through the schoolhouse door the way floodwater finds the smallest crack, quietly, patiently, the moment no one is standing guard.

Sign now: tell Commissioner Willie Jett to adopt a written policy permanently barring MyGender Dolls from every Minnesota classroom.

Here's why this fight matters, John.

Parents, not researchers or a state agency, hold the first right to guide how their children understand their own bodies. Designing this material for children as young as four without parental consent doesn't just bend that principle; it snaps it in half, and turns you from decision-maker into bystander in your own child's life.

It's also our strongest legal lever. The federal investigation rests on exactly this principle: the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) gives parents the legal right to know, and to consent, before it happens, not to be informed after the fact like a formality.

And it's about the children themselves. A child as young as four is only beginning to lay the foundation of trust in their own body and the world around them, brick by brick. Handing them removable, interchangeable anatomy doesn't add a brick to that foundation. It pours adult concrete over wet clay before it has had any chance to set. That is the opposite of everything child-development experts recommend.

Here's the beautiful part: we're only asking officials to keep their own word. The Department, the university, and the governor's office all say schools have no plans for these dolls. Good. Then put it in writing. A written policy is a locked door; a verbal assurance is one propped open by a chair. A permanent policy costs them nothing if they mean what they say. Refusing to sign one would tell parents everything they need to know.

Add your name: call on Commissioner Willie Jett to ban these dolls in writing and require certification from every district.

Why would Commissioner Jett listen? Timing. His Department is standing in a spotlight it did not choose, under an active federal investigation right now over PPRA compliance, and the U.S. Secretary of Education has warned that continued noncompliance could jeopardize Minnesota's federal education funding. The Department needs to look responsive, and our petition hands them the easiest, cheapest way to do it.

Picture two paths, John. Down one, the Department adopts a formal written policy: these dolls, and anything like them, are banned from Minnesota classrooms for good, and every district certifies in writing that none were purchased. Down the other, we stay quiet, the promise thins out like fog in the morning sun, and eventually children as young as four are handed material no child that age should ever have to see.

There is real hope here, but only if we push now. Every signature is another hand on the door, holding it shut. Every signature makes it harder for the Commissioner to look away.

The window is open today. The door to that classroom is unlocked, but it has not swung open yet. Once these dolls cross that threshold, pulling them back out becomes a hundred times harder. Act before that door opens.

Sign the petition urging Willie Jett, Commissioner of Education, to permanently bar these gender dolls from Minnesota schools.

Thank you for standing up for Minnesota's children and parents,

Mary Curtis

P.S. A public university built anatomically modifiable gender dolls for children as young as four, and nothing but a piece of paper stands between those dolls and a classroom.Click here to sign the petition now!