Up here in Massachusetts, where we persist in our bizarre notions of equality, a middle school kid got in trouble for wearing a T-shirt with something on the front that didn't meet the school's standards.

Was it a Marilyn Manson T-shirt? A T-shirt featuring the likeness of some gold-toothed rapper whose last hit was called "I Eat Cops"?

No.

The kid's shirt said, "There are only two genders."

This is Massachusetts, so the first question is, "Which two genders did the kid mean?" This ain't Mississippi. Massachusetts at least unofficially recognizes a half-dozen genders and encourages participants in gender identity to make one up that suits their own needs and wants.

But, Massachusetts or no, this is 2023 America, so the kid gets to speak before the school board, while reporters who oughta be trying to figure out why property taxes keep going up sit stunned, doodling the names of other careers in their notebooks.

"I shoulda been a butcher," writes Sammy Swift of the Gazette and Shopper while next to him reporter Lila Pancreas of the County Do-Rag scribbles "Go to law school?" over and over again. If there's a third reporter, he's trolling Indeed, looking for truck driver jobs.

Ah, America, where we finally have too much freedom of speech.

My take?

What kind of incompetent parent lets a kid out of the house wearing a "There Are Only Two Genders" shirt?

I'm not kidding.

If your daughter Madison goes to middle school showing more skin than Shakira at the Super Bowl, and they send her home, who gets the blame?

Little Madison doesn't get the blame. She's a dope. Everybody in middle school is a dope. Maybe Einstein wasn't a dope in middle school, but he rearranged the entire universe, so there's no telling how many genders he thought were possible.

You get the blame. The parents. You know, the people who are supposed to be running their kids' lives.

So, again. What kind of fool lets his kid go off to school in a "There are only two genders" T-shirt?

A parent who lets his kid go to school wearing that shirt knows damn well the kid is in for a bad day, and should be considered a bad parent, even if the kid is going to get to appear before the school board, babbling about his "rights."

Other kids in the school, presumably those who don't fit the traditional star quarterback or prom queen model, said the T-shirt "scared" them.

This means those kids must be wimps, right? This is America. We don't encourage cowardice among the junior high crowd. You don't want to raise kids who are gonna go all wimp during the next school shooting, do ya? Hell, no! You want your children to die like men. Even the girls, even though that might mean some of the girls are manly and that means ...

OK, forget about that.

"Yeah, but that kid gets sent home because his shirt said there are only two genders, while the schools have that rainbow gay flag everywhere," the dumbest parent in the crowd says. "Why is that OK?

OK, Bobo, I'll explain it to you.

The rainbow flag, the pride flag, tells kids that all kinds of people are OK. The "There are only two genders" T-shirt tells kids that only two kinds of people are OK and that a lot of other people are trash. Which of those things do you think should be taught to junior high kids? Before you answer, remember that junior high kids aren't just dopes; they're vicious little dopes. You tell them that some kids are "weird" and they'll tear those kids apart. I've seen it happen. So have you.

I was a dope in junior high school. I'm not now, not anymore.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion, and read features by Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Devil's Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.