by Amy Contrada
There’s been much talk about the lunacy of school policies supporting so-called “transgender” or “gender fluid” students. What happened in the girls’ restroom at a Loudoun County, Virginia high school — a girl raped by a “transgender” male student and the later public abuse of the girl’s father — rightly became a flashpoint in the recent election.
Will anything really be done under the new Republican administration to curb the dangerous policies that enabled this tragedy? What can the newly elected governor and Legislature do to end this insanity? It will be difficult. The radicals are well entrenched in the state bureaucracy and schools.
In 2020, the Democrat-controlled Virginia Legislature passed a law instructing the state Department of Education (DOE) to
develop and make available to each school board model policies concerning the treatment of transgender students in public elementary and secondary schools that address common issues regarding transgender students in accordance with evidence-based best practices and include information, guidance, procedures, and standards. Each school board shall adopt policies that are consistent with but may be more comprehensive than the model policies developed by the Department of Education.
(Sadly, a handful of Republican legislators voted for this bill as well.)
Thus, the Loudoun County school board was following the requirements of the new state law to pass transgender student policies when the scandal arose last summer (over the rape incident and the board’s lie that no such thing had happened).
The law requires school boards to address these issues for transgender students:
1. Compliance with applicable nondiscrimination laws;
2. Maintenance of a safe and supportive learning environment free from discrimination and harassment for all students;
3. Prevention of and response to bullying and harassment;
4. Maintenance of student records;
5. Identification of students;
6. Protection of student privacy and the confidentiality of sensitive information;
7. Enforcement of sex-based dress codes; and
8. Student participation in sex-specific school activities and events and use of school facilities. Activities and events do not include athletics.
“Supportive learning environment” means including LGBT clubs, diversity events, and incorporating transgender issues in the curriculum. “Student records” include enforcing biological fantasy (denying a student’s “sex assigned at birth”). “Identification of students” means using fake names and pronouns of their choice. “Activities” could include clubs, theater, and gym class (though sports teams are excluded). “Sex-based dress codes” will somehow be used to allow boys to wear skirts. “Events” could include school trips (when boys could stay in hotel rooms with girls). And of course, “use of school facilities” means that boys can use the girls’ restrooms, locker rooms (connected with gym class), and changing rooms. Anyone who dares to object will be guilty of discrimination.
The guidance document from the Virginia DOE, “Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools,” was inspired by the LGBT activists in Massachusetts who pioneered all the LGBT nonsense. (A decade ago, MassResistance tried to warn the country that the transgender wave would soon hit their states.)
Do Virginia parents really care about who is raising their children? If so, they’d better note this: on page 12, the Virginia DOE’s transgender model policies state that it is legitimate to hide a student’s new “gender identity” from his parents. (This falls under requirement #6 above: “protection of student privacy.”) After all, a student might not be “safe” at home if the parents know of his new “gender identity”:
[P]rivacy and confidentiality are critical for transgender students who do not have supportive families. Disclosing a student’s gender identity can pose imminent safety risks, such as losing family support or housing. … School divisions will need to consider the health and safety of the student in situations where students may not want their parents to know about their gender identity, and schools should address this on a case-by-case basis. If a student is not ready or able to safely share with their family about their gender identity, this should be respected. There are no regulations requiring school staff to notify a parent or guardian of a student’s request to affirm their gender identity, and school staff should work with students to help them share the information with their family when they are ready to do so.
It gets worse. The Virginia DOE has posted an encyclopedic resource page with “best practices” for supporting and promoting transgenderism in the state’s schools. This page, entitled “Gender Diversity,” links every leftist sexual-radical group imaginable (including the American Psychological Association). The now infamous National School Boards Association gave advice to school boards everywhere in their document, “Transgender Students in Schools” (2016), which is linked on this DOE page.
Do Governor-Elect Youngkin and concerned parents really want to end the transgender rapes, biological denialism, and “gender” curriculum in the schools? If so, they must work to overturn the Virginia transgender students law, throw out the state DOE’s guidance document, and delete the “Gender Diversity” resource page.
But the problem is not only trans student policy. Virginia’s entire “welcoming” policy for “LGBTQ students” must be scrapped. The transgender push is part of that larger radical movement; LGBT “identities” and “rights” are all linked. There are no halfway measures.
Sexual orientation nondiscrimination policies in the schools began this nightmare in the early 1990s. (Massachusetts led the way.) A lot of the graphic sexuality resources were first sneaked into the schools with “AIDS education” as the excuse. If you want to support “gay” students, you need to talk about anal “sex”! If you want to support lesbian and “trans” students, you need books about strap-ons! So if parents want to eliminate graphic sex-ed curricula and library books in the schools, they can’t be afraid of tackling the whole LGBT support network. And all “comprehensive sex ed” curricula must be jettisoned.
There was a lot of talk during the campaign about listening to parents, protecting students, and getting the filthy books out of the schools. Will the governor-elect have the courage to tackle this? In each state, the Executive Branch controls its Department of Education. Let’s hope the Youngkin administration will set to work immediately to overturn the transgender students law and purge the state DOE of the sexual-radical elements.
Image source: https://www.doe.virginia.gov/support/gender-diversity/index.shtml.
