With the release of a document meant to shred protections for transgender students in Virginia’s public schools, Gov. Glenn Youngkin sheds the tattered remnants of his moderate Republican costume.
Bearing a mouthful of a title, the “2022 Model Policies on the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools” buries its real aim under often-repeated assertions of compassion for “all students,” “all children.”
These assertions nestle uneasily with the proposed definition of a “transgender student” as “a public school student whose parent has requested in writing, due to their child’s persistent and sincere belief that his or her gender differs with his or her sex, that their child be so identified while at school.”
If one chooses to believe in the concept of the multiverse, then maybe one can picture an alternate universe where any youth dealing with gender dysphoria (about 5% of young adults, according to the Pew Research Center) can casually raise the topic with their parents over dinner and expect a calm, patient, empathetic reaction. Maybe in that same alternate universe, that child’s schoolmates would never, ever choose to shun or bully a classmate whose appearance or behavior doesn’t conform to social norms.
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That world, however, is not the one we live in.
Denial is no solution
According to a 2019 survey by GLSEN (founded in 1990 as the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teachers Network) 84% of transgender youth feel unsafe at school, to the point that their grades suffer, they’re more likely to miss school out of fear for their safety and less likely to pursue college. According to Human Rights Campaign Foundation statistics from 2018, 73% of LGBTQ youth have been threatened verbally because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. More than 70% of those responding to the survey reported feelings of depression, worthlessness and hopelessness.
Those statistics, by the way, can be found in “Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools,” the 2021 Virginia Department of Education document published during Gov. Ralph Northam’s term that Youngkin and his appointees have tossed into the bonfire.
The 2021 model policy proposal, while not above reproach, clearly defines a problem — the reception of transgender students in schools that contributes to high rates of discrimination, harassment and suicide — and posits potential solutions.
Youngkin’s version rejects all the proposed solutions and denies a problem exists.
The new document declares that the 2021 model policies are an expression of a “particular ideological belief,” the “belief that gender is a matter of personal choice or subjective experience, not sex. Many Virginians reject this belief.” There’s no further explanation for whom these “many Virginians” are, beyond a hint that Northam’s 2021 model policies “may be contrary to their personal religious beliefs.”
The phrasing makes advocacy for LGBTQ rights sound like a minority religion, one the 2022 policy wants to hide in the closet to appease a majority religion’s members.
Hoping for litigation?
Regarding the question of whether or not staff members and fellow students should use the pronouns requested by youth whose sense of gender identity does not match with their biological sex — a matter over which much hay has been made for political gain but which in practice amounts to at most a tiny, harmless inconvenience — Youngkin declares no such thing will happen unless the child’s parents have demanded it in writing.
The reality of school is that teachers and staff can find themselves in the role of counselor when a student is dealing with a difficult personal problem, whatever that problem may be. Should that problem be gender dysphoria, the 2022 document would require school staff to immediately notify parents. There’s no room left for determining whether such an action will result in abuse or estrangement.
The real goal, it seems, would be to make sure any teen who finds themselves coping with this particular issue will be too terrified of the consequences to ever bring it up.
This new document will go into effect after a period of public comment, and should it do so unchanged, it’s likely to face legal challenges. Those who crafted this policy might be counting on that reaction.
As Youngkin’s policy would have it, a transgender boy or girl could only use the restroom that matches the biological sex they were born with. Regardless of what one’s opinion on this particular controversy might be, the law of the nation in fact is that a student has the right to use a restroom that matches that student’s preferred gender.
That legal determination exists as the result of a federal court case tried in Virginia, Gavin Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that transgender students must be allowed to use the restroom that matches their gender, and in 2021 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case, letting the lower court’s ruling stand.
Social conservatives like Youngkin might well be hoping for a do-over.
Risks for job creation
But would that be worth the potential harm to Virginia’s economic development prospects, especially as we compete for high tech jobs to reenergize the very rural communities that helped alley oop Youngkin into office?
Consider that 289 companies have signed the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s “Business Statement Opposing Anti-LGBTQ State Legislation” in protest of policies that “isolate transgender youth” and “make schools less safe and inclusive for LGBTQ young people.”
What gets Youngkin favorable coverage on Fox News might risk sacrificing high-paying jobs for his supporters on the altar of political ambition.
To respect all Virginians is to acknowledge that Virginia isn’t just for lovers of culture wars.