Action Alert: Forcing “Transgender” Policies On Every VA Public School
On Monday, the House Education Committee will vote on SB 161 (D-Boysko), a bill that directs the Department of Education to develop model policies for all local school divisions on how they must handle “transgender” students in facilities use (bathrooms, locker rooms, overnight sleeping arrangements), pronoun use, dress codes, etc. This is designed to force the “transgender” ideology into every single K-12 public school in Virginia, whether there’s an issue with it or not.
Make no mistake, these policies will ultimately require students and teachers to be allowed to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex, allow biological males to compete on all-female sports teams, and compel students and teachers to speak another's preferred pronouns against their conscience, which they could simply change from one day to the next.
One Virginia High School French teacher, Peter Vlaming, was recently fired by his school board after Mr. Vlaming merely could not agree to use male pronouns for a female student, even though he called the student by their new name and simply refrained from using any pronouns at all! (Read more about Peter’s story here and here.) The reason he was fired was because the school board had just passed a new school policy related to “gender identity.” If this bill passes, this kind of thing will be coming to every community in Virginia.
In the initial Senate hearing on SB 161, Senator Peake asked whether the term “transgender” is defined anywhere in the bill itself or in Virginia law. (FYI: It’s not.) When Senator Boysko answered that she “wasn’t sure,” Peake asked her if she could explain the meaning of the word “transgender.” After a very long and awkward pause, Senator Boysko said she didn’t fully understand it and then called on her friends from Equality Virginia to answer. Not surprisingly, Equality Virginia did not attempt to define “transgender” but instead said that the “experts” at the Department of Education – unelected bureaucrat ideologues – would be charged with coming up with the definition!
Senator Boysko then declared that there are more than two sexes, including “non-binary” and presumably limitless others. She didn’t say, however, how many possible variations of pronouns that would mean would have to be incorporated into the daily speech of every student, teacher, and staff member – or whether that would require all new bathroom and locker room facilities for additional sexes. (For more on HB 161, check out our recent blog “VA Dems to End Girls’ Sports.”)
Regardless of how anyone thinks these confused children should best be handled in school settings, this bill will ONLY open the floodgates to new problems and conflicts that could have otherwise been dealt with on a case-by-case basis at the local level. This bill is both unnecessary and dangerous to the privacy, security, and conscience rights of every student, teacher, and administrator in Virginia’s public schools.
