Parents wishing to raise their children as boys and girls, without the added confusion of transgender issues, have won a temporary victory. Thanks to a unique action by the United States Supreme Court, at least one school district will be able to reserve bathrooms and changing rooms to boys and girls, based on their birth sex.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court — despite currently being on recess — put a stay on a lower court ruling forcing a Virginia school district to open a boys’ restroom to a biological girl. Earlier this year, the Obama administration sent guidance to schools across the country directing administrators to allow transgender students to use restrooms and changing rooms of their “gender identity,” regardless of biological sex.
According to the Obama mandate, boys and girls must be able to use the restroom of the opposite sex if they “identify” as the gender opposite their own. Schools must allow — and perhaps even encourage — boys who think they are girls to use the girls’ restroom, and girls who think they are boys to use the boys’ restroom.
This means that any parent or teacher wishing to educate young children and bring order to their already confused, chaotic, and passionate lives must allow their already complex world to become even more baffling.
While the girl-turned-boy Gavin Grimm is 17 years old, setting up transgenderism permanently in schools is bound to push the issue to younger and younger children. Already, there are summer camps for boys and girls who identify as the opposite sex — one open to boys as young as 3 years old!
Especially at such a tender age, boys and girls do not know enough about themselves or about the world to make such momentous decisions as rejecting their birth sex. Even at 17, the boy or girl is still a minor, without the right to vote or drink alcohol, and yet we as a society are expected to encourage them to alter their sex, in the face of biological reality.
Even so, there is an even better reason to oppose the transgender ideology — the bodily privacy of our children. When the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Grimm’s suit against the local school board in April, the board asked the Supreme Court for an emergency appeal, on the grounds that it was trying to “protect the basic expectations of bodily privacy of Gloucester County students.”
In other words, if your daughter goes to the girls’ restroom or changes in the girls’ changing room, she expects the privacy of sharing the space only with her fellow girls. If a boy is there — even if he “identifies” as a girl — this reasonable expectation of privacy is violated.
Next Page: Why this privacy matters, and why this Supreme Court action is temporary and likely to be reversed.
Peter Sprigg, Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council, praised the Supreme Court’s action to uphold “parental rights and the responsibility of local school districts to provide a safe learning environment for children.”
“Parents should continue to speak up about their privacy and safety concerns,” Sprigg declared. “If the Obama edict is allowed to stand, there’s no limit to what President Obama’s administration, or future presidents, will be emboldened to do.”
The transgender push will not only confuse children about sex, and invade their reasonable expectations of privacy, it also threatens to undermine the basic fabric of society. Obama’s edict twists the meaning of “sex,” reinterpreting a 1972 law to reflect a transgender ideology from 2016.
Children learn the meaning of words early on, and they love to play with those meanings. It is important for their upbringing that we use clear words without changing meanings. “Sex,” in that law and in current usage, means biologically “male” or “female,” and is different from “gender,” which may refer to identity. By mixing up those two words, the Obama administration not only does violence to U.S. law, but to the bedrock of our society as well.
Despite this victory from the Supreme Court, it is not likely to last. The four conservatives on the court ordered the stay, joined by liberal Justice Stephen G. Breyer. Breyer said he did not support the school board’s appeal, but joined the four conservatives as a “courtesy” to put the issue on hold until the full court can rule on the matter when it meets again in October.
If the court is divided 4-4 on the issue, as seems very likely, the 4th Circuit Court ruling will stand, and the school board will be forced to promote transgender ideology, regardless of the damage it will do to the privacy, education, and security of our children.
Our children’s privacy matters. Our children’s education on things like sex and how they approach the world as a boy or girl matters. The words we use with our children matter. Breyer deserves praise for temporarily halting this dangerous ideology for now, but long term protections for our children will require a true political struggle.
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