After President Barack Obama’s Department of Education and Department of Justice co-released strongly worded “guidance” (read: a decree) stating that America’s schools must let students use whatever bathroom or locker room they felt their gender identity corresponded to, we figured a lawsuit from parents couldn’t be far behind.
What we didn’t see, however, was how bizarre and conversation-changing that lawsuit might be. And boy, is this one ever going to do that.
According to Fox News, parents of students at a Minnesota high school have sued the school district after it allegedly ignored a male trans student using the girls’ locker room and engaging in highly inappropriate behavior.
The suit alleged that the student in question was making other female students uncomfortable by twerking, grinding, and engaging in “all sorts of scurrilous activity.” I usually hate it when news agencies use euphemistic phrases to describe things that make readers uncomfortable, but in this case I’m more than willing to let it slide.
The brouhaha is taking place in the small town of Virginia, Minnesota, which sounds confused enough about its identity already. According to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative political action group representing the 11 families in the lawsuit, the school’s policy that’s opened up bathrooms and locker rooms to whoever chooses to use them has led to an unsafe environment.
“School policies should promote the rights and safety of every student, but that’s not what Virginia Public Schools is doing — and it’s certainly not what the departments of Education and Justice are doing,” ADF senior counsel Gary McCaleb said. “No child should be forced into an intimate setting, like a locker room, with someone of the opposite sex.”
The suit named Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Independent School District Number 706 (the Virginia School District) and Secretary of Education John King Jr. as defendants.
“No student should be forced to use private facilities at school, like locker rooms and restrooms, with students of the opposite sex,” the lawsuit read. “No government agency should hold hostage important education funding to advance an unlawful agenda.”
“No school district should trade its students’ constitutional and statutory rights for dollars and cents, especially when it means abandoning a common sense practice that long protected every student’s privacy and access to education,” it added.
The facts of this case will come out in court, so it’s a bit too early to claim if this trans student was truly twerking, grinding and engaging in scurrilous behavior. However, while we hate to say we told you so … well, no, actually, we don’t.
Gender-specific bathroom laws are not meant to discriminate against transgender adults. They are meant to protect against sexual predators and those with mental illness who would use the opportunity granted to them by access to intimate settings to do harm — sometimes irreparable — to other individuals.
Even if you believe in transgender bathrooms, the behavior of this individual — if what’s being alleged is true — was meant specifically to intimidate and frighten students. That’s bullying under any definition, and possibly a sex crime.
Under a policy meant to end bullying, a group of female students are instead being bullied, and the school is turning a blind eye.
At the worst, this is a sexual offense, and the student should be prosecuted for what he did in the bathroom. If the school and the community refuse to do anything, then they need to be held accountable for that decision.
(via: Conservative Tribune)
