As someone who attended public school with transgender and nonbinary peers before Governor Northam implemented protections for transgender youth, I have seen how detrimental of an environment being ridiculed and oppressed makes the youth. Many of these kids that had to hide their identity at school were suicidal. School is a place where people are meant to learn and that includes learning about their own identity. I can guarantee if my peers were able to be open about their different identity without the fear of being outed to parents who could easily be abusive, they would have been so much less stressed and scared. With so many parents being uninformed and bigoted this policy is putting children at extreme risk. Kids can't escape their home and for many children school is the only safe place (minus the gun violence) that they see all day. It is obvious that Governor Younkin is trying to put lgbtq and lgbtq questioning children in abusive and violent situations with this policy. He wants transgender youths dead and the easiest way is for him to implement policies that push transgender and non gender conforming children to kill themselves. Kids have the right to explore their identity before potentially telling their family. Kids deserve the autonomy to withhold information from other people including their parents in order to stay safe. Children are people, too. It's time that the governor comes to terms with that.