I am a parent living in NoVa with five children between the ages of 8 and 20 years. As such, I have vested interest in the guidelines adopted by school systems, administrators and teachers. Four of my children are young women, whose safety and security were severely placed in jeopardy during the Northam administration. These guidelines strip away the very rights parents have been given as a means to both protect our children and to guide them well along the path to adulthood. As a parent who holds to Biblical truth that God gifted to each person biological sex at birth that is immutable and uniquely expressed both biologically and relationally, I find that the current guidelines grossly discriminate and even reject these core beliefs. Furthermore, the current guidelines are tantamount to child abuse, as they place the most vulnerable in our society in positions of potential harm in the opening up of locker rooms and other intimate spaces. They also open up children who need the loving guidance and connection of a parent to counsel that includes options that might be irreversible and damaging for their whole lives. As such, I am in support of Governor Youngkins’ new model policy.
The universal and God-given rights of parents ensure that they are the first line and primary influencers in the realm of their children’s sex and gender. No time in history has the shaping of this core identity been delegated to anyone outside of the family, much less a school administrator or teacher. I fully support the inclusion of a parent’s consent in the changing of names and pronouns. I also agree that it should only be within the parent’s consent that a child be given counseling regarding gender issues. If a student must obtain a parent’s consent to be given Tylenol or Ibuprofen, how is it that we have been allowing gender counseling to be given without obtaining parental consent? This is a malicious intrusion into the parent-child relationship.
I also support guidelines that a student uses the bathroom which corresponds with their biological sex. We have all heard the stories of boys claiming to be transgender using girls’ bathrooms or locker rooms and the tragic consequences of molestation or rape that ensued. Should we post security guards INSIDE bathrooms now, to patrol these intimate spaces? Or should we leave things as they have been for the duration and time-tested span of history, where biological women use women’s bathrooms and biological men use men’s bathrooms? Who is truly being mistreated here when the opposite is allowed? Who should we be protecting? ALL students.
The same holds true in situations involving overnight travel accommodations and other intimate situations. I support Governor Youngkin’s guidelines that these accommodations be based on biological sex. This is both common sense, logical, and again, protects not just the dignity and security of a very small group but the whole group of students.
Governor Youngkin’s new model policy will ensure that all students are respected and protected, while securing the God-given rights of parents to help their children make right decisions regarding their sex and gender.