Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) ran on education — specifically, giving parents more say about what happens in and around the classroom. So it is no surprise, yet nonetheless disheartening, that his administration announced last week that it rewrote model school guidance for how educators should treat transgender students, eliciting a storm of controversy on a subject for which there are no easy answers — and that, therefore, requires less politicization, not more.
Mr. Youngkin’s education department to quickly tear them [the Northam administration guidelines] up and substitute its own guidance — one that better reflected the governor’s weaponization of parental rights as a wedge issue.
It’s troubling, for example, that the new model policies would allow school personnel to disrespect and belittle transgender students by refusing to use the name that conforms with their gender identities, even in some cases when parents have made an official request. Just as teachers are not allowed to teach creationism out of their personal or religious beliefs, so, too, must school employees be barred from hurting children placed in their care.
Far thornier is the question of what school officials should be required to tell parents about their children’s gender identity. Mr. Northam’s policy recommended that schools weigh sharing information with parents on a case-by-case basis, considering students’ health and safety.
Mr. Youngkin’s new policy states that schools may not “encourage or instruct teachers to conceal material information about a student from the student’s parent, including information related to gender.” This might make informants of teachers and counselors, causing transgender students — already at a greater risk of suicide and substance abuse — to avoid confiding in them and, as a result, not get needed support . . . . There is also the risk that outing kids could endanger them if parents are unwilling to accept them.
Instead of issuing another guidance more likely to inflame than to strike a durable balance, Mr. Youngkin should have rescinded Mr. Northam’s policy and asked the state board of education to consult with his administration on how to craft a guidance that would help school districts, individual schools and administrators to navigate these fraught issues. Indeed, those closest to the students for which they are caring might prove better able to muster the right mixture of compassion and good sense these situations require than a governor in Richmond who made his political name riling up parents on school policy.
The second column looks at how the fallout of Youngkin's anti-transgender policies will likely harm LGBT students in general. Here are highlights:
When it came time to find someone to edit his college essay, Aaryan Rawal turned to a teacher at his high school in Fairfax County. . . .He trusted her opinion. He also trusted that she wouldn’t out him to his parents.
“For years, my sexual orientation clashed with my Indian heritage,” he wrote in that essay. “I threw out pink clothes, purged musicals from Spotify playlists, remained silent in class discussions on LGBTQIA+ issues, and deepened my voice to hide the inflections of the ‘gay voice’ — all in an attempt to stamp out my sexuality. None of it worked, but I still avoided anything with even loose connections to Queerness until the pandemic. No longer walking hallways pierced by gay slurs, I finally appreciate that my sexuality is not tethered to a color, music genre, behavior, or voice, but rather, a part of me I cannot change.”
Rawal is now a student at Harvard University. Virginia’s public schools propelled him to that prestigious campus, and that should be a point of pride for the state. But a close look at his experience also shows this: A shift in policy could have shifted that outcome.
Rawal said it wasn’t until his senior year of high school that he began to openly identify as queer at school. He said he only felt safe doing that because of the “model policies” put in place by then-Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to protect transgender students.
Rawal is not transgender, but he said the polices created an atmosphere where he felt free to be himself at school. He described it as allowing him to focus on his studies and pursue his passions.
“I don’t think I would be attending Harvard without that policy,” Rawal told me on a recent afternoon. “I think I would have been very depressed and suicidal.”
The 18-year-old shared his essay with me and agreed to speak openly about his experience in Virginia’s schools because he knows what’s at stake right now for LGBTQIA+ students in the state. He also decided long before we talked that he didn’t want to hide that part of himself in his public life.
“The model trans policies saved my life and are the reason I was able to attend a school that, while not perfect, still affirmed some of my humanity,” Rawal tweeted. “@GlennYoungkin new guidelines undermine the humanity of so many Queer kids — especially gender Queer and Queer students of color.”
The new policies require schools to force students to use restrooms and other facilities corresponding with their assigned sex at birth and prevent students from changing their names or pronouns without parental permission. They do this despite studies that show LGBTQ youth are already at high risk of self-hate and self-harm.
In the United States, at least one young person who identifies as LGBTQ attempts suicide every 45 seconds and 1.8 million seriously consider it each year, according to the Trevor Project.
“We know if this gets implemented, students will die in Virginia,” Rawal said. “Students will be subject to abuse and harassment. To us this isn’t a game. This isn’t about advancing an agenda.”
Years before I was a columnist, I was a cops reporter, and in that position, I saw time and again parents who were capable of horrific cruelty toward their children. Saying he trusts parents to do right by their children may help build a presidential platform for Youngkin, but using it to restrict how vulnerable children can identify in the places where they spend much of their time is inhumane and dangerous.
His policies stand to cost not only lives but also human potential. How can we expect LGBTQ students to thrive when we are putting in place policies that we know will make it more difficult for them to survive?
A statement released by the Pride Liberation Project condemned Youngkin’s new policies as “bigoted.” “These revised guidelines will only hurt students in a time when students are facing unparalleled mental health challenges, and are a cruel attempt to politicize the existence of LGBTQIA+ students for political gain,” it reads.
A piece at Vanity Fair looks at how radical and dangerous Youngkin is despite his efforts to pretend otherwise.
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