The most dangerous, and underreported, part of Obama’s transgender edict
For all the justifiable press coverage of
Barack Obama's federal guidance on transgender students in the public schools,
its most dangerous provision has largely gone unnoticed – and it has nothing to
do with bathrooms. The most outrageous provision of his transgender
bathroom order does not even involve locker rooms, where teenagers of the
opposite sex will change and shower next to one another. The most offensive part of the new policy is
that, under the Obama administration's federal guidance:
·
School districts must allow
biological males and females to spend the night together in the same hotel room
on field trips;
·
Colleges must let men who say they
are transgender be roommates with one or more women; and
·
School officials cannot even tell
those young women or their parents in advance that their new roommate is a man,
without risking a federal lawsuit.
The plain wording of the Obama
administration's diktat is clear enough, yet it has not
been reported, even by conservative news outlets.
Republicans get it wrong, again
Since the Obama administration announced the
federal guidance last Friday, several Republican elected officials have said
that its definition of a “transgender” person isvague or ill-defined.
That's absolutely wrong.
The eight-page
letter clearly
states that, as far as the Justice Department and the Dept. of Education are
concerned, a student becomes a member of the opposite sex the moment he feels
like it. The instant he tells school officials about his decision, they must
immediately treat him accordingly.
“When a student or the student’s parent or
guardian, as appropriate, notifies the school administration that the student
will assert a gender identity that differs from previous representations or
records, the school will begin treating the student consistent with the
student’s gender identity,” the letter says.
That's it. The student doesn't have to meet
any other conditions to change his sex – in fact, school districts are
prohibited from setting any. “Under [the Obama administration's unilateral
rewriting of] Title IX, there is no medical diagnosis or treatment requirement
that students must meet as a prerequisite to being treated consistent with
their gender identity,” the letter says.
That clarifies – mandates, really – that a
student doesn't have to have surgery, take hormone treatments, or present
himself in any way as a member of the opposite sex. He can continue looking and
acting as a male but say he identifies as a female. After all, that's sort of
what “gender non-conforming” is
all about.
Just as there is no minimum threshold required
to qualify as transgender, there is no maximum limit to the number of times a
student can change genders. “For some people, gender is not just about being
male or female,” CNN reported.
“In fact, how one identifies can change every day or even every few hours.” So,
theoretically, one could be male during homeroom, female during gym class, then
male again before he gets on the bus – and the school district is bound to
comply every step of the way.
Fighting to let a boy spend the
night with your daughter
Tucked away in the letter is a section
requiring schools to provide transgender students proper “housing.”
“A school must allow transgender students to
access housing consistent with their gender identity,” it states, “and may not
require transgender students to stay in single-occupancy accommodations or to
disclose personal information when not required of other students.”
The administration's 25-page
booklet of
proposed policies approvingly cites a local Colorado school district, which
says teachers must embrace “the goals of maximizing the [transgender] student’s
social integration and equal opportunity to participate in overnight activity
and athletic trips, ensuring the [transgender] student’s safety and comfort,
and minimizing stigmatization of the [again, transgender] student.”
The president's adopted hometown of Chicago is
more insistent: “In no case should a transgender student be denied the right to
participate in an overnight field trip because of the student’s transgender
status.”
So, any individual who says he is a member of
the opposite sex must be allowed to spend the night in the same room as members
of the opposite biological sex for his “social integration” and “comfort.”
Suppose a teenage boy discovers he is
“transgender” just in time to spend the night in his girlfriend's hotel room?
Or the hotel room of a girl who is decidedly not his girlfriend? He must be
allowed to do so without a chaperone, unless there's an adult in every room.
Don't forget, under civil rights law, there can be no disparate treatment.
If transgender students are chaperoned but “other” girls aren't, that's
profiling and could trigger a federal civil rights lawsuit from the social
justice warriors in the Obama administration or its like-minded successors.
Obama's already acted to
establish unisex bedrooms on field trips
This isn't mere speculation. Three years ago,
the Obama administration sided with a transgender female after California's
Arcadia Unified School District refused to
let her “bunk with [her] buddies” on a seventh grade overnight
field trip.
The Obama administration forced a settlement on
the school district, which agreed to the teenager's requests for hotel rooms
during “overnight events and extracurricular activities on and off campus,
consistent with [her] gender identity.”
Obama is now taking this nationwide.
School officials cannot alert the girls'
parents that a biological male will be sleeping in their room because, under
guidelines quoted by
the Obama administration, they can't even tell the boy's parents. “School personnel should speak with
the student first before discussing a student’s gender nonconformity or
transgender status with the student’s parent or guardian,” it says.
The Arcadia settlement – again, dictated
by the Obama administration –
says the child's birth sex must be “treated as confidential” by school
officials and cannot be disclosed without “express written consent.”
So, your daughter may not know she will be
spending the night with a boy until she gets to her hotel room.
Unthinkable as this would be, it hardly
scratches the surface. After all, this guidance doesn't just apply to high
schools.
Welcome to college! Meet your new
roommate
The administration makes clear, “In this
letter, the term schools refers to recipients of [f]ederal financial assistance
at all educational levels, including school districts, colleges, and
universities.”
To drive the point home, Secretary of
Education John B. King Jr. said in a press
release accompanying
the letter, “No student should ever have to go through the experience of
feeling unwelcome at school or on a college campus.”
(Emphasis added.)
How would a college apply the Obama
administration's demand to furnish a transgender student “housing” that
conforms to his “gender identity” so that he does not feel “unwelcome” in its
dorm rooms?
As demonstrated, the Obama administration's
guidance makes gender dependent on the student's assertion and nothing else; it
requires students to be housed with members of the sex with which they
identify. The letter states that the college cannot tell other students about a
transgender student's biology. “Nonconsensual disclosure of...a student’s birth
name or sex assigned at birth, could be harmful to or invade the privacy of
transgender students,” and Obama warns it could be against the law in the
letter.
Some people would argue that not telling a
gifted 16-year-old college freshman that her new roommate is a bearded
51-year-old with male pattern baldness and a taste for young ladies violates her privacy.
But according to the booklet, even the
potential roommate cannot ask about a transgender person's biology, because
“asking personal questions about a person’s body” is a form of harassment.
Thus, under the Obama administration's
policies, a man can declare himself a female and be assigned as the year-long
roommate of a nubile, possibly underage, co-ed. If the college tells the young
lady her roommate is a biological male without his express consent, it could be
sued.
And if the young lady objects, she is guilty
of stigmatizing and possibly “harassing” the poor man and should probably be
sent to sensitivity training – which she can schedule between her therapy
sessions to deal with her sexual assault.
All of this is being forced on the nation
without one legislator voting to authorize it, or even a public debate to
consult the views of the benighted American people. Obama's spokesman, Josh
Earnest, insists these
policies are being implemented to assure that schools and universities are as
“respectful and safe as they can possibly be.” And you can get on board or get
sued.
The fact that nothing in Obama's federal
guidance forecloses the possibility that a biological woman will become the
unwitting, unwilling roommate of a heterosexual biological male - overnight or
possibly much longer - tells us how far the president is willing to go to
enforce his radical ideology, and how little concern Barack Obama has for
anyone who does not share it.
