Just days after Township High School in Illinois was forced by the U.S. Department of Education to allow a transgender “girl” to use their locker room, other girls are standing up and calling the deal unfair.
The board at the school district, District 211, settled with the feds—allowing the transgender student, who was born a male, to use the girls’ locker room, so long as the student agreed to stand behind one of the numerous “privacy curtains” they would be hanging in the locker room.
The compromise seemed to satisfy the board, the transgender student, and the federal government—but it seems like no one bothered to get the input from the vast majority of students and parents in the school.
In front of a school board meeting packed with about 600 people, the board watched as concerned students and parents took them to task.
In a joint statement, six girls told the audience: “It is unfair to infringe upon the rights of others to accommodate one person… Please understand that we, too, all are experiencing personal struggles that need to be respected.”
They added that, as teenage girls, changing around biological women is already uncomfortable—and adding the transgender student, who is still physically a male, to the mix would make things even more uncomfortable.
Their parents seemed to agree with them.
“It seems the rights of this one person are trumping the rights of everyone else,” said one dad. “I’m angry because I’m tired of being told there is something wrong with what I believe.”
He added: “Like it or not, we are setting precedent here. Other school boards are going to look at what we did here, and they’re going to cave to the [Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights] too.”
When he said that his primary interest was the well-being of his daughters, the crowd began to shout out agreements—with one member shouting, “And my girls!” and another echoing, “Mine too!”
That prompted ” He added that his primary interest was for his daughters, prompting members of the audience to scream out, “And my girls!” “Mine too!”
Rather than capitulate to the ruling by bureaucrats in Washington, many parents—and many of their teenage daughters—came to the meeting ready to fight. They held signs that said, “No deal with OCR,” and vowed to take the fight to court.
Superintendent Daniel Cates made no firm commitments either way in the fight, instead just saying, “We have heard from hundreds about this matter, and your thoughts tonight are just one aspect of the many factors and considerations that go into our decision-making.”
