Pennsylvania Students Protest Pro-Trans Bathroom Policy
By: S.A. McCarthy / September 20, 2023
Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/20/pennsylvania-students-protest-pro-trans-bathroom-policy/
Hundreds of students in the Perkiomen Valley School District north of Philadelphia staged a walkout on Friday, in response to the school board allowing students who identify as transgender to use whichever bathroom they like. (Photo: FroggyFrogg/Getty Images)
High school students in the Keystone State are protesting transgender ideology in their bathrooms. Hundreds of students in the Perkiomen Valley School District north of Philadelphia staged a walkout on Friday, in response to the school board allowing students who identify as transgender to use whichever bathroom they like.
A policy barring students who identify as transgender from accessing bathrooms that don’t correspond to their biological sexes was proposed at a school board meeting Monday of last week. After a four-hour board meeting, five board members voted against the policy and four voted in favor of it.
John Ott, the student who organized the subsequent walkout, explained, “Kids were upset. Girls—we wanted to protect them. They were upset. They didn’t want men in their bathroom.”
Ott’s mother, Stephanie, added, “The safety of females is so important and these students that stood out that walked out, they are to be commended. They have courage and they exercised their First Amendment rights. This is about protecting our children and our privacy and boys and girls. It’s simple biology.”
Student Victoria Rudolph said, “There needs [sic] to be some changes. It’s just uncomfortable, seeing 19-year-old men or 18-year-old men in the bathroom.”
The Perkiomen Valley walkout comes in the midst of a nationwide debate over the transgender agenda in classrooms, including in school bathrooms.
In California, for example, the state’s attorney general is suing school districts for implementing parental notification policies, requiring staff and faculty to alert parents when students attempt to socially transition genders, including when students use bathrooms that don’t correspond to their biological sexes.
Despite this, a growing number of Golden State school boards are implementing these policies, and parents have introduced ballot initiatives to combat pro-trans legislation. Those ballot initiatives make parental notification policies mandatory and require students who identify as transgender to use the bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams that correspond to their biological sexes.
In August, a judge in New Jersey also barred Garden State school districts from implementing parental notification policies, despite a wide number of New Jersey residents—including a majority of Democrats—favoring such policies. In Maryland, a federal judge ruled that parents can’t opt their children out of LGBT propaganda sessions in elementary schools, even when invoking religious liberty.
Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia first drew national attention to the transgenderism-in-schools debate back in 2021 after implementing numerous pro-trans policies and firing or suspending teachers for refusing to go along with the program.
Perhaps most notably, the school board was intensely criticized for allowing at least two female students to be raped and sexually assaulted by a male student who identified as “gender fluid,” and attempting to cover up the assaults.
The first rape occurred in a women’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School, when a 12-year-old girl was forcibly sodomized by a male student. Later, when attempting to approve a policy allowing trans-identifying students to use the bathrooms of their choice, the school board denied any knowledge of the rape, even when questioned by the victim’s father.
Just as students are now doing in Pennsylvania, students at Broad Run High School in Loudoun County staged a walkout after the school board’s complicity in the rape was revealed.
What Did You Say? 