Michael Brown Op-ed: Why a Virginia middle school is removing urinals from the boys’ bathrooms
Commentary By Michael Brown, CP Op-Ed Contributor | Monday, August 23, 2021
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/voices/why-a-virginia-middle-school-is-removing-urinals.html/
It’s bad enough that a middle school in Loudon County, Virginia, has decided to remove “male” and “female” signs from its bathrooms. But in an even more extreme nod to social insanity, this same school is removing the urinals from the boys’ bathrooms. Why? It’s because a number of biological females, who identify as males, are offended by the presence of urinals.
So rather than point out to these females that they are not really males (otherwise, they’d have no problems with urinals), the school turns the world upside down to accommodate them.
This is the direct result of school policy 8040, which states, “LCPS staff shall allow gender-expansive or transgender students to use their chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their gender identity without any substantiating evidence, regardless of the name and gender recorded in the student’s permanent educational record.”
So, no substantiating evidence is needed, and, the policy states, all teachers must comply with the students wishes.
In other words, impressionable students, including young children who haven’t the foggiest idea about sexual and gender realities, can simply declare their new identity, and the school must change their records accordingly. And woe be to the teacher or administrator who dares question this cultural madness.
Appropriately enough, the policy is titled, “Rights of Transgender and Gender-Expansive Students.” Gender-expansive? What does that even mean? Welcome to the new reality.
Of course, the problem with this new reality is that it has nothing to do with reality at all.
A biological boy who calls himself a girl is still a boy, and vice versa, no matter how much compassion we want to show them in the midst of their gender confusion. That’s why that girl cannot use a urinal: because she is not a boy. And saying this is neither hateful nor bigoted. It’s simply telling the truth.
But alas, we live in an age when truth has been displaced by perception, resulting in men’s bathrooms on college campuses having tampons on hand, because “men can menstruate.” And “breastfeeding” is replaced by “chestfeeding,” lest “men” breastfeeding their children feel offended.
And when you read stories stating, “When Jesse Ballard found out he was pregnant, he was shocked yet excited.” (Jesse, the “husband,” is the biological female, impregnated by his “wife,” who is the biological male.) And this is something we are supposed to celebrate. In reality, for all involved, it is heartbreaking. Surely, God has a better way.
Unfortunately, these decisions do not only affect the individuals making choices for themselves. Instead, they affect others living or working or going to school with them.
As David Kubal pointed out in his article about the urinals being removed from a school in his district, the perceived needs of roughly 0.3% of the population, now turn the world upside down for the other 99.7%.
Accordingly, he writes, because of this tiny percentage of people in Loudoun County:
- 46,000 junior high and high school students were given permission, by the school system, to believe they may not be a male or female as their chromosomes have determined by God’s design.
- 23,000 young women will be required to share a bathroom and locker room with young men.
- Thousands of young women’s positions on teams are now in jeopardy by men who are now allowed to participate in female sports on female teams.
- These school bathrooms may now become the scene of sexual assault and sexual immorality in ways that will mark the lives of these young men and women forever.
- Teachers will have to remember a person’s desired pronouns or other “gender-expansive” terminology (I must confess, I have never heard this term, nor do I know what it means).
That’s why, in 2011 in the context of the trajectory of LGBT activism, I asked, “How far have we already deviated from the path? Where will this current trajectory take us? If our college kids can describe themselves as ‘genderqueer dykes’ and ‘transgender gay males,’ what is coming next? How about the ‘trans child’? How about ‘queer in the crib’?”
How about the bathrooms in your children’s schools removing male or female identification and all urinals removed lest they offend biological females who identify as males?
The reality is that, based on where things have been going for several decades now, none of this should surprise us. The big question should be: if we don’t stand together and help turn the tide, what’s coming next?
I’m all for helping kids who are deeply confused about their gender identity and suffering real internal pain. I’m also sure that the current LGBT trajectories will do far more harm than good. Can we not all see where this is going now?
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2020.
Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2019.
Ryan also praised the efforts of the Capitol Police.
While the media spent its time connecting riots to the political right, the hard left continued to step up its tactics to promote social discord, as it has been doing for years.
On Monday afternoon, a crowd of people in an “Emergency Durham Protest” marched down Durham’s Main Street, then made its way to the Durham County Courthouse. The Herald Sun reported that organizations like the “Triangle People’s Assembly, Workers World Party, Industrial Workers of the World, Democratic Socialists of America, and the Antifa movement” were at the rally.
One of the participants, Eva Panjwani of the Workers World Party Durham, said in an interview:
The larger group was comprised of people demonstrating with various left-wing slogans such as a “No Trump, No KKK, No Racist USA” banner, pro-socialist Che Guevara shirts, and numerous odes to abolishing capitalism. One individual held a sign that said, “Cops and clan go hand in hand,” as the group marched past police officers.
The crowd gathered in front of the courthouse and decided to target a statue that was created in memoriam to “the boys who wore the gray.” That is, the North Carolina soldiers who fought for the Confederate Army in the Civil War.
>>> I Went to Charlottesville During the Protests. Here’s What I Saw.
What followed was a scene reminiscent of the French Revolution or the war in Iraq.
The rage-filled protesters tore down the statue and proceeded to kick and desecrate it. The surging mass of people hooted and hollered as individuals took turns spitting on and flipping off the generic visage of a young Southern soldier.
In the aftermath, some of the protesters took pictures in front of the crumpled-up bronze statue that had been pulverized in the fall.
However, the attack was fitting as a mirror to the “alt-right” march that had taken place at the foot of a Gen. Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville. The individuals portrayed by the monuments were simply irrelevant.
>>> Why Cities Shouldn’t Take Down Confederate Statues
This isn’t a battle over ideas or the Confederacy’s place in American history, it’s sheer and mindless identity politics.
American towns and cities are now increasingly being besieged by agitators who flaunt the law, direct their hate toward fellow citizens, and openly attack the crucial principles at the heart of the American way of life. The resounding message that these events send is that in 2017, it’s impossible for this country to accept people of different creeds and points of views. You are either on the “right side of history,” as President Barack Obama said, or you are on the wrong side. The narrative is increasingly join us, or be crushed.
Perhaps the protesters should pay more attention to what happened in our Civil War, which claimed more lives than all of our other wars combined. Perhaps they should study the leaders who, however imperfectly, tried to bind regions and people together to move on from a civil feud that pitted brother against brother and American against American. And perhaps they should have studied the people, like Lee and President Abraham Lincoln, who tried to piece the shattered puzzle of American nationhood back together.
Alas, those concepts were lost in a sordid trampling of an old, barely noticed statue. Unless leaders pay increased devotion to denouncing and taking action against these lawless demonstrations, mob rule is here to stay.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jarrett Stepman/ @JarrettStepman