(Freedom.news) Left-wing extremism has blurred a great many lines in American society, but none so completely as the line between biological males and females. Where once such distinctions were plain and obvious – and Americans were free to recognize and acknowledge them – today Leftists have forced the country into a debate about gender specification, as if there has always been an unresolved question.
Sadly, this debate is being waged primarily in a domain long dominated by the political Left – our public schools, which the liberal education establishment have long used as a driver of their radical social agenda rather focusing exclusively on educating our young.
But one state – South Dakota – could become the first in the nation to reclaim the lost sanity over this issue, if a lawmaker there gets his way. State Rep. Fred Deutsch, a Republican from Florence, has introduced legislation that would ban students from using public school bathrooms, locker rooms and showers that are opposite from their biological sex.
“I’m concerned about what I see happening in schools across our country,” Deutsch, who introduced a bill last week that would ban transgender students from using school facilities opposite from their biological sex, said, as noted by The Daily Signal.
“Federal bureaucrats, without the force of federal law, are threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that do not allow transgender students full, unrestricted access to facilities of the opposite biological sex,” he continued. “I don’t want that to happen in South Dakota. And I especially don’t want our children to be required by the federal government to shower, change or use restrooms with other young people of the opposite biological sex.”
Truth be told, neither do the vast majority of American parents – or students. But in the Age of Obama, ideology trumps sound public policy. And common sense.
Deutsch’s measure, HB 1008, easily passed the South Dakota House in late January, 58-10. It is expected to be taken up by the Senate this week.
As expected, Left-leaning advocacy groups are attacking the measure as a personal affront to so-called “transgender” students. But supporters of the measure have not included language that requires those students to change who they are or become something else.
It just acknowledges what we all know to be true – that there are two biological species within the human race, and that during the performance of certain acts we Americans prefer to engage in them in a unisex environment.
The bill also would require that schools make a “reasonable accommodation” for transgendered students; it described a reasonable accommodation as “one that does not impose an undue hardship on a school district,” “a single-occupancy restroom,” “a unisex restroom,” or the “controlled use of a restroom, locker room or shower room that is designated for use by faculty.”
In an op-ed for the Argus Leader, Deutsch wrote that his legislation also aims to restore privacy rights to public school children.
Deutsch said his bill is aimed at protecting South Dakota schools from “aggressive” actions by the Obama Department of Education to force schools into complying with guidance issued in 2014. That guidance specifically grants outsized rights to transgender students under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program that receives federal funding, The Daily Signal noted. Before the 2014 guidance, it wasn’t clear whether the law applied to kids using facilities segregated by sex.
Schools that don’t comply with Title IX risk losing their federal funding.
That has already happened. Last year a school in Illinois was threatened with the loss of millions in federal funding for not allowing a biological male who “identifies” as a female full access to girls’ locker rooms. The Dept. of Education ruled that the school discriminated against the student “on the basis of sex.”
That decision, however, conflicts with prior rulings in Pennsylvania and Virginia, The Daily Signal noted, where federal courts have ruled that Title IX does not apply to transgendered student use of opposite-biological-sex facilities. In the Virginia case, the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that Title IX specifically authorizes schools to provide gender-separate facilities: “A recipient may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex.” 34 C.F.R. § 106.33.
As for Deutsch’s bill, it remains to be seen whether South Dakota will adopt it. But one thing is already clear: The extremists behind the effort to force us to deny certain indisputable biological evidence regarding our children are not sending their children to schools where little Johnny in drag gets to shower with little Jane.
But beyond that, this issue was never about “equality” or “compassion” for children who are different. There have always been “different” children. This is about the Left once again using the brute force of government to enact a social policy that would otherwise never survive the democratic process.
And it appears as though this time around, South Dakota has had enough.
“I am introducing this bill because I don’t believe it’s right for the federal government to force our schools to require children to shower, change clothes or go to the restroom with members of the opposite sex. The regulation violates our personal values as a people, and our rights as a state,” Deutsch wrote in the Argus-Leader. He is right on all counts.
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