Keene School District’s New Transgender Policy Unnecessary
Keene Sentinel Letter to the Editor
Surprisingly late to the table, the social engineers over in the Keene school district have joined 6 other NH school districts in presenting a policy addressing the needs of transgender and gender nonconforming students. Transgender is defined as a person whose gender identity is different from their gender assigned at birth. The policy recognizes the privacy of transgender students as well as sets protections against possible harassment.
No doubt these protections are meaningful. But they are unnecessary. NH law already protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation and I don’t believe there is a public school out there that doesn’t already have some sort of anti-bullying policy in place.
Those two points aside, the policy gets a bit more controversial in its statement concerning restroom accessibility: “A student shall have the right to access the restroom or locker room that corresponds to the gender identity consistently asserted at school.” So in other words, boys who identify as girls would have the right to use both the girls bathrooms and locker rooms and vice versa. The policy also permits transgender students to participate in competitive sports in a manner consistent with their gender identity.
Undoubtedly, this move by NH schools and many others across the country is fueled by the Obama administration’s directives in May 2016 forcing schools to allow students to use the bathroom of the gender that they identify with or lose federal funding under Title IX; thus proving how easily the federal government manipulates the political climate in our country not by force of law, but force by checkbook. (more…)
