Our nation's laws and policies should be rooted squarely in justice

President Trump today signed an executive order ending Obama-era protections for transgender youth in our nation's public schools.

The move elicited the usual reactions from the usual suspects. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty and Law Center both criticized the move. Conservative groups hailed it as an important victory for the right of states to set such policies, while religious groups have hailed it as a moral victory to protect our youth.

What follows are my own unevolved thoughts on the matter. Take them for whatever they are worth.

While I understand that many people, including people I genuinely have a lot of respect and admiration for, feel uncomfortable around the transgender, our comfort should never be the basis for our laws or our policies. Nor should the basis for our laws and education policy be what the most people want, nor what outcome will satisfy the most people.

Our standard should be the standard of justice, of right and wrong, and the demands of safety. The U.S. Constitution, which our elected and appointed officials have sworn an oath to uphold, demands nothing less than the protection of the marginalized and the powerless.This is the entire point of executive power, after all: to benefit those who have no power of their own.

Public schools can be rough because kids can be cruel. In repealing the requirement of the Obama administration, that transgender youth be allowed to use the bathroom of the sex they identify with, the Trump administration has failed to keep that oath and to respect its duty to the Constitution.

Because of this policy change, transgirls -- that is, children who were born physically as boys but identify as girls -- now lack a federal protection that allowed them to go to the bathroom where they would have been safe from physical and even sexual assault. Transboys -- children who were born physically as girls but who identify as boys -- are going to be in similarly unpleasant situations.

Bullying comes easy to our president, but it is not something we should want our children exposed to, involved with, nor witness to. This decision of his is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I stand with my trans friends. Come stand with us.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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