Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin delivered a masterful policy stroke last week. He revised Virginia’s model policy on accommodating students who identify as transgender.
Via a bill passed in 2020 by the Virginia legislature, Youngkin’s Democratic predecessors created model policies for school districts that conformed to the demands of gender identity activists. Schools were to allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms and play on sports teams based on gender identity, not the students’ biological sex. Most troubling of all, the model policies implied that parents need not (and perhaps even should not) be consulted before a school engaged in the practice of “socially transitioning” a child. To paraphrase McAuliffe, the old model policy all but said, “We don’t think parents should have a say in whether their school treats their girl as a boy.”
True to the spirit of his education-centric campaign, Youngkin is pushing back. His new policy did not mince words in passing judgment on the document it replaced, declaring that it “promoted a specific viewpoint aimed at achieving cultural and social transformation in schools” and “disregarded the rights of parents and ignored other legal and constitutional principles.” The single most important feature of Youngkin’s new policy is its definition of a transgender student: “a public school student whose parent has requested in writing, due to their child’s persistent and sincere belief that his or her gender differs with his or her sex, that their child be so identified while at school.”
This approach cuts past the noise to the true core of the controversy while maintaining the morally highest ground possible.
For years, gender identity activists have argued that using preferred pronouns and allowing bathroom, locker room, or sporting access by gender identity rather than sex were simply matters of kindness — and also possibly matters of life and death. In recent months, traditionalists have countered that the evidence base for activists’ “life-or-death” claims is shoddy and that, by facilitating “social transition,” schools were prodding students down a path toward experimental medical interventions that could lead to permanent sexual dysfunction and sterility.
But before the question of how schools should treat students experiencing gender dysphoria comes the question of whether they should take special measures at all. And before that comes the question of whether schools should be acting on behalf of the parents or whether schools can and should act without parents’ knowledge and potentially against their wishes.
Only a minority of fringe activists (which may include some in the media) would forthrightly maintain that schools can and should act behind parents’ backs. They would argue that this is essential for the “safety” of children. But this argument fails because if teachers truly had cause to fear for a child’s safety, they are mandated to report to the authorities. And there’s truly nothing “safe” about encouraging children to lead a double life — going by one name and gender at school and another name and gender at home. It is, indeed, a surefire recipe for confusion, anxiety, and even depression.
Most parents, liberal or conservative, would agree that they and their schools should be on the same page in terms of how to accommodate their children. Hence, although Youngkin’s model policy is sure to generate criticism from activists, it’s also certain to be overwhelmingly popular with parents and citizens.
Youngkin’s model policies are worthy of emulation in every state that values parental rights. State legislators could, as I’ve previously suggested in these pages, pass “Child’s Given Name Acts,” codifying that schools must identify children consistent with their parents’ wishes. Or state superintendents and school boards could, on their own volition, pass model policies based on Virginia’s.
If the GOP truly wants to become the “Parents Party,” then it must pursue a policy agenda that puts parents first — especially in the most sensitive and controversial matters concerning their children. Youngkin’s administration has blazed a trail that any leader who values parental rights would be well advised to follow.
Max Eden is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Restoring America page.
