This week, the Department of Education ruled that public schools must grant transgender students unrestricted access to the bathrooms, locker rooms, and open shower facilities of their preference.
Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland, one of the three Democrats remaining in the 2016 presidential race, fully supports the Obama administration’s policy. “Yes, he supports” the policy, O’Malley’s spokeswoman Lis Smith told THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an email. But the campaign of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has not responded to emails asking if she supports the Obama administration’s ruling.
One week ago, Clinton wrote on Twitter that she supported an LGBT non-discrimination ordinance in Houston:
No one should face discrimination for who they are or who they love—I support efforts for equality in Houston & beyond. #HERO #YesOnProp1 -H
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 29, 2015
Opponents campaigned against the ordinance with the slogan “No men in women’s restrooms.” On Tuesday, voters in Houston–a Democratic city with a mayor who is gay–rejected the ordinance by a 22-point margin (61 percent to 39 percent).
There doesn’t appear to be any logical reason Clinton would support the Houston ordinance and oppose the Obama administration’s policy regarding transgender rights in public schools. But the Education Department’s ruling this week made clear just how extreme the administration’s policy is.
As the Chicago Tribune reported, the district actually allowed the student who was born male but identifies as female into the girls’ locker room, and “installed four privacy curtains in unused areas of the locker room and another one around the shower, but because the district would compel the student to use them, federal officials deemed the solution insufficient.”
The school district’s superintendent objected to the administration’s order to give unrestricted access to “open shower facilities” to students who are anatomically male but believe they are female.
“The students in our schools are teenagers, not adults, and one’s gender is not the same as one’s anatomy,” Superintendent Daniel Cates said in a statement. “Boys and girls are in separate locker rooms — where there are open changing areas and open shower facilities — for a reason.”
Clinton has faced some criticism from Democrats for her reluctance to support the LGBT agenda in the past. In 2000, Bill Clinton worried about his wife’s “general discomfort” with gay rights. Hillary Clinton did not support a constitutional right to same-sex marriage until this year. Whether she fully backs the Obama administration’s policy on transgender rights remains to be seen.
