Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin defended his administration’s model policies on transgender students, saying the previous policies “excluded parents” after a day of student protests at numerous public schools.
In a Wednesday appearance on Fox and Friends, the Republican governor said the main goal of his proposed model policies is to protect the rights of parents and maintain their role as the primary decision-makers in their children’s lives.
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“We first want to love every kid, and we want to make sure we’re protecting their dignity, and their privacy, and their safety,” the governor said. “And the difference in what our policies are really focused on is indeed bringing parents fully in.”
The model policies were announced earlier this month and require public schools to obtain written parental permission before accommodating a student’s request to use a name, pronoun, or bathroom facility that does not correspond with their biological sex. Under previous policies, school districts across Virginia had allowed schools to facilitate a child’s transition to a new gender identity without parental knowledge or consent.
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“This is an opportunity to take a step back and right a wrong,” Youngkin said. “And the wrong was to exclude parents from these decisions.”
The new policies are in a period of public comment before they take effect at the end of October.
“Children don’t belong to the state, they belong to families,” the governor said. “As children are dealing with important topics, parents have to be at the center, and that’s what these policies are all about.”
The governor’s comments come the day after students at nearly 100 schools across the state marched out of class in protest of the new policies, many without adult supervision.
The protest was organized by the Pride Liberation Project, which bills itself as the “only student-led organization advocating for LGBTQIA+ rights in Virginia.”
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On Tuesday, during the walkout protests, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter noted that “parents should be a part of their children’s lives, and it’s apparent through the public protests and on-camera interviews that those objecting to the guidance already have their parents as part of that conversation.”
“While students exercise their free speech today, we’d note that these policies state that students should be treated with compassion and schools should be free from bullying and harassment,” she said.
