Another Obamanation Undone: Trump and Sessions Take the Federal Government out of Your Kids’ Bathroom
The Obama administration’s edict on transgender bathrooms in public schools is no more. On Wednesday, President Trump revoked the rules granting transgender individuals access to the sex-segregated facilities of their choice.
“The Department of Justice has a duty to enforce the law,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement about withdrawing the guidance. “Congress, state legislatures, and local governments are in a position to adopt appropriate policies or laws addressing this issue.”
Sessions cited the legal ambiguity and confusion of Obama’s directive for the repeal.
“The prior guidance documents did not contain sufficient legal analysis or explain how the interpretation was consistent with the language of Title IX. The Department of Education and the Department of Justice therefore have withdrawn the guidance,” Sessions said.
“SHOCK!” “HORROR!” “FASCISM!” … countless will cry, as media outlets spin the story as an inhumane assault on transgender “rights.”
The Trump administration is rescinding guidance on rights of transgender students to use bathrooms based on the gender they identify with.
— NPR (@NPR) February 23, 2017
Breaking News: The Trump administration rescinds rules on bathrooms for transgender students https://t.co/XNJzPfYVxu
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 23, 2017
And so it begins: Justice Department begins rollback of transgender students' bathroom rights https://t.co/OZAeCJ4dvw
— huffpostqueer (@huffpostqueer) February 11, 2017
But the headline hysteria begs the question of what sort of “rights” we’re talking about here. What right does any human have, on a metaphysical level, to force an institution to accommodate their bathroom preferences, at the expense of everyone else?
What right, for that matter, does anyone have to force an institution to abandon its beliefs in basic human biology?
Even in the philosophically impoverished vision that disputed rights aren’t rights until the Supreme Court finds the stilted grounds on which to manufacture them (e.g. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s infamous “right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”), the court has, to date, issued no such fiat.
Ergo, no such “right” exists, even on dubious grounds.
If anything is truly concerning about this development is that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — who has, of course, been vilified as the most extreme arch-conservative by anti-Trumpers — reportedly disagreed with repealing the rules, and that the president’s siding with Attorney General Sessions was what tipped the scales in the decision.
DeVos and Sessions had a disagreement over removing the protections over transgender rights. https://t.co/NmANNZEqsK pic.twitter.com/eOhzRROaJZ
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) February 22, 2017
If anything is truly concerning about this development, it is the news that Education Secretary does not bode well. This latest outrage is founded on the same lie that fuels some of the most prominent thinking behind school choice — that government-run schools, rather than parents, are the sole, rightful educators of children.
Even without the regulations masquerading as guidance, there is nothing prohibiting parents from pressuring their local school boards to ensure access to transgender bathrooms or transgender-based sexual education. Sessions’ directive simply removes the federal government from the issue altogether (as it should be).
The only purpose of such a rule from the federal Department of Education would be to force the parents of local public schools to accept the anti-scientific arguments that would normalize transgenderism at the institutions that teach their children [read: child abuse] in Manhattan, Dallas, and Salt Lake City, all the same. In short, some parents will not teach what their leftist counterparts want, and must subsequently be forced to comply.
This may come as a shock to many, but a child’s education is the duty of his or her parents — not the state — which acts simply as a subcontractor in the issue.
What children learn – either through curriculum or example – is best decided by those who brought them into this world. Our political institutions and/or governments should merely reflect those decisions.
The fact that parents disagree on this bathroom issue only serves to stress the point that these questions are best addressed at the local level, rather than by technocratic central planners in a faceless bureaucracy. (For more from the author of “Another Obamanation Undone: Trump and Sessions Take the Federal Government out of Your Kids’ Bathroom” please click HERE)
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