Do you agree with the Obama administration issued "guidance" directing public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity?

Yes, I agree with the ruling. Yes, I am fine with the federal government withholding state funding until the law is enforced.

With that said, I would have liked to see a better rollout plan.

Keep in mind that he isn’t looking to change the bathroom behaviors. This maintains the status quo. He is basically saying if you don’t do what we have always done you can lose funding.

This is on the Republicans looking for a new “wedge” issue that worked so well in 2004 with gay marriage. That is settled so it is time to find a new thing to fire up the thumpers.

I am fine with the threat because discrimination is unacceptable in public schools.

”...believe the United States is and should be a nation governed by laws, not by threats.”

Me too, which is why I support the Administration to enforce a law passed by Congress and signed by President G. H. W. Bush.

I’m fine with it for all the reasons mentioned above.

I didn’t feel like the fed had to say something, but I don’t mind that they/he did. As most jellies know, I hate that some states started legislating on this topic at all. The choice was to ignore it and hope it just disappears, and is never enforced, or declare it an infringement on civil rights, and hate based, and unAmerican.

The fed almost always has to correct discrimination and segregation problems in the country. That’s our history. Segregation against black people, civil rights issues for gay people, now this transgender thing. The states that hate, and actually legislate on hate, don’t often correct their laws mistake fast enough. Should the fed have let the Little Rock 9 be blocked from entering the school under order of the governor? I don’t think so.

Outside his office’s purview.

Based on some of his past actions, how can one be surprised?

This issue cannot “solved” before some sort of metric is established that can be defined in law.

This is far more complicated than the homosexual marriage matter, that was settled by the appropriate branch of government.

Perhaps it’s time to officially add a third gender. Only doctors would be qualified to make a distinction. This might be at least a step in the right direction.

@SecondHandStoke The gay marriage issue was settled by the appropriate branch? A lot of people don’t agree. A lot of people think the fed should not have been involved in that either. Not any branch of the federal government.

So, how do you think the bathroom issue should be settled? The Supreme Court?

I suspect and fear that @johnpowell has gotten to the heart of this “wedge issue”.

But, of course, fear and suspicion are the bedrock of the religious fundamentals.

I generally agree with transgender people’s right to use bathrooms matching their gender identity. However, with unemancipated students, how do we handle the possible objections of parents who do not approve of their students choices and feels that the school is an ‘enabler’?

The US has laws regarding discrimination. The president is fulfilling his constitutional duty to enforce those laws by using the powers granted to his office. To claim that this is inappropriate or outside the purview of his office would be absurd. Furthermore, prejudicial discrimination is a terrible thing. So I support the president’s attempt to lessen it.

@hsrch I would rather be an enabler for non-discriminatory schools than for bigoted parents. Besides, anyone with an objection is free to homeschool their child.

Absolutely, for the reasons stated by many jellies above.

@hsrch Put the kid in private school?

I agree with @JLeslie and @SavoirFaire that there are options that are possible – although, perhaps, not practical in some cases.
It’s the parents, however who elect the school board (and other officials as well). If the parents organize, then who knows? It may be interesting to see what happens.

I do not see it as “guidance”. Heavy-handed would be too weak to describe. Parents will win this one. It has nothing to do with hate or any other negative intent.

@si3tech That’s what they said about desegregation in the South, too, and I’m pretty sure the parents didn’t win that one.

@si3tech Which parents? The parents of transgender kids? Or the parents trying to instill hate and fear in their kids?

@zenvelo Good point. “The parents” are not some unified front of bigotry in this fight.

The south did put their kids in private schools when the fed insisted on desegregation, and in my opinion that wasn’t a good thing for the most part.

@JLeslie and @SavoirFaire Pulling a child out of public school and putting them in a private school or home-school…will that address the real issue of discrimination? Can everyone who wishes to do so afford it?

@hsrch ”...how do we handle the possible objections of parents who do not approve of their students choices and feels that the school is an ‘enabler’?”. Would you mind clarifying this? It’s unclear whether the ‘students’ are their children or belong to someone else.

If it is the former, that is a whole other topic. If it is the latter, then I agree, thus my original comment about a rollout plan. What came from the federal government was a “directive” sent by the Justice and Education Depts. They knew that this is the right decision; surely they knew that there would be pushback from some of the people who are responsible for implementing it. Why not take the time to create a plan to get address their concerns, get their buy-in, and effectively roll out the directive?

@si3tech I can assure you that the parents won’t win this one. To expand on what @SavoirFaire mentions about the South’s segregation, I can cite an example. Virginia’s Prince Edward County refused to desegregate their public schools in the ‘50s, which led to the closing of public schools for ~5 years. Private schools for white children only were created. The people who suffered from this rebellion were the children, and specifically the black community. Why can’t we learn from history and not repeat these mistakes?

@Pied_Pfeffer Of course it won’t address the real issue of discrimination. I was responding to @hsrch, who asked how to deal with parents who dislike the non-discriminatory policies. And no, not everyone can afford to send their child to a private school. Nor are they all qualified to homeschool. But life is about choices. If they really think that homeschooling their children would be superior to a public education, they have the right to pursue that option.

But just to be clear, I’m not completely unsympathetic here. American culture presents people with so many terrible messages about sex and sexuality that I am perfectly willing to accept that some people have genuine anxieties that aren’t grounded on arbitrary hatred. I also believe that many people participate in bigotry unconsciously (in fact, it is known that many people do this) and this does not make them irretrievably evil. But bigoted policies are still terrible, and thus not to be tolerated.

The best antidote to this problem is education. And while education can take many forms and come from many places, surely a school is one of the most obvious places to begin the process of teaching people the difference between a trans person (who, let us remember, cannot benefit from non-discriminatory policies by simply declaring themselves to be trans unilaterally) and a sexual predator.

@Pied_Pfeffer I was referring to an individual family situation; not a general opinion. I have restated my comment:

However, with unemancipated students, how do we handle the possible objections of parents who do not approve of the choices of their transgender student and feels that the school is an ‘enabler’?

@SavoirFaire, above, makes some good points; I concur.

@Pied_Pfeffer No, it doesn’t address the issue of discrimination at all. That’s why I said I don’t think it was a good thing for the South. It encouraged the South to continue to stay divided. Not that I think the north was perfect. Now, 50ish years later the south is less divided than it was and the north certainly has it’s own problems regarding public schools and racism, but the two regions of the country still feel different to me in a general way. I don’t know if you feel it?

Overall, I think the vast majority of the US is not racist. Not how I define racism, but I do think down South the races are more divided, and the cultural differences are more apparent. It’s like a leftover from the past. It doesn’t mean people intentionally avoid people from another race. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad, but it felt less than good to me. More negative stereotyping about black people, more fear, although fear is a strong word for what I’m trying to describe.

A woman who I used to walk with while living in Lakeland, she was a math teacher in Tupelo, when the schools desegregated. She said she begged the white parents not to take their children out of the schools, because the public schools had science equipment and electives and sports teams. Still, a good portion if them took their white kids out and out them in the new private school they put together that was much smaller, with very few amenities. A whole generation or two of kids grew up like that.

Additionally, I have the example of a friend of mine who I grew up with in the DC suburbs who dated a black guy for a while when we were in 10th grade. Then, she moved to Alabama, started going to private school, because down there the white kids didn’t go to public, and proceeded to be one a born again Christian and wound up in therapy, partly because she was tormented by the idea that she lost her virginity to a black guy. We were in high school in the early to mid 80’s.

I’m not saying the South hasn’t grown up since then, but it grew up differently, and I think it’s a harder struggle when racism and segregation are the norm whether it be sanctioned by the government or not.

Where I lived growing up private school was for religious families, or families with money, or because the curriculum better suited a particular child, or sometimes the public school really fell short. I never grew up thinking about private school in terms of race until my girlfriend moved to Alabama. I did grow up with parents talking about school zoning, and that had some racial undertones I guess? I didn’t understand it that way then, it seemed more about socio-economics to me at the time, but I guess some parents were thinking race too.

What @johnpowell said in the second posting on this thread. But a person would never know this if all they watched was FOX News channels or listen to so-called conservative radio and TV pundits.

@hsrch I would hope that the school staff would be trained on how to address any resistance, be it with a parent with a transgendered student or not.

I must be old. Or, maybe I’m too young. I just think it’s being made into a big issue when it doesn’t have to be. There aren’t that many trans kids.

When we talk about schools it isn’t like talking about public restrooms in malls and restaurants. Probably, in a school, everyone knows who the transchild is, and probably the children are fine with whichever bathroom he or she picks, because there is no perceived or actual danger or foolery going on. The kids know each other, they aren’t strangers.

As I think about it, it should be less of an issue in schools.

It reminds me of the gays in the military issue. I had people on my Facebook saying it’s a problem because the gay guy might try to come on to men in the unit. Like they can’t control themselves and would push themselves on straight men. Of course, that’s just outright ridiculous.