(LifeSiteNews) — The transgender movement may be losing the “bathroom wars” in the court of public opinion as parents fight back, but they are thus far winning in the courts of law. Earlier this month, a Missouri jury ordered a school in the Kansas City area to pay $4 million to a student who identified as transgender for denying her access to the boys’ bathroom.
From Fox News:
The Jackson County jury on Dec. 13 found the Blue Springs R-IV School District had sexually discriminated against the former student after denying the student access to the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms at Delta Woods Middle School and the Freshman Center, FOX4 Kansas City reported, citing the lawsuit. The school district told Fox News in a statement that it “disagrees with the verdict and will be seeking appropriate relief from the trial court and court of appeals if necessary.”
The lawsuit, which was filed in 2015, alleged that the student was not permitted into either locker rooms or bathrooms at the middle school despite having changed her name and birth certificate to “male” through the Jackson County Circuit Court, meaning that the state of Missouri formally recognized the female student as male. Despite the school providing a bathroom for the student’s use, the court deemed this not good enough.
It is tempting to dismiss these stories as tempests in teapots (or toilets), but let me cite just a few examples of how these transgender policies are impacting students. Girls in Scotland are refusing to use gender-neutral bathrooms because they feel uncomfortable. In fact, some U.K. authorities are warning that many girls prefer to risk bladder infection rather than use a bathroom that is open to boys. In Alberta, Canada, girls were afraid to use the bathroom after a transgender bathroom policy was passed.
In Iowa, girls walked out of school to protest boys being allowed access to their bathrooms, holding up signs with slogans such as “We Deserve Our Privacy.” Back in 2018, a high school girl in Pennsylvania sued her school for her right to privacy after finding a boy in her bathroom. In Loudon County, Virginia, a girl was raped in the school bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt — and her father arrested when he got understandably angry at a school board meeting where bathroom policy was being discussed.
If you want some idea of how this issue impacts teenage girls, watch this video clip from a few years ago: A teenage girl, fighting tears because her school board ruled that bathrooms and change rooms are open to anyone who identifies as a girl. She is terrified that a boy will see her naked — she is a swimmer, and has to change often. A boy identifying as a girl chortles his glee at the decision. Her privacy concerns are dismissed, because she is collateral damage for trans activists.
If that sounds harsh, take a moment to peruse the thread beneath the video (which has now gotten nearly 6 million views on Twitter) and read the comments of those who support the transgender movement. There is no compassion, no understanding, no indication that they care a whit for anything but their own political agenda. They call her a bigot and a transphobe and welcome her tears not as the cost of transgender progress, but as a bonus. Hurting bigots, after all, is a good thing. Even if the bigot is just a scared teenage girl who doesn’t want a boy to see her without clothes on.
Legally speaking, we probably lost this battle with Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court Bostock v. Clayton County ruling last year. Culturally speaking, it appears that parents are finally getting fed up and fighting back. Godspeed to them all.