GLOUCESTER COUNTY, Virginia, September 10, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – A high school girl with gender identity disorder has been refused the right to go to the boy's bathroom at school.
A judge has ruled that Caitlyn Hope Grimm, a female junior at Gloucester High School in Virginia, may not use the school men's restroom. Caitlyn filed for a preliminary injunction to allow her to use the boys' restroom because, as she reasons, “I'm a boy.” But this week, Judge Robert George Doumar issued an order rejecting her motion.
Judge Doumar, a Reagan appointee, is senior judge of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He did not elaborate as to the reasons for his ruling, except to note that an opinion further detailing his reasoning would be forthcoming.
Caitlyn's case was championed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the Gloucester County School Board in June. They argued that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which the U.S. Supreme Court said mandates homosexual “marriage,” makes denying a female transgender student access to the boys' restroom “discrimination.”
The suit also argued that Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972 made denying girls access to boys' bathrooms “discriminatory.” But Judge Doumar dismissed that particular argument, noting that Title IX allows for separate bathrooms for different-gender students.
The Gloucester County school board argued that Caitlyn will not suffer irreparable harm from their restroom regulations. They have “three single-stall bathrooms for [her] and any other student to use,” the board told the court. Furthermore, the board argued that Caitlyn is still “biologically and anatomically a female. Plaintiff has not provided medical evidence or medical testimony that Plaintiff is a boy or that has male chromosomes.”
After the judge's ruling, Caitlyn's lawyers said they were “deeply disappointed” and called the school board's policy “harmful and stigmatizing.”
Joshua Block, a lawyer with the ACLU's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Project, said the decision relegates Caitlyn to separate restrooms from her male peers. “We expect today's decision to be reversed on appeal,” Block added.
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After coming out as transgender last year, Caitlyn and her mother notified school authorities, who agreed to allow her access to the boys' restroom. Based on her psychologist's recommendation, in July 2014 she petitioned the Circuit Court of Gloucester County to legally change her name to the masculine “Gavin.” Caitlyn used the boys' facilities for a few weeks, but then calls came in from concerned parents.
The school board was inundated with complaints from parents and community members, and as a result, the board voted in December to adopt a policy requiring transgender students to use a staff restroom or other facility separate from the general population. In response, Caitlyn and the ACLU sued.
The Obama Department of Justice filed a “statement of interest” in support of Caitlyn and all transgender children, to use opposite sex bathrooms. The Obama administration declared in May 2014 that sex discrimination under Title IX applies to those who identify as “transgender.” The Department of Education followed up last December by ordering federally funded schools to classify students based on their chosen “gender identity” rather than biological sex.
This issue is impacting school systems throughout the state. In May, after the Obama administration threatened to deny the Fairfax County School Board $42 million in federal funding if the board refused to change its policy, the Fairfax board ruled – over the angry objections of parents – that transgender students could use the opposite-sex bathrooms of their chosen “gender identity.”
In March, the Stafford County school board adopted a policy similar to Gloucester County's after outcry over a fourth-grade boy using the girls' restroom. Meanwhile, Arlington, Charlottesville, and Alexandria Counties now allow transgender boys to use the girls' bathrooms and girls to use boys' toilets.
School board meetings across the state have since erupted in arguments from angry parents. The issue has become a hot topic of the upcoming election year, with many school board members up for re-election.
The Virginia Christian Alliance and other conservative groups have mounted a campaign encouraging schools to require students to use the bathrooms that correspond to their biological sexes.
Other states have faced the same issue, with Maryland, Colorado, Maine, and the District of Columbia now allowing transgender student to use opposite-sex facilities, including locker rooms, toilets, and urinals.
In 2013, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders' diagnosis of transgender people changed from “Gender Identity Disorder” to “Gender Dysphoria,” because, as the American Psychiatric Association put it, “choosing the right words” is key, and the change “removes the connotation that the patient is 'disordered.'”
Other key phrases used by the gay agenda including “gender identity” for the opposite sex a transgender person imagines he or she is, and “gender assigned at birth” for the sex such a person actually is.
Critics of transgender organizations point out that it is unfair and fundamentally illogical to, on the one hand, say that it is important and healthy for people to psychologically and physically accept themselves, while on the other hand they use that very philosophy to reject who they are. The truly healthy way to help gender-confused people, critics say, is to affirm and love them the way they were created.
