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April 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — A teenage girl is launching legal action against ‘LGBT+ hate crime guidance’ for schools on account of it recommending that boys who claim to be girls have access to female-only spaces like bathrooms, changing rooms, and shower rooms.
“Girls should not have to stay silent when they are uncomfortable with males in their toilets,” the unnamed teenager said, according to Safe Schools Alliance UK, the legal group representing the girl.
The guidance was updated and issued in January on behalf of the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which is the main public body for conducting criminal prosecutions in England and Wales. It was developed in collaboration with a number of LGBT activist groups, including Stonewall, a UK group roughly equivalent to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in the United States.
The guidance claims that excluding “trans pupils” from toilets assigned to children of the opposite biological sex “may amount to indirect discrimination” and even includes “personal negative thoughts about trans people” in its definition of “transphobia.”
The teenage girl pursuing the legal review of the guidance says she feels bullied by the idea that she shouldn’t express her unhappiness about the prospect of having to share toilet facilities with males.
“This is supposed to be anti-bullying guidance, but I feel intimidated that I would have to stay silent,” she said. “That's not anti-bullying; not for girls. It's not bullying to stand up for your rights. I have a right to a female only space where I feel comfortable changing my period things without being worried about judgment. I actually feel bullied by being told I am breaking the law by saying no.”
The guidance is ostensibly aimed at stopping bullying, but the Safe Schools Alliance UK (SSA), which is supporting the teenager in seeking a judicial review, says it “effectively means the Police and CPS are monitoring our classrooms and encouraging school children and teachers to report each other for disagreeing with transgender ideology.”
“The guidance undermines safeguarding because students will feel intimidated under threat of prosecution to ignore their own personal and sexual boundaries, and will be forced into situations which make them feel uncomfortable or unsafe,” SSA says on a crowdjustice page seeking financial support for the legal action.
The SSA points out that the guidance “blurs the distinction between hate crime, which is defined in law, and ‘hate incidents,’ which are not.”
The definition of an “LGBT hate incident” given in the guidance uses similar language to that for a hate crime, both of which emphasise the importance of the victim's perception of what has happened.
A hate crime is described in the guidance as:
Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person’s race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.
The guidance goes on to note that “(t)here is no statutory definition of a homophobic or transphobic incident.” However, it says that it uses the following definition when considering cases with a “homophobic or transphobic element.”
Any incident which is perceived to be homophobic or transphobic by the victim, or by any other person.
The guidance then explains that both definitions are used by the CPS “to identify all LGBT hate crimes on their case files.”
“Schools must not be allowed to facilitate the intimidation and criminalisation of children for protecting their own boundaries and stating simple biological facts,” the SSA insisted.
The new legal challenge comes after the SSA announced earlier this month that another teenage girl in the UK who they are supporting has won the right to a full trial against local guidance from the Oxfordshire County Council that allows school-boys who identify as “transgender girls” to access girls’ bathrooms, changing rooms, and dormitory rooms on student trips.
And another local council in the UK announced last week that it will withdraw similar guidance to its schools after parents had complained that allowing boys to use girls bathrooms undermined the rights of their daughters.
That news follows a statement last week from UK equalities minister Liz Truss, who said “the protection of single-sex spaces … is extremely important.”