Under a sweeping directive issued by the Massachusetts Department of Education, boys and girls who identify as the opposite sex now are allowed to use whichever school bathroom and locker room they feel most comfortable in, and schools are discouraged from using gender-based clothes and gender-based practices — even from lining up elementary-aged children based on their sex.
The 11-page directive to the state’s public schools was issued Feb. 15 and supposedly was released in light of a new state law — passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor — that adds “gender identity” to the state’s nondiscrimination code. Traditional groups said the new law did not require such a wide-sweeping directive from the education department.
Nevertheless, those groups said, the chain of events in Massachusetts demonstrates the repercussions of passing any law that adds gender identity to state nondiscrimination policies.
The directive explicitly states it is aimed at children of all ages.
“In all cases,” the directive states in laying out the new policy, “the principal should be clear with the student (and parent) that the student may access the restroom, locker room and changing facility that corresponds to the student’s gender identity.”
School officials are only allowed to question the student if they believe the “student’s gender-related identity is being asserted for some improper purpose.” But in all cases, it is the student who decides his or her identity, and any uncomfortable feelings of other students are secondary, the document states. Gender-neutral restrooms and changing facilities are encouraged, but a transgender student is not required to use them, the document states.
The document quotes state law in defining gender identity as “a person’s gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior” is “associated with the person’s physiology or assigned sex at birth.”
Glenn Stanton, Focus on the Family’s director of family formation studies, said the debate over gender identity and transgenderism is tied to the debate over gay “marriage.”
“Transgenderism is only part of what same-sex ‘marriage’ is plowing the way for,” Stanton told Baptist Press. “When gender ‘doesn’t matter’ for marriage or parenting, it ironically becomes a much bigger issue in the agenda to rewrite the social script on what it means to be male and female. In saying it doesn’t matter, we end up talking about it at every turn. And this is where we find ourselves, and will, increasingly so. It is important for Christians to understand how and why this matters. Both male and female, in their sex-distinction and uniqueness, are what singly image the nature and likeness of God in the world. Is there any wonder it is being attacked so viciously?”
(BP)
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