Gov. Maggie Hassan and Attorney General Joseph Foster are wrong in supporting the Obama administration’s transgender policy for student restrooms.
Our state should have signed on to the lawsuit with 21 other states that are suing the administration for issuing the president’s executive order to allow students to enter the restrooms and the locker rooms of their choice based on a student’s sense of a personal gender identity that does not correspond with their gender at birth.
For the attorney general to say this policy is “strongly in the public interest” could not be further from the truth.
We live in a constitutional democracy that states that we are a government ruled by the majority with the respect of the minority. The president, Hassan and Foster are ignoring this philosophy of our Constitution.
If you give rights to a particular minority that takes away rights from the majority, you end up with tyranny of the minority and disrespect of the majority. The next argument they use is “protecting transgender individuals from discrimination benefits all members of the public.”
This policy does not benefit the overwhelming majority of students who are secure in the gender identity when they lose their rights to privacy and mental health. Our attorney general went on to say that “contrary to the claims of the states suing the federal government, our shared experiences demonstrate that protecting civil rights of our transgender . . . classmates and colleagues creates no public safety threat and imposes no meaningful financial burden.”
There is no way that the attorney general can make that claim of no public safety threat. In schools we are talking about students who are finding their way in life and may be confused about their gender identity. If a student of the opposite sex thinks he or she is transgender and enters a restroom only to find out that they are influenced by the hormones of their birth, it puts all of the students in school restrooms or locker rooms at risk of sexual harassment.
If you try to give a minority group a right that takes away the civil rights of the majority, everyone’s civil rights are violated. I will not let my son enter your daughter’s restroom or locker room while she is taking care of her intimate needs because he may be confused about his gender identity.
Gov. Hassan has signed on to this policy that is destructive to our children who are trying to understand their own puberty changes while trying to get the best education our schools have to offer.
The governor is using the politically charged word “inclusive” to support this policy statement. There cannot be any inclusiveness when you exclude the privacy and mental health rights of the majority to address certain rights of the minority.
If our political and legal leaders had all students’ welfare in mind, they would suggest that local school boards consider creating unisex restrooms so that every student’s civil rights can be protected. But they will not do this because they are using our students’ privacy and mental health rights as a political football to gain votes in an election.
Any public official who is running for public office in this election season who uses this “inclusive” argument as the reason to support this Obama administration transgender policy should be voted out of office for failing to protect the civil rights of the majority of our children.
Gov. Hassan went on to say that no students should be discriminated against due to gender identity and that schools remain a welcoming place for everyone.
If school districts find out that there are transgender students in their schools and choose to create unisex restrooms, they will not be discriminating against these students. If the Obama administration policy is adopted in our schools, an overwhelming number of our students will not only be unwelcome but our children could endure the anguish of holding on to their bladder and bowel movements until they can go home to privacy and safety.
Unisex facilities can provide protection for students who are not sure about their gender status.
Government cannot extend certain specific rights to one group if it takes away the rights already in place by a larger group. And threatening the people of New Hampshire with taking away Title IX federal funds is a violation of our rights under the 10th Amendment of our U.S. Constitution.
If I have to knock on every door in my school district to make parents, guardians and taxpayers aware of the jeopardy that this executive order places on our adolescents who are trying to focus on getting a 21st-century education, I will do that to make sure that the will of the people of our local school system is done and not the edict of the federal and state governments.
(Joseph Mendola of Warner is a town representative to Kearsarge Regional School District.)