On Thursday, Glenn Youngkin was in DC for a town hall on education policy. He had agreed in advance to take a question from a 17 year old Arlington transgender student named Niko: “Gov. Youngkin, your transgender model policies would require that students play on the sports teams and use the restrooms that correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Look at me. I am a transgender man. Do you really think that the girls in my high school would feel comfortable sharing a restroom with me?”
Youngkin’s guidelines would require transgender students to participate in activities and use school facilities that align with the sex they were assigned at birth. It would also make it more difficult for students to change their name or gender presentation at school. But Thursday Youngkin called for school to add gender-neutral bathrooms. Sounds like a decent proposal, right? Kind of… but, who’s going to pay? Victoria Luevanos, a progressive state Senate candidate for the 20th district (Virginia Beach, Accomack County, a bit of Norfolk City and Northampton County), noted on twitter that her oldest child “is finishing up middle school and says they can't even use the school bathrooms because the lights haven't worked all 3 years. He lost over $200 million from public schools, and the schools already lack updates.” It’s also worth noting that in other states that have suggested gender neutral bathrooms, Republicans are suing the school districts.
Jessica Anderson is a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates in a swing district that includes part of James City County, all of Williamsburg and part of New Kent County. Yesterday she said that “If you watched Youngkin’s recent town hall you were likely left with a lot of questions, because he didn’t answer a single one. Between double speak and misdirection, he showed us how well he’s been taking notes from the likes of DeSantis and tRump. One particular moment was when an audience member, Niko, who is a transgender man, asked if Youngkin thinks girls in high school would be comfortable with him in their bathroom. And immediately the dodging began; he said he’s been saying we need gender neutral bathrooms, while ignoring he can’t adequately pay teachers, let alone afford to redesign over 2000 public school bathrooms. But the most interesting part of this response was him saying, “so people can use a bathroom, that they are in fact, comfortable with”, so that means we don’t need gender neutral bathrooms, because Niko is clearly comfortable in a men’s room, right Governor? The reality is he doesn’t want these students to be comfortable, he wants them to feel like isolated outcasts, but he sugar coated his hate with “gender neutral bathrooms”. But this is also a man who sees children as nothing more than property and admitted as much in this very response. What we need is real people in politics, who want to represent all the families, not just the ones who vote for them!
Dr. Ronald Lee is another progressive Delegate candidate running in a swing district, this one including part of Hampton City, part of York County and Poquoson City. “Anything less than full equality is inequality,” he told me and reminded me that far right nut Austin Scott (R-GA) “had choice words for his Democratic colleagues, pointing out in a statement to Fox News Digital that the ‘left is arguing about bathrooms while our economy is in the toilet because of their reckless overspending. ‘Inflation just hit another record high, and once again, the left is proving that they would rather push their woke agenda instead of addressing real problems for American families. This is just another distraction to avoid cleaning up the mess they created.’”
