Sweeping declarations that challenge the status quo rarely go over well in this country.
Sweeping declarations that challenge the status quo rarely go over well in this country.
Change, even for the right reasons, even to ensure the civil rights Americans hold so dear, rarely comes easily.
So, it is with the Obama administration’s directive to every public school district in the country Friday about how transgender students should be treated — or else.
In a strongly worded letter, Education Secretary John B. King Jr. said schools must allow transgender students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity, not require them to use bathrooms that match their gender at birth or single-stall bathrooms when other students aren’t required to do the same.
The directive doesn’t carry the force of law, but it carries the fear of decimated budgets. Schools that don’t comply could lose billions in federal education funding.
Just ask North Carolina.
The backlash, unsurprisingly, has been swift.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called it the biggest issue “since prayer was taken out of public schools.” Republicans in other Southern and Midwestern states, where bills targeting gay and transgender people have been popping up with frightening regularity, are up in arms, too. Lawsuits surely will follow.
Fear of change is powerful. So is ignorance.
That’s why Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in a powerful speech to announce the federal government’s countersuit against North Carolina, was right to draw parallels to the racially separate-but-equal bathrooms of the Jim Crow era.
No matter what happens in court, the Obama administration was right to act.
This is about more than bathrooms. It’s about guaranteeing civil rights and encouraging acceptance for yet another group of Americans that has waited far too long for both.
— The Sacramento Bee