Project 2025: LGBTQ+ Rights
In this post on the agenda for the next conservative administration, Project 2025, I discuss the recommended stripping of LGBTQ+ students' rights.
8/20/20242 min read
This post on Project 2025 and how it relates to education will be focused on LGBTQ+ issues raised in the agenda. There are a few key recommendations made that strip rights and protections of LGBTQ+ students, apart from the banning of the terms like “sexual orientation and gender identity” (among others) that I mentioned in a previous post.
First, the author of the Education section of the document, Lindsey Burke, chief of the Heritage Center’s Center for Education Policy, recommends that the Office of Civil Rights stop collecting gender data that includes “nonbinary” as a category. Why? I don’t see the harm in making another column on a Spreadsheet. Especially if it validates someone’s identity.
Second, Burke recommends rolling back the changes to Title IX (essentially the federal sexual harassment policy) to recognize anything other than gender at birth. Again, why? It should not matter the gender of someone that files a sexual harassment claim. This feels like a ploy to invalidate sexual harassment claims, especially if they come from transgender people.
Third, Burke objects to the withholding of federal meal program funds from schools that insist on using “gender at birth” rather than “sexual orientation and gender identity” language. This is wrong on so many levels. There should be repercussions for schools that refuse to use affirming language. When schools do this, they essentially say, “We don’t care about our students,” and put their beliefs over the best interests of the child’s. There should be penalties for these actions.
Last, and perhaps most dangerous, the Project 2025 agenda states that federal law should require school staff to out LGBTQ+ students to their parents, and no school staff should be allowed to address a student by anything other than the gender and name on their birth certificate without parental approval. If a staff member objects, those parents do not have the right to insist their child be addressed by their chosen name or gender. This is heartbreaking. To think that there are educational institutions (and I know there are many out there), that would deny the needs of a child is beyond mind blowing. If a child says they’re hungry, do you deny them food? If they say they need to use the restroom, do you tell them they can’t? Obviously, if a student is asking to go by a different name or gender identity, they need it to validate themselves. On top of that, even if a student and their parents say they want to be called a certain name and a staff member says they won’t, they don't have to? What kind of dystopian world do these people think we live in?
Schools are places where children and adolescents should be able to grow and explore. How can they do that when their rights to do so are denied? When I’m elected to the Fenton Area Public Schools Board, I will advocate that none of this hateful and harmful rhetoric seeps its way into our district. In Fenton, every student should feel safe, respected, and loved in order to help them reach their highest potential.
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