Press Release: Privacy and safety should trump gender politics in schools

Yesterday's press release from The Family Foundation:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FEBRUARY 24, 2015

LEXINGTON, KY--"Schools facilities policies should be made on the basis of privacy and safety, not on the latest fashion in gender politics," said a spokesman for the Family Foundation in response to the passage of SB 76 by a State Senate committee late today. The Senate heard student testimony in favor of the bill, after hearing testimony from a student against the bill last Thursday.

The bill passed by the Senate Education Committee today which would prohibit schools from setting facilities policies that endanger student privacy and safety will give constructive guidance to schools if passed by the House, said Martin Cothran, spokesman for the group.

"Parents don't want their kids showering with students of the opposite biological sex at school," said Cothran. "Unfortunately there are school officials now bowing to the demands of special interest groups to open school restroom and locker room facilities to students of differing biological genders."

Cothran said such policies not only threaten the privacy of students, but endanger the safety of students who think they are of a different gender than their biological sex. "Sending biological males into the girl's bathroom and biological females into the boy's bathroom may accomplish a lot of things, but we don't think safety is one of them."

SB 76 would require that access to school bathroom and locker room facilities be based on biological sex rather than "gender identity." Students identifying themselves as being a gender other than their biological gender would be provided with the best available other facility, including unisex bathrooms or faculty facilities where they would be safe.

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The Kentucky Bathroom Bill

The Kentucky State Senate is now considering SB 76 a bill that would protect both the privacy of students by ensuring that only biologically female students use the girl's bathroom and only biologically male students use the boy's bathroom. It would also require schools to provide transgender students with a unisex bathroom or allow them to use the faculty bathroom.

This would both protect the privacy of the majority of students and decrease the chances of transgender students being harassed.

But Chris Hartman, director of the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, is opposing it. He thinks sending girls dressed as boys into the boys' bathroom and boys dressed as girls into the girls' bathroom will reduce bullying and harassment.

Go figure.