Courageous Lawmakers Fight for Student Privacy
 
Courageous Lawmakers Fight for Student Privacy
Written By Laurie Higgins   |   01.28.16
Reading Time: 7 minutes

State Representative Tom Morrison (R-Palatine) introduced the bi-partisan Pupil Physical Privacy Act (HB 4474), which if passed would require the following:

[A] school board to designate each pupil restroom, changing room, or overnight facility accessible by multiple pupils simultaneously, whether located in a public school building or located in a facility utilized by the school for a school-sponsored activity, for the exclusive use of pupils of only one sex. Defines “sex” as the physical condition of being male or female, as determined by an individual’s chromosomes and identified at birth by that individual’s anatomy. 

Signing on as co-sponsors are John D. Anthony (R-Morris), Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield), John M. Cabello (R-Loves Park), C.D. Davidsmeyer (R-Jacksonville), Mary E. Flowers (D-Chicago), Jeanne M. Ives (R-Wheaton), Dwight Kay (R-Glen Carbon), Sherry L. Jesiel (R-Gurnee), Bill Mitchell (R-Decatur), Reginald Phillips (R-Charleston), David Reis (R-Olney), Barbara Wheeler (R-Crystal Lake), and Keith Wheeler (R-North Aurora). Who knew Illinois had this many wise and courageous leaders willing to endure the deceitful epithets hurled at anyone who dares to dissent from the foolish views espoused by “progressives”?

If we lived in a rational society committed to sexual sanity, such a bill would be wholly unnecessary, and anyone who sponsored such a bill would be thought of as daft. But we don’t, and therefore the bill is necessary. These lawmakers deserve many thanks for their courage and wisdom.

Of course, there already exists a federal law that specifically states that schools have the right to maintain sex-separated restrooms and locker rooms, but “progressives” never let little things like laws (or common sense, rationality, or decency) get in the way of advocacy for their sexual delusions:

[T]itle IX of the Education Amendments of 1972…is designed to eliminate (with certain exceptions) discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program….A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex, but such facilities provided for students of one sex shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.

District 211, the largest high school district in Illinois now facilitates confusion and undermines modesty by allowing gender-dysphoric students—that is, students who wish they were the opposite sex—to use opposite sex restrooms and locker rooms. Those students who rightly don’t want to use restrooms and locker rooms with students of the opposite sex risk being called hateful and ignorant if they express their feelings. And they most assuredly can’t expect policy to reflect their feelings and beliefs.

District administrators absurdly describe this policy as “upholding dignity,” when in reality, allowing students to use opposite-sex locker restrooms denies the dignity of gender-dysphoric students as well as those students whose privacy they’re invading. What the district is really doing is upholding the disordered feelings and perverse ideology of Leftists.

Out of compassion for students who suffer from gender dysphoria, HB 4474 provides for a rational accommodation of their desire not to use restrooms corresponding to their sex, while still respecting essential and immutable sex differences:

[HB 4474] Authorizes a school board to provide reasonable accommodations to a pupil to use a single-occupancy restroom or changing room or the regulated use of a faculty restroom or changing room if the pupil is an adult or an emancipated minor, or the parent or guardian of a minor pupil submits to school officials, in writing, a request to receive such accommodations and the pupil is a member of the male sex but does not identify as a member of the male sex or the pupil is a member of the female sex but does not identify as a member of the female sex

Parents and students who know truth

There are a remnant of wise and courageous parents and students whose minds remain unclouded by the toxic ideological stew that poisons our anti-culture. They know that physical embodiment is not only immutable but also good and that the natural modesty that derives from physical embodiment should be both respected and cultivated.

They know that students should be neither ordered, nor asked, nor permitted to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose sex they don’t share.

They know that restroom stalls within restrooms and private changing cubicles within locker rooms do not provide sufficient privacy to separate properly boys from girls or women from men.

They know that objective biological sex is more meaningful and important than feelings about one’s objective biological sex.

To these parents and students, it makes no difference if the boy who seeks to use the girls’ restrooms and locker room likes his penis or loathes it. A boy does not belong in a girls’ restroom (and vice versa).

Gender Identity Disorder and Amputee Identity Disorder

What no school administrator or gender-dysphoric person has proved is that the mismatch between the sex of gender-dysphoric persons and their desires about their sex is a disorder of their healthy, properly functioning bodies rather than their minds. And how precisely is their discomfort with their bodies different from the discomfort of those with Amputee Identity Disorder (also known as Body Integrity Identity Disorder [BIID])?

Those with BIID identify with amputees. They believe they should have been born with missing limbs, and they have a persistent desire to have a limb or limbs amputated in order to achieve consonance between their feelings and their bodies. Because the medical establishment will not amputate healthy limbs, sometimes those with BIID will deliberately harm healthy limbs in order to force an amputation. Society and the medical establishment view this as a disorder of the mind—not the body. What rational sense does it make to view as barbaric the amputation of a healthy arm but therapeutic to amputate a healthy penis? Will schools allow those with BIID access to accommodations designed and intended for those without legs—an accommodation, by the way, that does not deny the privacy, feelings, or beliefs of others?

Remember, the Left says there are no behaviors, thoughts, or feelings that are intrinsically male or female. They believe all human phenomena are arbitrarily deemed male or female. Preferences in toys, activities, and colors are neither inherently or objectively male nor female. Ways of thinking and feeling are neither male nor female. So, all that exists immutably and objectively as male or female is biological sex. Gender-dysphoric persons cannot in reality have a male or female “identity” because there exists no such thing. Gender-dysphoric persons can’t have a male or female identity because male and female “identities” are merely arbitrary, phantasmic social constructions. The only true thing that can be said about gender-dysphoric persons with regard to maleness and femaleness is that they desire to change the one thing they cannot: their sex. Restrooms and locker rooms correspond to sex.

 “Transgender” restroom/locker room policies inculcate

Defenders of feckless, unethical, and irrational “transgender” restroom and locker room practices and policies dismiss the concerns of their opponents by claiming that most students don’t fully undress in locker rooms, or that normal students don’t mind undressing in front of gender-dysphoric students, or that there aren’t many gender-dysphoric students asking to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. But none of those arguments are sound or persuasive. Policies that maintain sex-separated areas for students to engage in personal activities pertaining to physical embodiment not only protect the privacy, safety, and modesty of students but also teach important ideas about the immutability, meaning, and goodness of objective sex.

Conversely, policies and practices that allow boys (who will always be boys) and girls (who will always be girls) to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms teach controversial, subversive Leftist assumptions about objective biological sex, cross-dressing, modesty, compassion, and bigotry.

“Transgender” activists= 21st Century alchemists

Like medieval alchemists, Leftists demand that all of society believe or pretend to believe that men can be transformed into women. Even some conservatives will argue foolishly that it would be acceptable for students to use opposite-sex facilities if they’ve had their penises or breasts amputated. It shouldn’t need to be said, but here goes: Men do not become women if their penises are amputated, and women do not become men if their breasts are amputated. Taking cross-sex hormones doesn’t change people into the opposite sex either. While elective amputations of healthy arms or legs actually do transform those with BIID into amputees, all that surgery and cross-sex hormones accomplish for gender-dysphoric persons is create elaborate and deceptive anatomical costumes—oh, and render them sterile.

What is coming

For now, school districts are willing to accommodate the Neanderthaloid beliefs of parents and students who know truth—I repeat, for now. The ultimate goal of “LGBTQQAP” activists and their allies, however, is to compel society to accept their subjective belief that objective biological sex is ultimately irrelevant—a meaningless, arbitrary anatomical trifle, like a birthmark or wart. To them, objective sex is meaningful only if one chooses to affirm it as meaningful. The subjective self determines the meaning and value of all phenomena. Therefore, in this brave new world, all restrooms, dressing rooms, and locker rooms will be co-ed/sex-neutral. There will remain no place in schools or public places for separation by sex.

This effort to subvert the cultural understanding of maleness and femaleness through government schools, rhetoric, law, and courts is as revolutionary and destructive as any issue in contemporary America. Americans should be at school board meetings in droves and preparing themselves for civil disobedience.

Take ACTION:

1.)  Many elementary, middle, and high schools are quietly implementing these practices with no parental notification or input. Parents: Contact your administrations and ask if they are permitting or would permit gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and/or locker rooms. Further, tell your administration that under no circumstance will your child be permitted to use a restroom or locker room that students of the opposite sex are permitted to use.

2.)  If your state representative is a co-sponsor of HB 4474, contact him or her to offer your thanks.

3.)  If your state representative is not yet a co-sponsor of HB 4474, click HERE to urge him or her to sign on.

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would” (Alice in Wonderland).


Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem
GrudemWe are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

Laurie Higgins
Laurie Higgins was the Illinois Family Institute’s Cultural Affairs Writer in the fall of 2008 through early 2023. Prior to working for the IFI, Laurie worked full-time for eight years in Deerfield High School’s writing center in Deerfield, Illinois. Her cultural commentaries have been carried on a number of pro-family websites nationally and internationally, and Laurie has appeared on numerous radio programs across the country. In addition, Laurie has spoken at the Council for National Policy and educational conferences sponsored by the Constitutional Coalition. She has been married to her husband for forty-four years, and they have four grown children...
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