Director, Commonwealth Policy Center

America's education establishment left the world of objective reality on Friday, when the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) politicized public school bathrooms and sided with biological revisionists by demanding that public school students be allowed to use lockers and restrooms regardless of their biological gender at birth. Instead of coming to grips with biology, sociology and confusion that sometimes comes with children developing into young adults, professional educators in Washington have [declared war] on the subjects and left children to their own confusion.

The DOE letter, which was sent to every school in the nation, asserts that Federal Title IX law equates sex with self-determined gender identity. The problem is that when the law was passed in 1972, it was meant to give young girls equal opportunities in education and sports activities.  It was never intended to allow young boys access to girls' showers. It now sets the stage to undermine the law.

Highly controversial policy changes to Title IX rightly belong in the legislative arena instead of being pushed through by a bureaucrat's letter.
The implications are far reaching. School staff and contractors must address students by their preferred pronoun. Boys who identify as girls must be called "she" and girls who identify as boys must be called "he".  High school boys who wear dresses to prom cannot be disciplined or prohibited from attending. The letter says schools “may not discipline students or exclude them from participating in activities for appearing or behaving in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity… ." Noncompliant schools face losing federal funds.

So how do we know the gender identity claim is real? The answer is we don't. There is no way to verify the legitimacy of a student's gender identity claim. The DOE doesn't even bother to determine that. Schools just need to take kids at their words. Funny thing though, 70-80 percent of kids identifying as the opposite gender eventually lose those feeling according to former chief of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, Paul McHugh. Affirming what was considered a dysphoria only a few years ago does much damage and to troubled kids. But so long as education elites believe they are eradicating discrimination, let all facts be damned.

Perhaps this latest militant policy change is indicative of a larger identity crisis of identity.  People are created in the image of God. He made them male and female at birth. This is an objective biological truth and affirmed by sociological realties. The American creed teaches the idea of a Creator endowing us with rights. It also implies that with rights come boundaries, or limitations placed by the same Creator we say gave us rights. But that can no longer be taught in the schools any more.

America is in a crisis. It has been for a long time, but more immediately if educators tell children they are not objectively male or female, what stops them from telling kids they are not objectively human?