Original reporting completed for WTOP News in Washington D.C. WTOP retains the rights to broadcasted and digital reporting. Read the story here
Ivy Lyons
Hi there. My name is Ivy Lyons. I’m a digital journalist and PhD student in the DC metropolitan area. Today, I want to just talk about the story that I’ve been working on for a while that has really caught my attention about LGBT students. The story is about their education, their narratives, and their potential as collateral damage and an ongoing controversy that sparked in Loudoun County, Virginia. This is that story.
Jack Martinez, Loudoun County Student
Hello, my name is Jack Martinez and I’m a Loudoun County student here to give one student’s perspective on the school board policy 8040. Regarding the transgender regulations, as well as proactive education as per state mandate
Anonymous Va. student
And, as a queer student, it just generally makes school unsafer…
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin
…that all school districts should and will adopt policies consistent with state law… consistent with those policies,
Loudoun Co. Parent 1
told you how we are not okay with boys being in the girls bathroom, that you’re not comfortable with it too.
Loudoun Co. Parent 2
How can my daughters feel safe and comfortable when they’re boys allowed in the restroom?
Ivy Lyons
These questions and this conversation started and continued to be about the safety of individual students of specifically female students in Loudoun County. But these conversations didn’t end here. And they kind of began with the election of Governor Glenn Younkin. He says he came in with a mandate. And that mandate was also to return parental rights.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin
Let me back up. And our draft guidelines are fundamentally rooted in reestablishing the role of parents in these most important decisions.
Ivy Lyons
This was Governor Glenn Younkin, speaking with Nick Iannelli, of WTOP News in Washington.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin
And kids in Virginia have a right to have a parent involved in these decisions. And parents have a fundamental right in the Commonwealth to be the key decision maker with their children in these decisions. That’s not at the expense of a trusted teacher or trusted counselor. But we’ve got to recognize this isn’t controversial….
Ivy Lyons
Whenever he said that to Nick Iannelli. I had this brief moment of confusion, right? Because it was controversial in every sense of the word. Students were not agreeing with advocates and advocates were not agreeing with government officials and government officials weren’t agreeing with every single teacher in a district… That school districts were actively deciding to disobey executive orders that were coming out of a newly minted administration that won on parental rights advocacy. Now, of course, there is that question that lingers: What is it that Younkin is talking about when he says “well, these policies” or “these conversations”? I’m gonna let you hear what one student told me those policies meant
Anonymous Va. student
Reguarding that impact… this law kind of removed the rights that queer and trans students has had established in their schools. So a lot of students – a lot of students and alot of districts – have had rules established protecting queer students from malicious dead naming; from different forms of discrimination. But Governor Youngkin has gotten this decision that’s been made has effectively removed or stripped these rights from students.
Ivy Lyons
These concerns about rights being stripped we’re not uncommon in the state of Virginia, but after a sexual assault in Loudoun County in which one student was identified as transgender, one advocate told me that this was just an intense time, and it would be incredibly difficult, because, well, the media had some role to play in spreading misinformation that made it harder for transgender students to thrive in the county.
Cris Candace Tuck, President of Equality Loudoun
I’ve seen a very large increase in the amount of apprehension and fear that our students, that are parents that, our community members are facing.
Ivy Lyons
This is Cris Candace Tuck, a leader of an advocacy organization for LGBT people in Loudoun County, Virginia.
Cris Candace Tuck, President of Equality Loudoun
It has basically elevated normal issues that happen in every school district, whether they are LGBTQ related or not, and has put them under a microscope. It has people believing that these things are not fairly common. And that – that’s dangerous, and it’s damaging. The rhetoric in the last year has changed so dramatically. And it’s something that is hard to discuss in a local context. While Loudoun sort of kicked off this debate, this nonstop coverage of trans issues and LGBTQ+ issues across the country, the reality is the deflations and the attempts (spread) hate through misinformation,
Ivy Lyons
So follow the timeline with me here. We start off with Loudoun County, seeing a sexual assault from a student who is misidentified as transgender by media outlets…
Cris Candace Tuck, President of Equality Loudoun
That information ran almost around the clock for at least one or two, maybe even four or five months. And it has made a national and even international impact, you can simply search on Google, for Loudoun County transgender assault, and you will find thousands and thousands of articles from all over the world. That report has shifted the national conversation, and Loudoun County is used as another scary story in the fight against trans rights, And yet, every time we have positive news, things that are happening, whether it’s, you know, I can only use my organization as an example, but donating thousands of dollars to our local hunger relief, or setting up a scholarship on first time for LGBTQ+ people in Loudoun County, or even the products festival here in Loudoun, and the largest one in the region. With unbelievable support, we pulled together a Pride festival in 60 days, raised 10s of 1000s – almost $45,000 have over 150 business to support that. And yet, there’s no airtime of these stories. Every time someone from Fight for Schools or Moms Demand Liberty or any of these other organizations literally make an allegation. There’s a news report on it.
Ivy Lyons
That misinformation, snowballs right and to this narrative of trans girls, trans women who will have been identified as male at birth, taking advantage of the systems that they exist in in order to take advantage of other students or turns into our narrative of students experiencing overly sexualized content or being overly sexualized. You can hear some of that and the responses that parents had at school board meetings,
Loudoun Co. Parent 3
We had a revolution. So no, we will continue to act like kings and queens until we once again restore this community and this Commonwealth to the birthplace of freedom.
Loudoun Co. Parent 1
Tells you how we are not okay with boys being in the girls bathroom, that you’re not comfortable with it too. I’m just asking you to please you louder. Fight for us. Because you the only voices we have here at this point.
Loudoun Co. Parent 2
How can my daughters feel safe and comfortable when they’re boys allowed in the restroom and the locker room with them? I tried to explain this to my oldest daughter. And the look of confusion and dismay on her face says it all.
Loudoun Co. Parent 4
There are two chromosomes to determine a person’s sex and gender. They are the X and Y chromosomes. If you have two X’s, you are a female. If you have an X and a Y, you are a male. The fact that I may feel differently, does not change who or what I am.
Ivy Lyons
With all of these things in mind. I wanted to get some of that other response. What was it that was making people question content? And why was it such an issue for parents rights advocates? The answers we found to that question, when we come back.
Ivy Lyons
I sat down in the middle of my midterms and I had a conversation with one of the parents rights advocates that was connected to a national group that was really behind Governor Glenn Youngkin. And I asked the leader of that organization, what was parents’ rights? How are students understand what was going on? And did they see anything happening that would lead them to believe that there are challenges when it comes to content that students are engaging with and problems that they’re seeing in their schools?
Tiffany Justice, Co-Founder of Moms for Liberty
Our mission is to unify, educate, and empower parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government. We know that parents have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children, and that’s their education, their medical care, their moral, and religious upbringing. And so our moms and dads across the country – and community members, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters – are all standing in defense of parental rights.
Ivy Lyons
So what exactly are parental rights? Tiffany Justice, the leader of Moms for Liberty says her organization has the answer.
Tiffany Justice, Co-Founder of Moms for Liberty
Yes. So when our country was being founded, our founding fathers didn’t think to put into the Bill of Rights, that parents have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children. In fact, if we went back, and we told them, “Hey, if you could put that in, we’d really appreciate it,” we probably be laughed at. And they would say, “Well, what government? What’s, why would the state why would the government ever think that they would have the right to direct the upbringing of someone’s child?” But that’s where we are in America today. And so let me be clear about what fundamental parental rights mean, these are rights that the government does not give you. And the government cannot take away. As a parent, you have the fundamental right, given to you by God, if you’re religious, a by nature’s God, perhaps. But But regardless of any religion, or political party affiliation, or race, parents share the fundamental rights to direct the upbringing of their children. So we will partner with different groups or institutions, we will send our child to school, but we still are directing the upbringing of that child, we do not co parent with the government.
Ivy Lyons
Now I in trying to build this story was thinking that maybe that was at the core of this issue, that that was the controversy, but I hit another snag.
Tiffany Justice, Co-Founder of Moms for Liberty
And so, what you’re seeing is government actors, government, actors act as government employees who work in schools, working to turn parents against their children. And that’s not acceptable. The idea that the American government would actually – would work and and advocate and support children turning their backs on families, feeling alienated from parents is sickening. And it really shows how far we have strayed from respecting the role of the family, as the foundation for American principles and values. And no one is going to love support, protect and advocate for a child, like that child’s parent. And how dare the government, the audacity of any individual to think that they could get between a parent and their child,
Ivy Lyons
She ended up coming to the same conclusion that Governor Glenn Youngkin, which was, “hey, parents have these rights, and it’s not controversial.”
Tiffany Justice, Co-Founder of Moms for Liberty
I think it’s all nonsense. We are we live in 2022. I have no doubt that in years past, it was probably more difficult to come out to your parents as being gay. But we live in 2022. And I’m a 43-year-old mother of four children. I know and I’m in touch with Moms for Liberty members across the country. We have gay members. We have members who have gay children. Parents today love and accept their children and just want them to be happy.
Ivy Lyons
Now, a lot of people spoke on the condition of anonymity for the creation of this rather long story. And the comments were interesting to say the least there were a lot of questions about both what Jason Miyares, Governor Glenn Youngkin’s Attorney General, said were the fundamental rights that parents have, and the very real fears that students were sharing. Again, under the condition of anonymity, one student told me that they wouldn’t be able to share their gender identity and preferred pronouns in Fairfax County, and that a lot of students and a lot of districts, quote have rules established to protect queer students from malicious dead naming the different forms of discrimination. Additionally, other students said, as a queer student, quote, it just generally make school unsafe. It’s stuff like being a little more uncomfortable to use my pronouns with other people. It’s just like, not wanting to be out and proud as I’ve always been. Another queer student told me that they rely on those protections at school and they’ve had friends who’ve been kicked out of their homes denied access to financial support and threatened with conversion therapy, once a family member found out that they were queer. These protections, the student said, are often life saving and oftentimes the only safeguard against homelessness, financial harm, abuse, and trauma for unsupported queer students. So, what about the content? There is this other question of whether or not LGBT things can be in schools because parents also have the right to shape their child’s living experiences and content can be overly sexual. What does overly sexual mean? And how does a parent’s right, advocate? Think about this. We go back to Tiffany.
Tiffany Justice, Co-Founder of Moms for Liberty
It’s an interesting way that you’ve posed the question. I think there’s been a real confusion and a purposeful confusion on the part of the media and the progressive far left on this issue. Parents across the country have been very concerned about the books they have found in libraries, and on public school library shelves. A lot of the books have extreme sexual content, sexual violence, and we have found that they have even been in elementary school public libraries. I feel like that is the issue at hand. This idea of high school students having access to information, what information should be in libraries for high school students, it’s really a conversation to be had at that very most local level. Local taxpayer dollars are being spent on the books that are in public school libraries and so those communities needs to come together and have a conversation about what content they feel is appropriate and what content they feel that they want to pay for. And the community should definitely have a voice in that. And so what mom’s for Liberty has done is work to help to create committees and to improve processes and procedures. As far as the vetting of library books that are kept in public schools. In Florida, the Department of Education has just begun a committee where they are bringing in parents and other stakeholders to talk about what processes and procedures are used to review and purchase books in public school libraries. My advice would be to Virginia Governor Younkin to create that very same action in the Department of Education, bring parents in and other concerned community stakeholders and have a conversation.
Ivy Lyons
Now Governor Glenn Younkin has been let’s say called out by a few organizations in the LGBT advocacy community. GLSEN and Equality Virginia have both issued rebukes of the governor’s administration and asked that they, quote, listen to what transgender youth in our schools have to say about their experiences. Quality Virginia strengthened its calls after a devastating mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs led to five deaths and 17 injuries. Nerissa Rahaman wrote in a letter to state superintendent Jillian Balow and Governor Youngkin that they needed to resend the 2022 VDOE model policies, the policies that were at issue for the students. And in addition, the Los Angeles Blade, the pride liberation project and several other organizations were quick to not just point out that this was a controversial act but say directly, that quote, these privacy protections are part of creating a supportive accepting environment. Now Loudoun County was at the crux of these conversations. That’s when I started looking at, well, how broad these LGBTQ issues were these controversies – that maybe weren’t considered controversial – how common they were. In nearby Maryland, Jennifer Eller sued the system in 2018. Prince George’s County public school systems, I should say, because she transitioned in 2011 and, she claimed, that there was alleged discrimination and harassment. That she was essentially being dead named, that school administrators told her not to wear skirts, that one school called her a pedophile, a high school student verbally assaulted her in a parking lot, quote, including telling her that they will, quote rape her and make her quote their girlfriend. The teacher recounted all of these things through her legal representation, but the controversies in LGBTQ individuals and education did not stop there. Dhruvak Mirani was in Howard County running as the youngest person on the Democratic Party’s primary ticket. And while he was running, I asked him about LGBTQ books and discussions that were happening in the classroom.
Dhruvak Mirani
These things in Howard County, such as book ban, such as extremists running for our Board of Education using openly racist dog whistles like restoring neighborhood schools and things like that is an enormous threat. That is kind of a combination of the rhetoric that I have seen for the past 13 years in our county public school system growing up where I’ve grown up, facing the kind of vitriol that I have for being as outspoken as I have. I think that for any student, having to be an adolescent, going through public schools, developing their interests. Learning how to learn in school is hard enough, and I and I really do worry that any student who goes through through what is happening right now will be – will have that even further of a barrier… in their academics and their in their social life. And I think that we are placing such an enormous burden on students. That simply is too much.
Ivy Lyons
When we come back, we’ll see what experts have to say, this is What We Know Now.
Ivy Lyons
And we’re back. Now. That’s when I started to understand a little bit more of what exactly we were trying to figure out. Because when this story started, we were concerned with understanding the controversy. Right? What was happening? What kind of conversations were occurring? And I mean, when we looked at DC, we saw similar issues, not necessarily, you know, that we were seeing controversies where trans identifying people were just outright having negative experiences and going to the press about it. But there were concerns that DC congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton made clear because a flood of anti LGBTQ bills in the states and the reality that there’s congressional control over the District right now, well, that means that, quote, we have every reason to believe that a Republican Congress will launch such attacks against DCS LGBTQ residents. Now, I asked the district’s Republican Party to speak on Norton’s comments and party chairman Patrick Mara pointed to the autonomy that the DC government has that DCS voting rights are centered in its platform, and of course, that home rule and self governance have been central in its policies as well. Mara added that GOP leadership have maintained open channels of communication with relevant congressional officials, committees and staff in the same way that Norton has. But this became a national story. And these conversations as Tuck said, were happening on social media, and it’s having an impact on the community. So what do all of these concerns amount to? And really the new question that we came away with, how is this impacting students? I spoke with quite a few experts, we came up to about eight experts to ask what was at the heart of all of these challenges, how we can navigate them better, and really how these things are impacting students. First, there was this agreement across experts that not feeling comfortable in school not having access to resources – well, that can lead to isolation and negative mental health outcomes. David Huebner, a professor at George Washington University School of Public Health told me just as much
David Huebner, Professor at George Washington University’s School of Public Health
well, we know for example, that so if we want to talk about Texas, for example, and the limits that they’re placing on parents ability to provide gender affirming care. And, you know, and by extension, physicians ability to provide gender affirming care for trans youth. All of the research that we currently have suggests that allowing kids to make a social transition and when appropriate, to seek medical care, medical care, that’s gender affirming, that has maybe hormones, hormone blockers, things of that nature. All of the research we show, we see shows that when kids have access to those kinds of healthcare services, either a social transition, or medical transition, as indicated, those kids do better mentally, have less depression, less anxiety, less suicidality. So what we’re seeing is that the legislature is saying, No, we cannot provide care. Parents cannot seek that kind of care. Physicians can’t provide that kind of care, despite the fact that we know that it’s going to make these kids healthier.
Ivy Lyons
I also asked about these communities more specifically, there’s so much more to get into when it comes to the health of LGBT communities. But more specifically, I want to tune into something that was best said by Carlos Rodriguez Diaz, who was speaking to me about a future story on LGBT health. That point is that these aren’t inherently vulnerable populations.
Carlos Rodriguez Diaz, Associate Profesor at George Washington University’s School of Public Health
They’re communities that are socially main vulnerable. And yes, I’m rephrase, rephrasing the notion of vulnerability as you describe. We are not inherently vulnerable, we are made socially vulnerable.
Ivy Lyons
Now. That’s a conversation to look forward to. But I want to go back to Dr. David Huebner while we were talking, he was expanding on the potential impacts that some of these controversial laws could have.
David Huebner, Professor at George Washington University’s School of Public Health
Well, I mean, some of these laws are really new. And so I don’t think we we haven’t Been able to study the impact of, you know… What is it? What is the impact of a law that says a parent can’t seek this care for their kid? So all we can do extrapolate and understand, but like, it’s sort of like, well, we know. Let me give you an example. If we know that there’s a certain drug that effectively treats or cures cancer, and then a legislature passed a law and says, “No, you can’t give that drug anymore. You can’t, you can’t provide that treatment anymore.” We don’t need to study the impact of the law, what we know is we’re withholding a treatment that has evidence behind it. And people are gonna die as a result of that kind of – as a result of withholding that kind of care. So we don’t have research that specifically tests the effects of these laws. But we do have research that says that the treatments that these laws are forcing families to withhold can save lives. That is, these laws are preventing families from providing their kids with life saving treatments.
Ivy Lyons
Now, I can have a pretty chaotic train of thought. But I think that you are starting to piece together what I know, which is these students have an experience, this controversy comes out and it gets mass mediated, right? Everyone’s talking about it, it becomes this national firestorm. And it inflames people on the right and on the left and everywhere in between. But the impact on students and families is: if you don’t feel comfortable having conversations in school, you might also feel less comfortable, or actually have less access to resources that you need that would lead to better health outcomes. Next, what losing stories of whole people groups could mean for students and those students speak out about their experiences. This is What We Know Now.
Ivy Lyons
So what does it mean to lose write these narratives? What does it mean to lose all of this stuff? These resources? What does it mean to not be able to speak openly about LGBT topics in classrooms? And how can this all spiral? Or has it spiraled? In comes Dr. Dwayne Wright,
Dwayne Wright, Assistant Professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development
I am an assistant professor of higher education administration, as well as the Director of Diversity Equity inclusion initiatives at the Graduate School for Education and Human Development, which is part of the George Washington University in Washington DC.
Ivy Lyons
I reached out to Dr. Right, because I needed to know what would the educational impacts truly be? Right? Are there real educational losses that come from losing actual content? The things that Tiffany was talking about earlier, these books and these narratives of non heterosexual people? Does it have an impact on students?
Dwayne Wright, Assistant Professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Oh, sure. So let’s just take a few steps back because I think that the best way to understand a controversy is to go to its core. So if you remember, right before the 2020 election, the previous president issued an executive order banning something that he called Critical Race Theory from being taught as part of any federal contractors. And upon further investigation, the media has basically established that the previous president saw a segment on Fox News in which a provocateur — I would call him — Christopher Ruffo, basically mentioned the critical race theory labeled something that he described as critical race theory and wanted it banned. The President saw this, and as happened so frequently in the last administration, decided to put it into policy or quasi policy. So from that time, which was, you know, October going into the election. Up until now, there’s been sort of this controversy, which has moved from federal bans to state bans and a battle over parental rights. And of course, parental rights is nothing new within America. Within our federal system, we’ve had battles over parental rights going all the way back to Brown versus Board of Ed in which some citizens, some counties, some states decided to fight against desegregation by saying, “Well, no, I have a right as a parent, for my child — my white child — not to participate in education with black students. And, you know, through the years, the Supreme Court and other courts struck that down, and that type of argument we thought had gone by the wayside. So this critical race theory scare led to another sort of parental rights scare, which led to the banning or restricting of LGBT content in our school curriculum. Onstensibly, this has been presented to the public, the voting public, and the legislators, even though we haven’t seen a lot of popular referendum. This has mostly been laws passed by legislators, saying that we don’t want to quote unquote, sexualize individuals, we don’t want to sexualize students.
Ivy Lyons
More interesting. Tiffany Justice said something very similar.
Tiffany Justice, Co-Founder of Moms for Liberty
We somehow in this country have been encouraged to try to forget about what age-appropriate means. And I do believe it’s the effort of queer theorists and Marxists to blur the lines between child and adult. And we see, again, government schools working to do and aid in that as well. This comes back to what we first started talking about: the fact that we have the government — and that’s what public schools are, they are government schools, teachers are government actors. We have the government literally keeping secrets of children from adults about things such as their sexual orientation, or their perceived gender identity. That is a problem. It must stop it is not appropriate. And it really is in violation of many different things, including and most importantly, our fundamental parental rights as parents,
Ivy Lyons
but Dr. Wright says,
Dwayne Wright, Assistant Professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development
No, of course, this is a bit misleading and false, right? Because the same way, prospectively LGBT materials conceptualize students, heterosexual materials, which have been in existence within school materials, since we started having public schools in America could potentially sexualize students as well most of the bills we see right now aren’t going after any heterosexual materials. What they are really doing much Like the critical race theory ban is trying to find a wedge issue, to have one party, take back the suburbs, and also to use this so-called parental rights as a political issue. It worked semi-successfully in the Virginia Governor campaign. As soon as they saw success there, they tried to take it nationwide.
Ivy Lyons
Of course, there are a lot more anonymous comments, and there are outright ones. A lot of people are concerned about the safety of children, especially young women who are born female. There are a lot of concerns from parents after the misreporting of the sexual assault in Loudoun County. But there’s also this reality, which is: the controversy exists. And the people who are losing, especially in education, and all of these debates are the students.
Dwayne Wright, Assistant Professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Well, primarily, what it – what it does, is it deprives the individual student of answers that other students are getting at their same level of development. And what that does — again, maybe intentionally, but you know, lets you assume good intentions, maybe unintentionally — it takes one student and places them at a disadvantage, and therefore a different learning level than any other students. Take, for instance, if we decided, for some god awful reason, not to teach about gender at all in school, and we only taught to a patriarchal, male-centric perspective. What are our female students not getting in that sort of system, hypothetical system? They’re not understanding the differences between biological males and biological females, but they’re also not seeing themselves reflected in the examples that we use to teach young students, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? And if you’re only seeing lawyers, doctors, policemen, all male, how, as a young woman, would you then be able to figure out and place yourself within the perspective of the future that you’re being taught what’s not taught in the schools needs to be made up for at the home. Right? So if you’re a public school students — let’s say in Prince George’s County here, even though I don’t know they have a band, let’s just say Florida, maybe to make it more accurate — and you’re going home, what that parent what that household needs to make up for what needs to supplement for education, because of the don’t say, gay bill is actually quantitatively qualitatively different than the LGBTQ family. And that is unfair in a system in a public education system, where every family should be getting the same and high-quality education.
Ivy Lyons
So let’s go back to the students, let’s keep them centered in this conversation, because that’s who we’re talking about, right? I asked, How are you doing? how is this impacting you? Here’s what they said.
Anonymous Virginia Student
And as a queer student, it just generally makes unsafer, I think, to face more discrimination in schools, especially to students that are only out in school and not to their families. This added discrimination can allow students be bullied in school, and then they don’t have somewhere to turn to. And they have no one who is protecting them. So if students are at the forefront of these movements, students are at the forefront of their own right. Then you kind of end up having this, like, dichotomy between students and parents. And for politicians to kind of just consider parents’ views as opposed to students ever harms the students in the long run.
Ivy Lyons
Now, the good news is, there is agreement: an assessment by institutions and families of books that may be controversial, can start by asking whether these stories are really harmful. Now, I want to be clear that experts are suggesting that engaging with a broad set of narratives like stories and info that includes students that are from a variety of backgrounds is helpful to all students. Wright says you gotta keep in mind who’s being hurt by these topics, and use the info that you have to guide these responses.
Now, I have to be honest, without dragging you through 24 hours of content and reading an entire story which you can read when it’s published. You can just go online. This is absolutely What We Know Now. My name is Ivy Lyons, and I hope to have another story for you very soon.
What we know now is edited and produced by Ivy Lyons with audio for MontanyMusic and Soundful this narrative was produced as part of a digital project for WTOP News in Washington, which reserves the rights to the reporting corrections or questions to this podcast can always be sent to tips@ivylyons.com. Thanks for listening.
What We Know Now 