Transgender children are under attack by political leaders across the nation, and Robert Levy has brought that to Moore County.
Last month, Levy, a Moore County Schools Board of Education member, proposed a series of new board policies, the most controversial of which insert his political views into curriculum decisions and matters of student safety and privacy.
Among these, citing safety and morality, Mr. Levy proposed banning transgender students from using bathrooms and playing on sports teams matching their gender identity. He did so although no area school raised issues involving transgender students’ bathroom or locker room use. Moreover, the North Carolina High School Athletic Association already has a restrictive policy regarding transgender athletes.
It’s worth noting that according to the association, only six transgender children compete statewide, none in the Sandhills.
Given the lack of local problems, why is Mr. Levy focused on these children? In his words, “We do have to deal with all students and one of the problems is we are sacrificing the privacy of the vast majority in order to accommodate the political will of the extreme minority.”
Two questions arise: Whose privacy is being sacrificed when there are no specific complaints at the school level; and whose “political will” is being accommodated? Certainly not that of Moore County’s transgender children; there is nothing political about what they need — they want to use the bathroom safely and enjoy school athletics.
For an explanation of Mr. Levy’s motivations, consider that his anti-transgender proposal does not stand alone.
This year so far has been a record-breaking one for similar legislation, with conservative lawmakers in 33 states proposing more than 100 bills aimed at curbing the rights and freedoms of transgender people, especially children. In Raleigh, GOP members of our General Assembly introduced two bills that discriminate against transgender children in sports and health care, and another bill would allow medical providers to refuse care to transgender individuals.
Although the school board’s policy committee did not support any of Mr. Levy’s revisions, he pushed his proposals for a vote by the full board. Then, after our General Assembly tabled its anti-transgender bills, Mr. Levy suddenly pulled his policy against transgender children from the school board agenda.
Despite this, harm has been done. Rhetoric and policy discussions of leaders have measurable and critical impacts on transgender youth. The Trevor Project — the nation’s largest LGBT youth crisis intervention and suicide prevention organization — reported a dramatic spike in calls and online chats following anti-transgender messaging.
In the week after the Texas legislature introduced an anti-trans “bathroom bill” in June 2017, contacts to the Trevor Project from transgender young people more than doubled. After President Trump’s July 2017 tweet regarding a proposed transgender military ban, such contacts almost tripled within 24 hours.
In this case, Moore County’s transgender students have been the focus of ugly discussions in news reports and social media posts. Under Mr. Levy’s proposal, they may be subjected to inspections of their “sexual body parts” and required to use bathrooms and locker rooms of a sex that they no longer resemble or claim. They are hearing another school board member, David Hensley, vow to “protect” other children from them. On social media, he has called their social and emotional health needs “ridiculous leftist issues.”
To put their lived experience in context, these are children, from elementary through high school, who already do not feel welcome at school. According to GLSEN’s 2019 School Climate Survey, 42.5 percent of LGBT students reported feeling unsafe at school because of their gender identity, and 45.2 percent of them avoided sex-segregated bathrooms because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable.
In North Carolina, 71 percent of LGBT students reported hearing negative comments about transgender students from classmates. Sadly, 35 percent reported negative remarks about students’ gender expressions from faculty.
Harassment has consequences. LGBT students who experienced high levels of harassment for their gender expression were almost three times more likely to miss school than those who experienced lower levels and were twice as likely to report they were not going to pursue secondary education (either college or trade school). Students with high levels of gender harassment had lower GPAs and were more likely to be disciplined at school.
Unsurprisingly, they had lower self-esteem and higher rates of depression. These students are suffering and struggling not because they are transgender; they are suffering because others harass them.
Conversely, outcomes for transgender children improve markedly when simple steps are taken to affirm them. A 2018 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health shows that transgender students who could use their chosen name at home, work, in school, and with peers showed a 71 percent decline in symptoms of severe depression, a 34 percent decrease in reported thoughts of suicide and a 65 percent decrease in suicidal attempts compared to peers who could not.
For our transgender young people, wanting to play on sports teams matching their gender identity or feeling safe in bathrooms are not leftist issues. If Moore County’s school board inserts itself into transgender students’ lives at all, it should do so in the same spirit that it should approach all Moore County students: to affirm them and encourage their success.
Our school board is supposed to be nonpartisan, and there is no room for political gamesmanship when kids’ lives are at stake.
Julia Latham is a Moore County resident, attorney, mother and LGBTQ advocate.
