Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin insisted Sunday that there’s nothing “controversial” in regards to the state’s latest school policy requiring students to make use of bathrooms or play for sports teams that correspond to their biological sex and never their gender identity.
“This is just not controversial,” Youngkin, a Republican, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
He added that it’s a problem parents needs to be deciding for his or her kids, at the least in the case of the bathrooms, as a substitute of a blanket policy decided by the faculties.
“I just think the concept we’re going to have policies that exclude parents from their children’s lives is something that I even have been going to work on since Day One,” the governor said. “We campaigned on it. We empowered parents to make decisions as regards to [COVID] masking in Virginia. We’ve empowered parents to make decisions as regards to curriculum that matches their families’ decisions.”
Youngkin, who made parental alternative in schools an indicator of his gubernatorial campaign in 2021, has rolled back how his Democratic predecessor handled transgender students.
The state’s latest policy, introduced at the top of September, now generally requires that students use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their biological sex.
“We would have liked to repair a improper,” the governor said.
“The previous administration had had a policy that excluded parents and, in reality, particularly didn’t require the involvement of oldsters,” he said.
“Dhildren don’t belong to the state. They belong to families. And so, in these most significant decisions, the first step needs to be to interact parents, to not the exclusion of a trusted teacher or an adviser, but to be certain that that oldsters are involved of their children’s lives,” Youngkin said.
CNN’s host Jake Tapper asked whether the policy shuts out parents who support their child going to the toilet or joining a sports team that aligns with their gender identity.
”If parents actually want their child to have the ability to alter a pronoun or their name or use a rest room, if parents select that, then, legally, that’s what the faculties will do,” Youngkin said.
“What we’re not saying is that there is no such thing as a accommodation. What we’re saying is, parents should be engaged in that call. And if a toddler and their parent, together with administrators and teachers, decide to have accommodations for that child, they will probably be granted,” Youngkin said.
But he said sports teams are a unique issue.
“I do imagine that it’s unfair for women to have biological boys play sports with biological girls. There are sports with segregated — with segregated sexes for those sports. And people sports needs to be honored that way,” he said.
”And there are sports where they’re not segregated, where, in reality, each sexes get to play at the identical time. Again, there’s a commonsense approach here to this. And I do think we’ve got to respect girls as well here,” Youngkin said.
