Loudoun MAGA Maniacs Try Policy
Very interesting piece in the latest Loudoun Times-Mirror about the assault on our local public schools by the MAGA/Trump “Fight For Schools” operation. This is a Republican operation masquerading as a non-partisan parents group. The Republicans in Virginia have been dining out on the troubles of our county school board, exploiting the spectacle of two sexual assaults that occurred in our high schools. Governor Youngkin, who owes his electoral victory in 2021 to this sad affair, launched a grand jury investigation that spread blame around to the Democratic-majority school board but also to the (Republican) county sheriff, one Mike Chapman. You don’t hear much about that last bit.
At any rate, the burden of the Fight for Schools account is their leader urging that the debate focus on “reform” rather than culture-war issues. The problem is these people have no policy ideas other than bromides. Asking them for policy proposals is like asking a Labradoodle to present a lecture on calculus. Their entire effort has been founded on hysteria over boys in skirts preying on girls in school bathrooms, or dirty books in school libraries.
The perpetrator of the sexual assaults has never been shown to be transgender. That remains entirely speculative, as well as beside the point. Any male can enter any female bathroom. People of every gender and gender identity can and do commit crimes, including sexual assault. The second assault did not occur in a bathroom. The first one occurred prior to any stipulation by the school board that students could use whichever bathroom accorded with their self-adopted gender identity.
Contrary to the article, according to the Grand Jury report, the miscreant in question was wearing a kilt, not a skirt. Of course, girls can and do wear kilts, but to me, that suggests a very different vibe than “transgender.” Also contrary to the article, it was not reported by the Grand Jury that the boy was “gender-fluid.” Those words do not appear in the report.
The stance of the county Democratic Party is not encouraging. On one side you have school board members with dubious defenses of their role in the incident, which I would describe as inattentive and detached, and on the other you have Delegate David Reid, who in a letter to the Times-Mirror goes off on the NAACP and the “LGBTQ lobby” in a baroque recapitulation of all the MAGA-Republican talking points. Reid received a rousing ovation at the recent county Democratic Party meeting. Politically, these two positions are a formula for disaster in this year’s elections for state and local offices.
Help me push back on this wretched situation by donating to my campaign for the state legislature here.