The Unreported Part of Obama’s Transgender Edict (Part 2 of 2)

The most outrageous provision of President Obama’s transgender bathroom order does not even involve locker rooms where teenagers of the opposite sex will change and shower next to one another; rather, the most offensive part of the new policy is that, under the Obama Administration’s federal guidance:

School districts must allow biological males and females to spend the night together in the same hotel room on field trips;

Colleges must let men who say they are transgender be roommates with one or more women; and

School officials cannot even tell those young women or their parents in advance that their new roommate is a man, without risking a federal lawsuit.

This plain wording of the Obama Administration’s order is clear enough; and doesn’t just apply to high schools, but to colleges as well.  The Administration makes clear:

“In this letter, the term schools refers to recipients of [f]ederal financial assistance at all educational levels, including school districts, colleges, and universities.”

To drive the point home, Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. said in a press release accompanying the letter, “No student should ever have to go through the experience of feeling unwelcome at school or on a college campus.”

So how would a college apply the Obama Administration’s demand to furnish a transgender student “housing” that conforms to his “gender identity” so that he does not feel “unwelcome” in its dorm rooms?

As demonstrated, the Administration’s guidance makes gender dependent on the student’s assertion and nothing else; it requires students to be housed with members of the sex with which they identify.  The letter states that the college cannot tell other students about a transgender student’s biology.  “Nonconsensual disclosure of ... a student’s birth name or sex assigned at birth, could be harmful to or invade the privacy of transgender students,” and Obama warns it could be against the law in the letter.

Some people would argue that not telling a gifted 17-year-old college freshman that her new roommate is a bearded 51-year-old with male pattern baldness and a taste for young ladies violates her privacy.  But according to the booklet, even the potential roommate cannot ask about a transgender person’s biology, because “asking personal questions about a person’s body” is a form of harassment.  Thus, under the Administration’s policies, a man can declare himself a female and be assigned as the year-long roommate of a possibly under-age, co-ed.  If the college tells the young lady her roommate is a biological male without his express consent, it could be sued.  And if the young lady objects, she is guilty of stigmatizing and possibly “harassing” the poor man and should probably be sent to sensitivity training – which she can schedule between her therapy sessions to deal with her sexual assault.

All of this is being forced on the nation without one legislator voting to authorize it, or even a public debate to consult the views of the American people.  Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, insists these policies are being implemented to assure that schools and universities are as “respectful and safe as they can possibly be.”  Your choice is to get on board or get sued.

The fact that nothing in Obama’s federal guidance forecloses the possibility that a biological woman will become the unwitting, unwilling roommate of a heterosexual biological male - overnight or possibly much longer - tells us how far the president is willing to go to enforce his radical ideology, and how little concern Obama has for anyone who does not share it.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel