Democratic Virginia Delegate Danice A. Roem said Monday that a bill which would prohibit teachers from concealing a student’s gender dysphoria from their parents would cause children to die.
The transgender lawmaker made the comments as the Virginia House prepares to vote on Sage’s Law, a bill that would require parental to be notified if their child socially transitions to another gender, prohibit teachers from hiding that transition and clarify the meaning of “child abuse.” The bill addresses recent attempts by Democrats to label “misgendering” as child abuse in order to justify state interventions to protect children from their non-affirming parents. (RELATED: ‘Harry Potter’ Video Game Will Feature Transgender Character)
“Mr, Speaker, if the delegate would like examples of children who have been forced out of their homes … go down the street to [Richmond LGBTQ+ youth center] Side By Side, go to Virginia Beach and talk to one of the youth homeless centers there,” Roem said. “If you want experiences, if you wanna hear lived experiences from the very kids who this bill would affect, go talk to the kids who were kicked out of their homes, and who were beaten for being outed against their own will.”
Roem, who first began presenting as female at the age of 30, said Virginia voters were “tired of having to hear kids being used as political props and thrown to the wolves.”
Responding to comments from Roem that schools would have no way to accurately determine biological sex in opposition to “gender identity,” LaRock said that schools would have other ways to verify a student’s biological sex and determine whether a student was identifying with a gender inconsistent with that.
“I do know that it is very obvious in the school context that counselors would know a child’s biological sex, having a child that has been present in the school, perhaps participating in different sports, and who would then confide in a counselor,” Republican Del. Dave LaRock, the bill’s sponsor, responded. “So the student themselves would be likely to disclose, as part of that decision in the conversation leading up to it, what their actual biological sex is.”
The Virginia House’s final vote on Sage’s Law (HB 2432) is tomorrow. Sage’s Law requires school staff to notify parents about their child’s new gender identity & prohibits school counselors from hiding gender-identity changes from a parent & from encouraging children to do so. https://t.co/cj42fj9A5m
— Ginny Gentles (@ginnygentles) February 7, 2023
Sage’s law is named after a 14-year-old girl who was sex trafficked and raped after the state removed her from her parents custody to protect her from “misgendering.” The chain of events first began when the school hid Sage’s new identity as a boy from her parents and failed to notify her grandmother that Sage was being abused in the men’s bathroom she now used. In tearful testimony offered before the Virginia legislature’s education committee, Michele, Sage’s grandmother, testified that Sage now says she was never a boy, and was merely trying to fit in with the rest of the kids at school.