Starting in the academic year 2016-2017 the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) will be adding transgender education to its curriculum. Transgender is a new term for many people. It is defined as people who are born with typical male or female anatomies but feel as though they’ve been born into the “wrong body.”
This should not be confused with the Islamic concept of Mukhannathun (which acknowledges people who are born with biological qualities of both genders and has specific religious opinions about them), cautions the imam of Masjid Al Noor in Springfield, VA, Mufti Shahzad Husain. His congregation is in the second largest district of Fairfax County.
The school board also modified their non-discrimination policy to add gender identity. This modification could open doors for a student who is a male but identifies as a female to use the girl’s bathroom and locker room, say activists like Mychele Brickner. Parents will also not be able to opt out of a classroom taught by a transgender teacher. Parents question what will happen if Mr. Clark becomes Mrs. Clark, will the parents even be notified? Will staff get sued for using the wrong pronoun? There are many questions.
All the seats on the Fairfax county school board are up for reelection. Activists say that the only way to reverse this decision is to vote in a new board in as only one member of the current school board voted against this measure. Local churches are actively informing their members on how to vote on this issue and who to support during the school board election on November 3, 2015.
Peace Islamic Center in Burke, VA, Masjid Al Noor in Springfield, VA and the Moroccan American Community Organization in Fairfax, VA have taken steps to inform their communities about the issue and rallying them to get out and vote on November 3, 2015.
There is a lot of misinformation on the Internet about the exact changes made to the policies and curriculum.
The new topic will be taught to students in grades seventh through 10th grade, according to some reports but the school board website indicates that during ninth and tenth grades students will ‘learn how maturation affects adolescent development and learn to recognize the development of sexuality as a lifelong aspect of personality. Students are provided definitions for heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual, and transgender and that all persons deserve to be treated with respect regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.’
A May statement by the school board read that: “The decision by the Fairfax County School Board to add "gender identity" to our nondiscrimination policy is to provide an environment which promotes equality where every student and employee is treated with dignity and respect. This tells our students and staff that school and the Fairfax County Public Schools workplace are places where they can be safe from harassment and discrimination. The School Board has taken this proactive step to protect our students and staff from discrimination.”
Funding is at the crux of the policy change for the school district. At the June school board meeting, the board members admitted that the federal government has been pressuring school districts across the country to amend their “gender identity” policies otherwise The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Education could recommend terminating federal funding to the county. FCPS has a budget of 14 million dollars and a cut of 1.6 percent means about a million less dollars that go into the school system for children of low-income families, library books, textbooks and other instructional materials, research and professional development for teachers.
Elizabeth Schultz, a current board member and a candidate for the next election, was the only member of the school board who voted against this policy change. She believes that there is huge federal government overreach into school policies under the Office of Civil Rights. The parents’ voice is missing from the decision of the school board, as witnessed by the amount of support for Schultz at the school board meeting. Patty Reed, who is also running for school board, abstained; the rest of the board voted to pass this measure.
There was overwhelming opposition to the proposed teaching on gender identity and sexual orientation by community members as noted in comments on the FCPS website. 90 percent of the comments were in opposition to the policy change. The issue affects a tiny minority of students and faculty, so why is this policy change being implemented on an entire school district unless it is to make a political statement, questions Schultz.
Islamic law, by the consensus of scholars for the past millennia and half, prohibits same-sex acts. Muslims believe that Allah has created humans on fitrah (natural state). In terms of sexuality, opposite gender attraction is the natural state. It is possible for fitrah to be corrupted by internal and external means. Homosexual thoughts are also not considered sinful unless acted upon. Islam also teaches compassion and many scholars counsel Muslims who have homosexual urges to control them for the sake of Allah and take it as a test from the Creator. Imams teach kindness for people who are fighting their homosexual urges.
But teaching young adults that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle choice is not acceptable, says Mufti Husain.
Omar Abdelrehim is the President of Peace Islamic Center, a disabled Navy veteran and a parent of three children in the FCPS district. He is an ardent advocate for parents’ rights and is shocked at the changes made in the curriculum. He was at Masjid Al Noor on Friday and on the Greed For Ilm podcast talking up the issue.
Many Muslim parents believe that these are topics should be taught at home or as the parents deem fit, not in public schools. Included in the emails sent by Muslim organizations is a newsletter curated by former Fairfax County School Board member, Mychele Brickner and her associate Andrea Lafferty.
Lafferty is a Fairfax County resident, a grassroots organizer on the transgender issue and a controversial figure. She is a Christian lobbyist who organizes against abortion, gambling, prostitution and gay marriage. TVC distributes information about gays and lesbians, often referring to gays and lesbians as "sexual predators" and "pedophiles."
Her husband, James Lafferty is the founder of the Virginia Anti Shariah Task Force. Her organization, Traditional Values Coalition, is pro-Zionist and takes vitriolic anti-Muslim positions including attacks on CAIR and shariah. She is a Catch-22 for Muslims who agree with her on the issue of parental rights in public schools, yet are deeply concerned about her views about Muslims.
Abdelrahim was introduced to the issue through Brickner, who has served the county for two terms.
Mychele Brickner is often called an anti-LGBT activist. She says even though the opposition uses labels like bigot, anti-gay and anti-transgender, no one has malice in their hearts against the children who have this issue. “We want them to be treated compassionately and we don't want bullying. [However] we don't want children who don't have this issue to be forced in situations with the opposite sex, no matter what they think they are.” she says. She worries that her school district will face the same issues that two other school districts faced. Referring to the situation in Gloucester County where a young boy who identifies as a girl was allowed to use the bathroom of the gender that he identified with. The Stafford and Gloucester County School Boards did the right thing to state that students must use the restrooms according to their biological gender and to provide an accommodation for the affected student, she wrote in April article.
The only way to address this issue for people of faith is to opt out of the Family Life Education curriculum at the beginning of the school year. However the school district has also made policy changes that will make it difficult for parents to opt out as some topics will be taught under the health curriculum, which does not offer opt outs.
LGBT activists say that it is essential to teach normalcy to reduce harassment of LGBT young adults.
“[Parents] don’t want kids to think that this is normal and appreciated. We want [our children] to be tolerant but in so many ways the Family Life curriculum beyond tolerance– it is about appreciating and accepting anything and everything.”
Brickner informed the Muslim Link that an unauthorized survey on gender identity and sexual orientation was sent by the school administration to all FCPS high school students in June 2015. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation, a LGBT advocacy organization, sponsored this survey. The version of the survey “on emotions” shown to parents did not contain these questions, says Brickner. She believes that this survey will be used to get further support for the transgender education.
In Brickner’s flyer, which was also sent out by Masjid al Noor and other masajid, a mother related her son’s experience, “that they had introduced words and concepts to him in 8th grade that terrified him, such as anal and oral sex... as he put it, he couldn’t get his overactive imagination to stop thinking about it. He said with teenage hormones affecting him, he felt afraid of his thoughts. All the other kids were imagining things too, and eventually started talking about them.”
The June 2015 meeting of the Fairfax County School Board held at the Thomas Jefferson School of Science and Technology was attended by a large number of the general public. Hundreds could not enter the building due to the limited space.
Many were concerned about the quick turnaround with this decision when other topics like school start time and end time has taken the school board ten years to discuss and finalize.
“If there is no evidence the policy will work, again, we raise the question ‘what’s the rush?'” parent Jun Yuan asked the school board at the June meeting.
“School should be restricted to academics and this education should be done at home,” says Abdelrahim.
“It is important for our children and our future and it is important to raise our children and schools need to be a partner and not something that we fight. Minority communities are willing to inform their membership that this is wrong,” says Brickner.
The only recourse parents and taxpayers have to what has happened at FCPS is to elect a new school board, says Brickner. She and other activists have worked to ID a group of candidates who would consider running. Elizabeth Schultz is running again. She had not endorsed the flyer sent out and has reached out to Muslims, Coptic, Catholics and Korean churches with her concerns.
Parents don't want their children to be faced with this. Brickner agrees that some accommodations are necessary. If a child has biological gender issues, they should be given a private bathroom in the school to use— it is the forcing all children to be in a mixed-gender environment, i.e. housing the kids on overnight trips for debate teams and sports teams that makes parents and students very uncomfortable. “It is about the 99 percent who have to change how we have always operated for a small number of students who may have this issue,” says Brickner. “If you are going to change the culture so radically then you are bound to have pushback.”
Voting is on November 3 and each county resident is allowed to vote for four school board members— three at large members and one district member. Omar Fateh is a Muslim running for one of the At-Large seats and is against the policy changes, as are At-Large candidates Jeanette Hough, Bob Copeland and Manar Jean-Jacques, and challengers Tom Wilson (Sully), Mark Wilkinson (Hunter Mill), Anthony Stacy (Mt. Vernon) and Peter Kurzenhauser (Dranesville).
As of the publication of this report, leaders of several large Fairfax County based Islamic Centers have not responded to queries about their or their organizations stance on this issue.
“What do we do? I don't want my kids to learn this,” is the most common response Abdelrahim hears from concerned parents.
Abdelrahim is talking to his three kids about transgender issues at home under the guidance of the Quran and Sunnah. He is considering pulling them out of FCPS and homeschooling them. “A lot of my neighbors homeschool their children,” he said.
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