How’s your sense of deja vu? Do you remember voting for an initiative that had something to do with the rights of parents of public school students? Didn’t Washington voters already establish that schools needed to give parents access to student records and teaching materials, and give parents the right to opt their children out of certain lessons? Yes, we did. We passed I-2081, yet here we are being asked to vote on this again.

I usually do background research to help me decide how to vote on initiatives. I try to read the text of the initiative, I read what’s in voter pamphlets, I look at who’s speaking out on which side, I talk to friends to see if they have opinions. But sometimes, an issue is just too simple to justify all of that work, and that seems to be the case this year.

Conservative groups that I often disagree with are behind some initiatives that I support this year. I’m on board with IL26-001 which “would re-enact RCW 28A.605.005 as it was originally enacted in Initiative to the Legislature 2081.” It’s simple: A majority of citizens supported this initiative, yet the legislature took away the provisions that enhanced the rights of parents when dealing with school districts. Something is not obvious from the language of the initiative or the bill that gutted it. But a major concern of parents is that schools can hide from parents information about their child’s desire to change gender, a desire that can only be affirmed by Washington public school employees. 

Schools are asserting that only they have the best interest of the child at heart. Parents who don’t fully endorse gender ideology are, by virtue of that fact, abusive. No! That’s absurd. Laws already protect children from abusive parents. I know. I once sent a student to the office when he showed me the belt marks on his back after I’d called his home about missing assignments. “See what you did!” he exclaimed. He could not go home that day until after police had met with his parents. He later told me he’d never been hit after that. Parents who do not support the trans-activist agenda can absolutely have the best interests of the children at heart. If actual abuse is suspected, procedures are already in place to deal with it.

The other initiative I’m supporting is IL26-638, “Protecting Fairness in Girls’ Sports.” This matter has recently been considered by the US Supreme Court which ruled that states can legally maintain separate teams for males and females based on biology, not gender identity. The ruling did not require states to do this, and Washington has bought into the “gender identity” dogmatism for many years, i.e. the notion that claims* of a gender identity entitle a person to the rights guaranteed to a person of the opposite sex. The result has been that biological males who claim to be female are competing in women’s sports in Washington and many other states. 

The debate about keeping men out of women’s sports has gotten ugly. Somehow, people who support this are said to “deny the existence of trans people.” I’ve been accused of this, and I don’t even know what that would mean. People taking cross sex hormones or availing themselves of surgeries to alter their bodies exist. I don’t deny that. Yet, in my mind, humans are dimorphic, male and female, and separate sports teams for males and females makes sense to me. A handful of children without obvious male advantages might be prohibited from competing against girls, but better that than unimpeded entrance of male to female trans people into female sports. 

Back to my claim of simplicity regarding these ballot measures. Remember when Ketanji Brown Jackson, during hearings about her nomination to the Supreme Court, declined to answer, “What is a Woman?” She waffled and said she wasn’t a biology major, so she couldn’t define it. How about “Adult Human Female?” That works for me. No one is confused about men, just women, because men have “transed” themselves into women’s spaces, women’s prisons, and women’s sports. Women are not clamoring to get into mens’ prisons or mens’ sports, for obvious reasons. 

I wish Washington citizens didn’t have to put these issues before the voters, but our legislature has pushed far ahead of the public on the trans issue, so here we are. I’m supporting I26-001 and I26-638.

re: “claims of gender identity,” yes, Washington is a Self-ID state. Any person can simply claim to be the opposite sex and the state must accept it as true. No medical efforts to transition can be required.