Rumor has it that Glastonbury High School’s decision to switch to gender-neutral graduation gowns was made out of deference to a student at the school who identifies as transgender.
At this time we cannot either confirm or disprove the charge made by LifeZette (whose Editor-in-Chief is Glastonbury’s own Laura Ingraham). The author of the piece, Deirdre Reilly, presents a circumstantial case based on history from other states, but the original source of the information about Glastonbury High is not clear. We spoke with Republican Town Committee Chairman Mark DeLuzio, who said it was LifeZette that reached out to him.
Glastonbury High’s principal has represented the change to the press as coming organically from a group of students who wanted the gowns to symbolize class unity and cohesion. Bearing in mind all of the above, if it turns out that staff are sitting on information that could put them or the LGBT movement in a less-than-positive light, that’s the story — not the gowns.
It would show that, post-Kerrigan, post-Bathroom Bill, post-Obergefell, Connecticut’s LGBT activists are rapidly running out of real problems to solve — not that we have ever believed sexual complementarity in marriage or freedom of conscience are problems, but it is at least easier to see how the sweeping changes of the last few decades could constitute a grand, righteous cause in our opponents’ minds. Not so concerning an itchy, pricey fabric tent that students wear for a few hours out of their entire lives (been there, done that!).
On the other hand, it would also show that school officials have reason to fear backlash; resistance to men in women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, and other more subtle incursions, is alive and well.
In fairness to students whose support for the change is as straightforward as local news coverage suggests, there’s no reason even longstanding school traditions can’t be periodically re-evaluated to see if they’re still working. Our advocacy of a concept of marriage (and now, of biology itself) that is incompatible with Sexual Revolution ideology has never been simply because we’ve done it that way for a long time and didn’t feel like changing; no, the ubiquity of that special relationship, transcending eras and cultures, was hardly the only arrow in our quiver. Change a fundamental building block of society, big deal. Create a safety hazard and privacy violation for half the human race, and punish those who object, big deal. Change your graduation gowns? Not so big a deal — if there is in fact a grassroots consensus, and it isn’t being driven by covert agendas.
Mr. DeLuzio expressed concerns about incrementalism, and he’s not wrong. Several months ago, I wrote that “…running parallel to the legitimate desire not to burden children with false limitations, there is a radical campaign based on the idea that sex differences are merely a social construct and that the body is just putty to be reshaped at will, not much harder to change than changing clothes if money’s no object. The latter is happy to piggyback on the former to get to its destination of genderless utopia.” That is still true, and it is why we’ll continue to monitor this story.
