Jessica Johnson, a visiting scholar of religious studies at the College of William & Mary, is the author of “ Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire .” Virginia’s shift from the 2021 Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students to the 2022 Model Policies on the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) seems sudden and extreme, but it has a history.On Aug.30, the Hanover County Public School Board voted to adopt a “ restroom and locker room ” policy that criminalizes and pathologizes transgender students.Effectively, it denies the possibility of a student being trans without parental, medical, legal and educational authorization.
The 2022 VDOE model policies mimic these stipulations, such that privacy, dignity and respect for “all” students can be achieved only by eradicating those who are trans.At a Hanover public school board meeting in September 2021, I heard one ugly joke that baselessly characterized trans students as sexual criminals; by last October, this unsubstantiated moral panic was a fixation.
One mother stated , “I am scared for my daughter.… Who is to say that a transgender student will not sneak a picture from underneath the stall on their cellphone of a female or male using the bathroom and pass it along, which you all know is considered child pornography and is a felony?” Often, this demonization of trans students was couched in terms of Christian belief.
One parent spoke on behalf of Christian families so victimized by secular trends that they had no choice but to home-school: “Every sexual orientation, mental illness, marriage preference, minority group, social justice initiative and other worldly religions are raised up on this imaginary pedestal and just catered to.… But I am a Christian.… My faith says that God created us male and female.This is the God that makes no mistakes.
For Christians to go along with this transgender lie is disrespectful to my God.Sin is sin and I will not call it anything other.I am one of the many Hanover parents that have pulled their kids from the school district to home-school.If our religious beliefs continue to be violated, there will be a mass exit of Christians from your school system and that will not look well on the county.” Yet the Hanover public school board meetings routinely begin with Christian prayer , followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.
“Transgenderism” was deemed a “personal belief system” that, if allowed to exist in Hanover schools, “would be equivalent to establishing a state religion” when “our objective should be to promote unity.” The question of how “unity” would be defined and according to whom was clear.The Family Foundation — a Richmond nonprofit that believes “there is no square inch in all the universe over which God has not claimed ‘Mine,’ and that includes the arenas of civil government and public policy” — provided signs that stated “Protect Every Kid.” This slogan universalized the particular so that the bodily safety, privacy and well-being of trans students was transposed into defending “all kids” from them.Much like “All Lives Matter” generalized “Black Lives Matter” to hierarchically privilege White life over Black life through the ruse of universalism, “Protect Every Kid” erased trans youths from public life and the nation.One parent stated that the mere presence of trans youth would contaminate the “ purity ” of cisgender students; “seeing and experiencing this firsthand can leave a child permanently traumatized and their purity in ruins.” As a political feeling, tool and weapon used to define and police “unity” and “purity,” Christian nationalism shaped dehumanizing rhetoric and policies through a particular logic of the universal — one that shores up “normative” gender according to a strictly “biblical” male/female binary (and hierarchy), while framing whiteness as the universal (superior) and natural (nativist) ethno-racial identity.In March, the Hanover School Board enlisted the Alliance Defending Freedom , a conservative Christian legal advocacy organization that seeks to change the law and culture of the nation , to devise another policy.
Meanwhile, Johnny Redd, a White man who considered “a shift of attention away from core educational objectives …to social issues like CRT, transgender bathrooms” a problem, was appointed to the school board.“My attention will be focused on …
education of the students, not indoctrination of the students, not promoting social change that is illogical, immoral and/or ungodly,” Redd said.
“A biblical worldview will be the lens that I use to analyze policies and curriculum.… I am not going to … allow an evil tide to carry THE CHILDREN to a point where they are brainwashed.” When the Hanover NAACP published an open letter calling Redd’s appointment into question because of his prejudicial remarks, he responded using a racist, sexist stereotype, referring to “an angry African American lady.” Shortly thereafter, a logo design for a faculty conference resembling a swastika made headlines.The teacher who created the symbol was trying to represent “unity.” In August, several Hanoverians testified to how this policy debate affected LGBTQ, Black and Jewish community members.One person said, “I chose to speak today because as a Jew, we have seen this happen before.Holocaust history is about the vilification, policing, and ultimate murder of trans and LGBTQ people.
Restricting Jews and LGBTQ people from society is how the Holocaust began.Gay and trans people were deported alongside Jews and were targeted for not being able to participate in the public community.
… When I read the part of the policies that would require a criminal-background check, among other requirements, just for a child to use the restroom, I thought about my great-grandmother’s family being barred from French businesses and being able to shop and live among non-Jews.Exclusion from basic human rights, such as using a bathroom, is the same type of violence against transgender children that my grandmother’s family endured.It is the same type of violence brought against the Black community.” Contrary to statements that suggest otherwise, the 2022 model policies do impose a specific ideology.Christian nationalism is not relegated to churches, extremist groups or religious-political leaders; it exerts control and fosters political violence through public policies and institutions that seek to exterminate non-White, non-Christian, and non-heteropatriarchal thought from the nation..
