The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights made a startling announcement Monday, setting a dangerous precedent for minor children in public schools.  After a two year investigation, they have found that a Chicago area school district is in violation of Title IX, which is a federal law prohibiting discrimination in schools based on sex.

Here is what happened:

• A transgender girl (with male body parts, so there’s no confusion) filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in 2013 because she was denied access to the girls’ locker rooms. It should be noted that this student had been given full access to girls’ restrooms, and was referred to as “she” within the school and in all school files.

• Township High School District 211, after working with federal officials, installed four privacy curtains and a curtain around a shower in an unused part of the locker room. In order to respect the privacy of the other students, the district insisted that if this transgender student was going to use the girls’ locker room, she use these privacy curtains while changing or showering.

• OCR determined that because the district was requiring this student to use these privacy curtains instead of leaving the choice up to her, they were in violation of this discrimination law.

• OCR is giving the school district 30 days to comply with their ruling that the student have full access to the locker room to use at her discretion, or they will withhold federal funding from this school district.

Get it? This entire controversy is not even about whether the transgender child at issue had access to the female restrooms or locker rooms – he/she/it already had that. The school district had already gone to extraordinary lengths to accommodate this student. This school district is in danger of losing their funding solely over a privacy curtain.

This is a gross misrepresentation of why Title IX was written.  Title IX was enacted to address giving both males and females the same opportunities in school, for instance, a school would be in violation if they had a boys basketball team, but not a girls basketball team.

OCR has taken it upon themselves to expand the meaning of Title IX to suit their political agenda, and they have left our teenage girls vulnerable in the process. Title IX is supposed to protect girls from discrimination; now instead it is being used to force them to shower in the full view of biological males (complete with penises!).

How long before a testosterone driven thirteen year old boy decides he wants to dress up like a girl if it means he gets to see his female classmates take off their clothes?  All he has to do is claim he thinks he is a female and he’ll get full access to a daily teenage peep show.  And he’d think it was the best decision he ever made.

Who is going to determine whether or not he is telling the truth?  Will school districts even be allowed to have truth hearings on this, to determine if the student is really transgender or just faking it?  Surely that would be discriminatory, too, wouldn’t it?

Even if these hearings will be allowed, what sort of evidence would possibly be allowed in such a hearing? Is there anything that makes a person transgender other than their subjective belief that they are one? Is there any way to attack such a subjective belief?

Studies also show 1 in 5 girls (and 1 in 20 boys) is a victim of child sexual abuse. Statistically speaking, in any given girls locker room, there will be girls who have been sexually abused and are likely uncomfortable with having someone born with male body parts undressing right next to them. Do they have any rights according to the Department of Education? Not when the LGBT movement is involved.

How about the girls who simply feel self-conscious changing clothes alongside someone they see as a male?  Suck it up, right?  Let’s desensitize them to being naked alongside someone with male genitalia as early as possible.  Certainly no problems will ever stem from that.

There are parents who may be uncomfortable with their children being exposed to the opposite sex in that way on a daily basis.  It may conflict with their personal values.  But those parents haven’t mattered to the government in a long time.

None of it matters.  None of these individuals have deemed themselves the latest trendy buzzword.  They don’t have special interest groups behind them.  Once someone announces they are LGBT (and whatever other letters are now included in that acronym), they have the world at their fingertips.  They win awards.  The government stands behind them 110%.  So much so, that they are willing to put the rest of our youth in a compromising situation to satisfy the demands of this one child.

The precedent is set.  The circus has begun.  We are now living in a country where transgender rights trump the rights of schoolchildren.  God help us all.