President Trump’s administration has rescinded the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter requiring that public schools let transgender students use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice. It was probably the right thing do, and there was nothing “shameful” about the decision: equally decent people can, and do, have competing views of what is good.
There is no reason, of course, to believe anything other than that the Obama administration’s initial guidance was well-intended, driven by a desire to see transgender students empowered to make decisions for themselves about who they are. It is also absolutely a legitimate worry that school districts might discriminate against transgender students.
But equally decent people could feel very uncomfortable sharing a bathroom or changing room with someone of the opposite biological sex — sex-based privacy has been a time-honored norm — and could also have religious objections to such mixing. What about their rights? There were also legitimate worries about the legality of the order, delivered as a sudden reinterpretation of long-standing regulations.
Finally, societal evolution takes time. It may well be better to let smaller units (states, communities, families) grapple with and adjust to social change than suddenly impose one vision of the good on everyone.
Of course, there may be no solution in a diverse school or district that equally respects the values and desires of all. This is a major reason that school choice is so crucial: it enables families and educators to freely choose the values they want taught and respected, rather than government choosing one side to win and the other to lose.