Don't Dump Social Problems on the Children.

This is why the Obama administration's announcement last week was so damaging and ill thought out...

Like much of the country, this rural school of 300 students in seventh through 12th grade where everyone insists there were never any cliques, is divided over the bathroom issue, with the teenagers here carrying out a proxy culture war for their parents and the country.

They should not push this social issue onto the backs of students, some still struggling to figure out who they are and how they fit into a changing society.

If the administration is still evolving on their social policies, why are they pushing this issue down to the school level for the children to sort out?

ADDED: Remember when Ryan White was shunned at his school in Kokomo, Indiana? That was not true of all the local districts, and eventually, he found a welcoming school:

Ryan White was diagnosed with AIDS on December 17, 1984. He was one of the first children, one of the first hemophiliacs to come down with AIDS, and it was definitely a time where there was no education and there was hardly any information on AIDS at the time. So I was living in Kokomo, Indiana, and Ryan was attending Western Middle School, and it was something that I really didn't even believe he had. I felt like, "How could he have AIDS?" He was a hemophiliac since birth, and I just felt like "How could he be one of the first ones?" I felt like somehow, in someway, it was going to be something else. I really never really believed he had AIDS for quite a while.
...
Then we moved to Cicero, Indiana, and there, the community welcomed us. And it was all because a young girl, named Jill Stuart, who was president of the student body, who decided to bring in the medical experts and talk to the kids, and then the kids went home then and educated their parents. So Ryan was welcome, he got to go to school, he got to go proms and dances. He even got a job. It was kind of funny, he came home once after he turned 16 and told me he had a job for the summer. I thought, "Oh my gosh. Who is going to hire you, knowing who you are?" I said, "What are you going be doing," and he said, "I'm working at Maui's Skateboard shop." I said, "Really? What are you going to be doing?" and he said, "I'm going to be putting together skateboards." And I said, "How much are they going to pay you?" and he said "$3.50 an hour." I said, "Ryan, that won't even buy your gas to Indianapolis and back." He said, "Mom, you don't get it. I got a job just like everyone else does." So it was really important to Ryan, to just be one of the kids, and to just fit in. He never bragged or anything about who he was, or what he got to do, he just wanted to be around his friends.

Put the needs of these children first.
Stop playing politics with their social issues and making them pariahs of the community. If they keep looking, surely they will find a better place that allows them to grow up to be someone -- not just a boy, or a girl, but a real person with other interests, goals and achievements outside of how they present outwardly and choose to label their gender.

That's not a bad thing -- fitting in and becoming someone beyond a label.