Virginia
Va. students stage mass walkout over anti-LGBTQ policies
Activists from more than 90 schools across state hold rallies
Thousands of students in schools across Virginia participated in walkouts and rallies on Tuesday to oppose the revised “model policies” on transgender students released by the Virginia Department of Education.
VDOE policy revisions were released on Sept. 16 and differ substantially from the policies passed into law in 2020.
The original policies on the treatment of trans students were intended to protect LGBTQ students; but the revised “model policies” have been criticized by activists, educators and legislators for mandating students use school facilities for the sex they were assigned at birth and bars students from changing their names and pronouns without parental permission. Further, the policies direct teachers and staff not to conceal a student’s gender identity from parents, even when a student asks to keep that information private.
The student-led Virginia-based Pride Liberation Project responded to these policy changes by organizing mass walkouts and rallies in more than 90 schools from Alexandria to Williamsburg.
“These proposed guidelines are essentially taking that cornerstone and using it to undermine our rights. If these guidelines are implemented, it will be the single biggest loss for queer rights in Virginia in years,” Natasha Sanghvi, a student organizer with the Pride Liberation Project, said in a statement.
Openly gay Virginia state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) in a statement said “these new model policies, which are in flagrant violation of Virginia law, will do serious harm to transgender students. They are not based in science or compassion and will lead to students being outed before they are ready, increased bullying and harassment of marginalized youth, and will require students to jump through legal hoops just to be referred to with their proper name.”
Ebbin joined several hundred students at West Potomac High School in Alexandria in a rally opposing the model policies proposed by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
“The new policy drafts are only going to do more harm to trans students who are already at risk for being outed, harassed and harmed,” Jules Lombardi, a Fairfax County high school senior, told the Washington Blade. “These drafts will take schools, which are supposed to be safe environments for students, and make them spaces where students have to hide themselves for fear of their parents finding out about their identities.”
“This isn’t a matter of ‘parental rights,’ it’s a matter of human rights and we deserve to be treated with the same respect as cis students,” Lombardi added.
Andrea-Grace Mukuna, a senior at John R. Lewis High School in Springfield, told the Blade that “gender affirmation matters. Something so easily given to cisgender people is a right that our trans and gender non conforming youth deserve. I am walking out because schools will no longer be a safe place for queer students to be in if these policies get passed.”
“Requirements for teachers to refer to students by their birth name and pronouns aligning with their sex, rather than trusting our students to know themselves and who they are best, reinforces the idea that we as students have no power, no control and no knowledge over anything in our lives. Gender queer youth exist, and no policy can change that,” Mukuna said.
Mukuna continued, “making an attempt at denying them their ability to be who they are is a malicious attack on vulnerable students that could cause deathly harm.”
“I walk out for my queer community — there is no erasing us,” Mukuna said.
Several hundred students walked out of McLean High School. The walkout was lead by members of the school’s GSA and organizers from the Pride Liberation Project including McLean High School senior Casey Calabia.
Calibia asked the crowd, “Do we want Gov. Youngkin to understand that this is not what Virginia looks like?”
The crowd roared, “yes!”
“Virginia stands for trans kids. Trans and queer people are a fact of humanity. We will be accepted one way or another and to see everybody here today is another step toward that change,” said Calibia through a bull horn.
Calibia told the Blade in a pre-walkout statement said “to call these policies in favor of respecting trans students’ rights and privacy is to call an apple an orange. The 2022 Transgender Model policies, even as a draft, have begun to actively hurt my community’s mental health.”
“Instead of focusing on academics and our future, we have to sit in class and wonder if we will be safe in school,” Calibia concluded. “To not only take away the 2021 policies, a cornerstone in LGBTQIA+ rights for Virginia, but to mock them with these replacements, is a devastating blow to myself, trans students, queer students, and the whole of Virginia’s public school student body. How can we be safe, if we can be taken out of school-provided counseling, maliciously misgendered, and denied opportunities given to other students simply because of our gender? Accepting queer students in class does not indoctrinate or brainwash kids. It tells queer students like me that it is okay and safe to be ourselves in school.”
The student protests in Virginia have made national news.
“This is a president who supports the LGBTQI+ community and has been supporting that community for some time now as a vice president, as senator, and certainly as president now,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in response to a question about the protests during her daily press briefing. “And he . . . always is proud to speak out against the mistreatment of that community … We believe and he believes transgender youth should be allowed to be able to go to school freely, to be able to express themselves freely, to be able to have the protections that they need to be who they are.”
“When it comes to this community, he is a partner, and he is a strong ally, as well as the vice president,” Jean-Pierre stated.
Walkouts and rallies were held at middle and high schools in Arlington, Bedford, Buchanan, Chesterfield, Culpeper, Fairfax, Fauquier, Frederick, Henrico, James City, Loudoun, Louisa, Montgomery, Powhatan, Prince George’s, Prince William, Spotsylvania, Stafford, Warren and York Counties as well as in the cities of Alexandria, Chesapeake, Newport News, Portsmouth, Richmond, Williamsburg and Winchester.
“Every parent wants Virginia’s laws to ensure children’s safety, freedom, and to encourage a vibrant and engaging learning experience. But the Virginia Department of Education is rejecting those shared values by advancing policies that will target LGBTQ kids for harassment and mistreatment simply because of who they are,” said Ebbin.
Virginia
Gay 1920s-era Hollywood star to be honored in Staunton, Va.
Billy Haines became acclaimed designer after anti-gay policies ended his acting career
A project is underway in Staunton, Va., to honor William ‘Billy’ Haines, who was born and raised in Staunton before becoming an out gay 1920s and early 1930s-era Hollywood movie star whose acting career ended around 1934 when he refused demands that he conceal his sexual orientation and end his relationship with his male partner.
Haines left the movie business around that time to start what became a highly successful interior design and furniture business in Los Angeles that he led until his death in 1972 at age 72, and which remains in business today, according to the Arcadia Project, a Staunton-based nonprofit initiative.
In a statement released last month, Arcadia Project announced it is working to revitalize a long-vacant movie theater in downtown Staunton that it plans to rename after Haines. It says a fundraising campaign is under way to support efforts to reopen the theater and the larger building in which it is housed as a “dynamic mixed-use cultural center.”
The statement notes that Haines left Staunton at age 14 and resided in Hopewell, Va., and Greenwich Village in New York City until 1922, when he was “discovered” by a talent scout and sent to Hollywood.
“Between 1922 and 1934, Haines appeared in 54 movies during his meteoric and highly successful career,” the Arcadia Project statement continues, noting he transitioned from silent movies to talkies and was fully open about being gay. “But when Hollywood’s moral crackdown of the 1930s demanded that he end his relationship with his longtime partner Jimmie Shields, Haines refused,” it says.
“For LGBTQ people – then and now – Haines’s choice resonates deeply. Rather than deny who he was, he reinvented himself as an interior designer to the stars,” according to the statement.
It says he helped invent the so-called Hollywood Regency style home and designed homes for Hollywood legends such as Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, Carole Lombard, George Cukor, and Jack Warner as well as for political figures like Ronald Reagan when he was governor of California.
“As there is no monument, marker or public recognition for Haines in his hometown of Staunton, Va., Arcadia Project, in collaboration with the LGBTQ+ community in Staunton seeks to commemorate him inside a new cultural center,” the statement says.
It quotes Arcadia Project Executive Director Pamela Mason Wagner as saying, “Naming the movie theater in Haines’ honor is more than an act of historical recognition – it is a powerful statement about visibility, belonging, and whose stories are valued in our community.”
The statement says project leaders hope to open the cultural center in early 2027, with a fundraising campaign seeking to raise $250,000 to renovate the theater.
“If the full goal is not reached, a smaller space within the building will be named for Haines, scaled to the amount of funds raised,” it says. “We truly hope friends and admirers of Billy Haines everywhere will want to participate.”
Donations for the project can be made through this site: www.thearcadiaproject.org
Virginians for Marriage Equality on Monday launched a campaign in support of repealing Virginia’s constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
Equality Virginia Executive Director Narissa Rahaman, former state Sen. Adam Ebbin, former state Del. Mark Sickles, and American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia Executive Director Mary Bauer are among those who spoke at the launch that took place in Richmond. State Del. Kirk McPike (D-Alexandria), who co-chairs the campaign, also participated.
“This amendment is about making clear that the government has no business deciding which marriages or which families are worthy of recognition,” said Bauer. “The ACLU of Virginia has been fighting for Virginians’ right to marry who they love since the landmark case, Loving v. Virginia, which struck down the ban on interracial marriage. Now we are proud to carry that legacy forward by standing with our coalition partners in the fight to pass this amendment and finally enshrine the right to marriage equality in the commonwealth’s constitution.”
Voters in 2006 approved the Marshall-Newman Amendment.
Same-sex couples have been able to legally marry in Virginia since 2014. Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who is a Republican, in 2024 signed a bill that codified marriage equality in state law.
Two successive legislatures must approve a proposed constitutional amendment before it can go to the ballot.
Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger in February signed a bill that finalized the referendum’s language.
The referendum will take place on Nov. 3.
Virginia
Va. Supreme Court invalidates Democrat-backed redistricting plan
Voters narrowly approved new congressional districts last month
The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a Democrat-backed redistricting plan that voters approved last month.
Ten of 11 of Virginia’s congressional districts favor Democrats in the plan that passed by a 51-48 vote margin in last month’s referendum.
The Human Rights Campaign PAC is among the groups that support it. The court by a 4-3 majority invalidated the referendum results.
Democrats on May 11 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the ruling.
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