Victoria Cobb of The Family Foundation says Sage's Law (HB 2432) seeks to address several government failures a Virginia teenager and her parents experienced first-hand over the past year. Michele Blair, the mother of the bill's namesake, says school teachers and counselors intentionally kept her in the dark about her daughter's gender struggles, which led to Sage being bullied, assaulted, sex-trafficked, and then kept from returning home after she was rescued because of unfounded claims of child abuse.
"She ended up running away from home and actually being drawn into sex trafficking," Cobb laments. "The school had hid this information from the parents, and furthermore, there were other situations that arose which resulted in adults determining that she should be kept away from her parents."
That was because her parents rejected the idea that Sage was born the wrong gender.
Cobb recently told the Royal Examiner that the bill, which has three components, is part of the "long overdue" parents' rights revival that is developing in Virginia.
"Any instructional or administrative personnel that know a child is choosing to identify as a different gender than their biological gender, if they know that is happening in the school, they must notify a parent," Cobb tells about the bill's first part. "The second component: Any counselor or social worker or person that interfaces with this child who is struggling with their gender identity would have to notify the parents."
Thirdly, a parent cannot be considered an abuser for simply not affirming a child's gender confusion. The bill recognizes that with few exceptions, it is up to parents to lead their children through life's problems.
All that transpired at Sage's school was allowed to happen under former Governor Ralph Northam's (D) guidelines, which came about after Virginia lawmakers passed a law in 2020 that called for the state's education department to develop the Model Policies, a template of sorts, for schools to follow. The state Department of Education under Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) reversed those policies last September.
Education policy is believed to have played a role in Gov. Youngkin's election in 2021.
