Surprise, Parents! Co-Ed Restroom in North Shore High School
 
Surprise, Parents! Co-Ed Restroom in North Shore High School
Written By Laurie Higgins   |   02.10.16
Reading Time: 4 minutes

A couple of months ago, Deerfield High School (DHS) in Deerfield, Illinois quietly changed a multi-stall girls restroom to a co-ed restroom. Worse still the administration has not notified either parents or students. Rumors are circulating that the administration chose secrecy over transparency in order to avoid controversy.

This is not a single-occupancy restroom, nor is it a girls restroom restricted to actual girls and boys who wish they were girls. Rather, it is a co-ed restroom euphemistically called an “All Gender Restroom,” presumably to divert attention from the reality of what the administration has created. They have created a co-ed restroom that girls and boys may use together.

Of course, schools that allow only gender-dysphoric students to use multi-stall opposite-sex restrooms, have in reality created co-ed restrooms too. In reality, it makes no difference if the boy in the girls restroom dislikes his body and cross-dresses or likes his body and dresses normally. In both cases schools are creating de facto co-ed restrooms.

But DHS has gone a step further than most schools have yet dared to go in the steady march to obliterate respect for and recognition of the nature, meaning, and importance of objective, immutable sexual differentiation. DHS has skipped over the interim step of allowing only gender-dysphoric students to share restrooms with opposite-sex peers. No intermediate step for the “progressive” science-denying administration at DHS. All boys and girls may avail themselves of this co-ed restroom.

It should be noted that during the day this restroom is in a remote part of the high school and therefore a more convenient place for a sexual assault. This restroom, however, is located near the pool and gyms, so during public events like swim meets, basketball games, and pep rallies, it is easily available to any and all community members. A high school girl or a younger sister of a high school girl may be in a stall when a strange adult male enters.

A faculty member posed this question to an administrator about the brave new bathroom world in which restrooms and locker rooms are invaded by opposite-sex students: What would happen if a girl student said she didn’t want to share a restroom with a boy. The administrator said the school would make separate accommodations for the girl.

Our hapless neighbors in Alberta, Canada are willing to make similar accommodations for the properly ordered desires of girls who don’t want to shower and use restrooms with those whose sex they don’t share. In the “Guidelines for Best Practices: Creating Learning Environments That Respect Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Gender Expressions,” the Alberta government wrote that “A student who objects to sharing a washroom or change-room with a student who is trans or gender-diverse is offered an alternative facility.”

I told my millennial children (who happen to be DHS alumni) about these bizarre statements. Their first response was incredulity, and then they worked out the absurd implications of such fecklessness. First, one girl will object to using a locker room with a boy and will receive a special accommodation. Next, so many girls will express opposition to using locker rooms with actual boys that schools will have to create restrooms exclusively for actual girls, at which point gender-dysphoric boys will complain that they deeply desire to change and shower with girls, insisting on their “right” to use the new girls-only restroom. And then Leftists will step in to stop all this nonsense, claiming that students have no right to privacy based on objective, immutable biological sex.

Alternatively, parents and their representatives on school boards could insist steadfastly and passionately that restroom and locker room policies and practices recognize and respect immutable sex differences.

Right now Leftists are demanding that schools create de facto co-ed restrooms but will grudgingly permit schools to limit the commingling of sexes to gender-dysphoric students and will grudgingly allow schools to require gender-dysphoric students to use private stalls for excretory functions and changing clothes. But those are merely transitional accommodations.

The next step in their truly wicked effort to “eliminate the binary” will be to demand that gender-dysphoric students be allowed unrestricted access to restrooms, locker rooms, and showers, which is to say, no more requirements that gender-dysphoric students use private stalls for excretory functions, changing, and showering.

Then comes the coup de grace. Leftists will demand that all facilities be open to any sex, including those who are not gender-dysphoric. Once society has allowed objectively male persons unrestricted access to women’s private facilities, there will remain no rational justification for prohibiting non-gender-dysphoric males from using opposite-sex facilities.

Kind readers, if you think this is an absurd line of thinking, you have not been paying attention to how “LGBTQQIAP” activists have been using incrementalism successfully for the past 45 years. These are their pernicious goals, and they count on the ignorance and cowardice of Christians—including church leaders, many of whom refuse to lead. While conservatives cower, stubbornly ignoring warnings, “LBBTQQIAP” activists and their accomplices scurry onward, ten steps ahead and bold as brass.


Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem
GrudemWe are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today.  Seating is limited!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

Laurie Higgins
Laurie Higgins was the Illinois Family Institute’s Cultural Affairs Writer in the fall of 2008 through early 2023. Prior to working for the IFI, Laurie worked full-time for eight years in Deerfield High School’s writing center in Deerfield, Illinois. Her cultural commentaries have been carried on a number of pro-family websites nationally and internationally, and Laurie has appeared on numerous radio programs across the country. In addition, Laurie has spoken at the Council for National Policy and educational conferences sponsored by the Constitutional Coalition. She has been married to her husband for forty-four years, and they have four grown children...
Related Articles
What Happened?
What Happened?
California Dreaming?
California Dreaming?
IFI Featured Video
Stop Doctor-Assisted Suicide in Illinois
Get Our New App!