Fairfax County Virginia has named Easter Sunday 2024 as “Transgender Visibility Day,” in what many Christians see as a hijack of their most sacred holiday.
The Fairfax County School Board has added Transgender Visibility Day to its prior designations of June as LGBT Pride Month and October as LGBT History Month for a remarkable 62 days of LGBT celebration in the district’s schools.
The Rev. Emma Chattin, executive director of Transgender Education Association, praised the board’s decision, asserting that visibility can be “a heroic thing, especially for our trans women of color in our community, who face additional intersectional obstacles of prejudice regarding safety, housing, employment and health care.”
Writing for the Washington Examiner, however, Fairfax local Stephanie Lundquist-Arora said the board members are telling Christians they do not matter by turning “one of their holiest days into a celebration of an ideology that undermines the church’s core convictions.”
The school board’s nine Democrats all voted in favor of the measure, whereas the token Republican on the board, Patrick Herrity, did not show up for the vote.
“I’m looking forward to the day when we have a full dais for this proclamation, and that day will come,” said board member James Walkinshaw of Herrity’s absence. “One way or the other, that day will come.”
That sentiment was echoed by Democrat Dalia Palchik, supervisor for the Providence district of the county. “What we say at this dais matters,” she said. “What you say in the community, what our leaders say and the outcome of that really matters.”
“Our transgender students are depressed,” Palchik contended. “Nearly half have considered suicide. You see across the board in our LGBT community that it is the one community that stands out higher than any other demographic in our students of depression, attempting suicide, considering suicide.”
“To me, it is a moral imperative and also a public health imperative that we band together,” she said.
