An Arlington School Board candidate and a local LGBTQ+ advocacy group are locking horns over questions of support and inclusion for transgender students.
Equality Arlington issued a statement earlier this week taking aim at Forward Party-endorsed candidate James “Vell” Rives’ stance on Arlington Public Schools’ nondiscrimination policy for transgender students.
In a questionnaire from the parent group Arlington Gender Identity Allies, Rives maintained that a student’s biological sex, rather than gender identity, should determine whether they participate in girls’ or boys’ school athletics.
“This is the only point where I find explicit contradiction between Arlington’s current PIP and the Virginia [Department of Education] guidelines,” he said.
This is a stance markedly different from other School Board candidates, who all argued that, if anything, the policy in place since 2019 should go further. The policy states that “students may participate in any co-curricular or extra-curricular activity consistent with their gender identity.”
Rives also stood out from the candidates — Kathleen Clark, Zuraya Tapia-Hadley and Paul Weiss — when asked whether he would support the APS nondiscrimination policy “regardless of any anti-trans policies enacted by the DOE.”
“I believe APS should comply with local, Federal, and Virginia law and any executive orders that carry the full force of the law, without regard to which party is in power in Richmond or Washington,” he said.
The other candidates all said they would support the APS policy regardless of what the Commonwealth says. (The four candidates, including two endorsed by the local Democratic party, are running for two seats on the School Board. Today is the last day to request a mail-in ballot ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5.)
Equality Arlington additionally referenced a public comment Rives made in 2019, where he argued against “a presumption of gender fluidity and a heavy emphasis on supporting and educating about gender transition.”
“The material the Board has made public does not reflect the whole of medical opinion, and I believe if our transgender policies are informed by such a lopsided picture, then our policies could actually be harmful to gender dysphoric children — who, in most cases, would otherwise come to accept their birth sex,” Rives asserted.
Equality Arlington condemned this statement, arguing that any implication “that schools should push students with gender dysphoria to conform to their birth sex … is at odds with best practices” from several medical associations. These include the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association.
Rives denies that this was the meaning of his statement in 2019.
Equality Arlington went on to argue that following the Department of Education’s model policies, including its stance on gender in athletics, “would lead to exclusion and suffering for transgender, intersex, and gender expansive students.”
The group said these policies are “widely condemned by LGBTQ+ advocates as harmful to students and contrary to the Virginia statute which authorized their creation.”
“Taken together, Rives’s policy stances on LGBTQ+ students are a significant step backward from existing APS policy and betray a worldview that seeks to minimize and disappear transgender students,” the Equality Arlington said. “His policies have the potential to significantly harm LGBTQ+ students who already experience higher rates of bullying, depressive symptoms, and sexual harassment than their heterosexual or cisgender peers.”
Rives responded that “Equality Arlington distorts my words to the point of being unrecognizable.”
In terms of the state’s model policies, Rives noted that “it is often unclear how legally binding the provisions are upon a local entity like APS.” The only area where he currently sees a contradiction with state law, he said, is in the school system’s athletics policy.
He also took aim at a social media post by Arlington Gender Identity Allies accusing him of having “transphobic views not backed by evidence.”
“I am disappointed that AGIA employed a candidate questionnaire so that voters can compare and decide themselves, but then felt compelled to weigh in and make untrue statements about me,” he said. “Again, I invite voters to see what I have actually written and said. I stand behind it.”
