An interview between CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) about the Obama administration’s new guidelines for schools to accommodate transgender students devolved when Banfield asked Patrick how schools should treat students who have identified as transgender from birth.
“In a circumstance where a person who is born with female anatomy and all that person’s life has identified — dresses as a male, acts as a male, looks exactly to anyone as a male, feels as a male, behaves as a male, you’re saying that that person should be in the girls bathroom?” Banfield asked.
In response, Patrick scolded President Obama for “interfering where he knows nothing he’s talking about.”
Banfield pressed Patrick, asking for his “feeling about that issue,” and the two quickly began talking over each other.
“I can’t answer if you’re talking,” Patrick said to Banfield.
“What would you say about that circumstance?” Banfield asked before Patrick finally responded to the question.
“We have all types of circumstances in our public schools,” Patrick said. “For example, many schools already deal with any type of issue with any transgender student by giving them a separate bathroom facility, but the President and his guideline says that’s not good enough. He says this student must be able to shower with a student of another sex.”
Banfield then noted that the guidelines issued by the Obama administration say that “you can make accommodations for those who feel otherwise.” A statement accompanying the letter does note that “schools can provide additional privacy options to any student for any reason” and that schools don’t have to “require any student to use shared bathrooms or changing spaces, when, for example, there are other appropriate options available.”
Patrick insisted to Banfield that the guidelines don’t offer such accommodations.
When Banfield noted that she read the guidlines, Patrick hit back, “No, you didn’t.”
“You can’t force a transgender student to go to the separate bathroom, but if someone else chooses to use a separate bathroom, that accommodation is allowed under these circumstances,” Banfield then said. “The effort here, the President says and the U.S. Administration says, is so that those transgender students aren’t separated out and treated as unequal. I thought it was pretty clear.”
“I think you just made my point,” Patrick responded. “Unless you make separate bathrooms for everyone, you can’t do it for a transgender student. So the transgender student must be able to go to the bathroom of the sex they think they are.”
Watch part of the interview:
