Ruling just ‘gratuitous cruelty’

School can be stressful enough for youngsters, what with peer pressure and parental pressure and the constant testing and always wondering about college and what you are going to do with your life.

The stress, I can only imagine, must be 10 times or 100 times greater for a transgender student.

There is the fear of even getting out of bed in the morning and going to school. The name calling. The mocking. The humiliation. The eating lunch alone. The wondering if there is going to be a fight.

And now, you can add the fact that transgender students know the president of the United States does not have their back. And now they have the added stress of knowing that their bathroom choice is being discussed nationwide.

Taking a few minutes off from bashing the media and immigrants, Donald Trump last week ended federal protection for transgender students that required schools to allow them to use bathrooms matching their gender identities. The administration called it a “states rights” issue, using that as the excuse to discriminate. Please.

Not that there have been any problems with the rules allowing students to use bathrooms that match the gender with which they identify. I haven’t heard of anybody complaining in South Florida or elsewhere (the rules are actually on hold), But Trump decided it was a good time to throw a bone to the ultra conservatives and religious zealots who helped put him in office.

So the administration has gone after vulnerable youngsters. It is very humiliating that in 2017 we are talking about denying a class of people basic equal rights — like Florida and much of the nation tried to fight gay marriage — but that’s what we have now, until the courts hopefully tell the Trump administration what they can do with their prejudice. In the next month or so, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a transgender bathroom case involving a student from Virginia.

No matter the decision, the cultural change is inevitable.

South Florida school administrators have made it clear transgender students wouldn’t notice any change. Broward School Superintendent Robert Runcie said “. . . we will continue to respect, value and support the varying needs of our diverse students.” In other words, there shouldn’t be bathroom upheaval at South Florida schools.

“Thank God for the school boards in South Florida that will stand up for transgender student rights,” I was told by Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida.

“This (ruling) isn’t only an issue of law. It’s gratuitous cruelty. It is the result of bigotry. Some people just don’t feel comfortable around transgender people.”

And all of this has to hurt transgender students, who have already experienced plenty of hurt in their lives as they wrestled with the idea of trying to be themselves. When small-minded adults got involved and started stoking fear, and passed that fear down to their kids, problems arose.

Again, in 2017, we should be past that. We shouldn’t be denying anyone their basic rights. But that’s what is going on.

Through all of this, I kept thinking about Melania Trump. You know, the one who lives in the penthouse in New York instead of the White House.

She said after the election that she would like to get involved with making people aware of the dangers of bullying. I think Melania needs to have a serious talk with her husband.

Gary Stein