(LifeSite) The Democrat-led Education and Health Committee of the Virginia Senate voted Thursday to block a bill designed to protect children from the consequences of hiding their gender confusion from their parents.
HB 2432, also known as “Sage’s Law,” would have required school officials aware of any evidence that a child is experiencing gender confusion to discuss the matter with at least one of the child’s parents.
All nine Democrats voted in favor of blocking the legislation while the six Republicans voted against the motion.
The committee’s decision comes less than a week after the House of Delegates passed the bill. As previously reported by LifeSiteNews, the proposed legislation would have strictly prohibited school officials from keeping a child’s perceived “gender identity” secret from parents. The bill also clarified that an “abused or neglected” student does not include a child who is raised in accordance with his or her biological sex.
Counselors, social workers, and psychologists within the school system would have also been barred from “encouraging or coercing a minor to withhold” information related to gender confusion from his or her parents.
The bill was nicknamed “Sage’s Law” after a teenage girl suffered from drug and sexual abuse in the aftermath of school administrator hiding her “gender transition” from her family. Sage began experiencing depression during the COVID-19 pandemic and started “identifying” as a boy at school. She eventually ran away from home and became a victim of sex trafficking.
Despite her family’s love for her, they were accused of “misgendering” the girl. “Sage’s Law” was a legal attempt to prevent the same trauma from occurring for other students and families.
The Family Foundation, a local pro-life organization, expressed disappointment in the decision in a February 16 blog post.
“If there was any flicker of a doubt that the LGBT machine has a death grip on Virginia’s Democratic legislators, the Senate Education and Health Committee’s actions this morning completely extinguished it,” the group said.
