The MAGA pastor/not a pastor who wanted to inject Fox News narratives into bathrooms at Waynesboro High School got his wish Tuesday night.
A long line of community members showed up, signed up and spoke out on both sides of the evil trans kids in girls bathrooms issue at the monthly meeting of the Waynesboro School Board.
Nobody on the trans kids are evil side presented anything remotely resembling a smoking gun as part of their case.
It was all, my granddaughter – real or perceived – said she’s uncomfortable going to the bathroom; or, I heard about something that made a neighbor’s kid feel like a boy was peeking at her while she was peeing.
On the other side, there were folks who decided they had to take a couple of hours out of their busy schedules to play defense against the rubes, and did so with more civility than was deserved.
I started to transcribe the meeting to come up with a play-by-play of the back-and-forth, but the above about sums it up.
A lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
To the winners and losers out of this.
Winner: The haters
Terrance Williams, who is either a pastor or isn’t, depending on whether you believe his online bio or those who know him, took over a big section of a School Board meeting with his nonsense.
Not sure what he is going to actually achieve here.
The City Elders group that he is affiliated with is no doubt looking for issues to rile up their voters for the upcoming School Board elections.
I promise you – the Stone Agers will not succeed at that.
Maybe they got a glimpse of how Waynesboro will react last night.
Knowing the ultimate fate of their to-be-doomed effort, for one night, the mouth-breathers and knuckle-draggers had their way.
Losers: Trans kids in Waynesboro
We’re not talking about a big actual number of kids here – maybe 30, if we can extrapolate from CDC national data.
How would you like to be a trans kid at Waynesboro High School today?
Nobody decides to be trans, anymore than anybody decides to be White or Black or Latino, or tall or short or in between.
Each of us is who we were born to be.
A generation or two into the future, we’ll treat people like people no matter who they are and what their circumstance is.
Today, too many of us still use differences to not only divide, but diminish.
It might be political fun and games to the likes of Terrance Williams, but there’s a trans kid either at WHS today, or taking a sick day, who is already being bullied by their peers – 49 percent reported being victims of bullying, per a 2024 report from The Trevor Project, which also tells us that 90 percent of trans teens said their well-being was negatively impacted due to politics.
Congratulations, Mr. Williams.
Forty-six percent of trans teens, per the Trevor Project report, said they’d considered suicide in the past year; 12 percent said they’d attempted suicide in the past year.
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Running some numbers for WHS based on the data: the witch hunt that a guy who either is or isn’t a local pastor is trying to whip up is going to add to the anguish for 10-12 students who are already thinking of suicide, and it might be the breaking point for one or two to actually try it.
You won’t read about that if it happens, of course.
That kind of thing gets swept under the rug so that the rest of us don’t have to confront the reality.
If that happens here – when that happens here – we’re all the losers out of this.
And all in the name of … Jesus?
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Chris Graham
