The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a recent court filing that transgender students must be allowed to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity rather than according to their biological gender.

The Associated Press is reporting on the case of a16 year-old Virginia girl named Gavin Grimm, who wants to be allowed to use the boys’ restroom at school.

In an effort to accommodate her and other transgendered students, the Gloucester County School Board adopted a new policy in December that allowed Grimm, who claims to have always considered herself to be a boy, to use a private facility.

However, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit on Grimm’s behalf in U.S. District Court arguing that she has a constitutional right to use the boys restroom under laws that ban sex-based discrimination in schools that accept federal money.

The suit refers to Title IX of the Education Act of 1972 and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment as reason to impose an injunction on the school requiring it to grant Grimm access to the boys’ restroom when she returns to class in September.

The DOJ has also weighed in on the case, essentially agreeing with the ACLU and stating that prohibiting the girl from using a boys restroom amounts to sex discrimination.

The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages and an order to allow Grimm to use the boys’ room.

As for Grimm, her personal testimony written on this transgender website is a story of a painful and often humiliating battle with her Christian mother while growing up. Until recently, her mother fought Grimm's masculine behaviors but finally gave in when her daughter appeared unable to stand the stress any longer.

Grimm’s complete confusion about her sexuality is also quite evident, as is the fact that the only doctor she mentions seeing is the one who started her on hormone therapy to make the “transition” to boyhood.

Even with the therapy, she admits to wanting “to live in that gray area where I didn’t have to say that I was anything.”

She describes herself as being “chubby” and “different”, and “a cacophany of bad” who felt as if she was living as two people – a male and a female.

“I struggled with depression for a very long time; I was diagnosed when I was eight. My childhood was pretty unhappy: confusing, painful, full of anger and loneliness," she writes.

She claims “coming out” as a boy has made her authentically happy, but admits that she doesn’t celebrate being trans. “If I’m being honest, I don’t love it. It’s a challenge, and it’s painful. I would trade it for a lot of things. I’d rather pretend like I’m a ‘normal’ boy. I don’t want to have to deal with every birthday being a reminder that I was born with this reality — and that parts of that reality will never change.”

People who suffer from gender dysphoria are not receiving the help they need to come to terms with who they are. Instead they are becoming the victims of the latest cause celebre, receiving largely sympathetic treatment in the press while their opponents are being painted with the usual brush strokes of "intolerant extremists" in an effort to sway public opinion in favor of trans causes.

As a result, many are being encouraged by members of their own family, private physicians, and now the government to proceed down a path that has only brought additional suffering to too many people like Gavin Grimm. The overwhelmingly poor outcomes of sex change procedures is why the medical community in general stopped offering these treatments decades ago.  Unfortunately, the practice continues with mostly private physicians.

Studies have also shown that 75-80 percent of children with gender dysphoria before puberty do not suffer from the condition post-puberty. Grimm does not state whether or not she was treated for the depression and anxiety she suffered as a child and we can only wonder if receiving the proper care might have brought about a different outcome to this story.

People who suffer from this disorder should never be subjected to the kind of abuse and suffering Grimm endured during her 16 years of life and we can only pray that they will receive the care they need to live the life God intended for them.

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