Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate for December’s Senate special election in Alabama, found himself at the center of the hot-button issue of transgender people and the use of bathrooms and locker rooms in public schools after video emerged Monday in which Jones discussed the topic.
“We’ve got to protect them,” Jones said when asked about the rights of transgender people in schools and bathrooms.
“We’ve got to protect them. Absolutely,” Jones continued.
“They were wrong to get rid of those Title IX Rules, you know,” he added. “They were wrong to ban transgender [people] from the military. Just wrong, wrong, wrong.”
The YouTube clip is entitled “Doug Jones commits political suicide in Alabama Senate race.”
Watch the full video here:
According to the label on the clip, Jones was speaking on the sidelines of a campaign stop he made last Thursday at the Macedonia Baptist Church in Daphne, Alabama.
In the clip, a woman asks Jones, “I know that you are for equal rights for everyone. Mr. Jones, what about transgender people in schools and bathrooms?”
Dean Young, a former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, who is a longtime friend of Alabama Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate Judge Roy Moore, released the clip at a press conference Monday.
Speaking to Breitbart News, Young, who uploaded the clip to his YouTube channel, stated that the woman who asked the question in the video was sent to the Jones campaign stop by Young himself.
Young used the occasion of the press conference to label Jones a “flaming, left-wing liberal extremist.”
Young exclaimed, “Doug Jones thinks it’s okay for guys to pretend like they are girls and go into the little girls restrooms in schools. Doug Jones thinks it’s okay for guys to pretend like they are girls and to go into girl’s locker rooms and take showers with them from kindergarten to college. That won’t work in Alabama.”
“You have a lot of good people in Alabama who believe in God and country. They won’t stand for this. It won’t work. … He needs to quit pretending he’s a moderate. You need a sense of common decency in Alabama to win. Doug Jones is out in left field.”
While the video was clearly a political ambush attempt against Jones, it does spotlight the Democrat candidate’s position on the controversial issue of transgender people pertaining to bathrooms and locker rooms.
Jones’s statement that “they were wrong to get rid of those Title IX Rules” was a reference to the decision by the Trump administration’s Departments of Justice and Education to rescind guidelines put into place by the Obama administration regarding the treatment of transgender students and their rights to same-sex spaces in public schools, notably bathrooms and locker rooms.
The Obama administration’s guidelines interpreted Title IX rules concerning transgender people. Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex” in any educational program that receives federal funding.
The Obama administration’s guidelines called for schools receiving federal funding to “treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for purposes of Title IX and its implementing regulations. This means that a school must not treat a transgender student differently from the way it treats other students of the same gender identity.”
The guidelines expressly call for federally funded schools to allow transgender people to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that are consistent with their “gender identity.”
The guidelines state:
Restrooms and Locker Rooms. A school may provide separate facilities on the basis of sex, but must allow transgender students access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity. A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so. A school may, however, make individual-user options available to all students who voluntarily seek additional privacy.
Besides rescinding those guidelines, in August, Trump signed a directive calling for the U.S. Armed Forces to cease proceeding with the recruitment of transgender people into the military. The order also bars the Department of Defense from providing medical treatment regimens for any transgender individuals currently serving in the military.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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