New Weekly Rainbow Tuesdays Happy Hour Begins This Week at The Shack

Beginning this Tuesday, Clare and Don’s Beach Shack will host a weekly LGBTQ+ Happy Hour, from 5:00 p.m. — 7:00 p.m. on the back patio.

The debut event, on Tuesday, October 29, will be a Masquerade Party, with the top three costumes winning prizes, so put on your Halloween best and come have some fun!

This happens to be just before gay bowling (CAMP) every week, so expect a really great crowd, as I may or may not have talked to all 48 teams last night and encouraged them to attend.

Rainbow Tuesday will feature rainbow swag, drink specials, and some awesome $10 dinner deals including blackened chicken or tofu wraps, coconut shrimp, chicken flautas, or haddock sandwich with a side of fries.

See you there!

Equality Arlington Expresses Concern about School Board Candidate Rives

In a press release issued Tuesday, Equality Arlington expressed concern over recent statements from Arlington School Board candidate James “Vell” Rives, regarding his anti-LGBTQ+ policy positions. In Rives’s responses to a questionnaire from parents of transgender, nonbinary, and gender expansive students in Arlington Public Schools (APS), Rives repeatedly states that APS should follow the Youngkin Administration’s 2023 Model Policies. The model policies, widely condemned by LGBTQ+ advocates as harmful to students and contrary to the Virginia statute which authorized their creation, would:

• Force school employees to “out” students to their families, potentially creating unsafe environments for LGBTQ+ students and making it harder for students to be their true selves at school.
• Allow school employees to bully students by refusing to use their correct pronouns or names.
• Place additional burdens on parents and transgender students who want their school to recognize their correct name and gender.

Rives also states that a student’s sex, not gender identity, should solely determine participation in girls’ or boys’ sports teams. This policy would lead to exclusion and suffering for transgender, intersex, and gender expansive students.

In his responses to the questionnaire’s five questions, not once did Rives use the term transgender, even though the questionnaire is focused specifically on transgender students.

Equality Arlington also reviewed Rives’s public comment to the Arlington School Board at an April 11, 2019, meeting, where he advocated that schools should push students with gender dysphoria to conform to their birth sex, a suggestion that is at odds with best practices of the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, the Endocrine Society, and the World Health Organization.

Taken together, Equality Arlington says Rives’s policy stances regarding LGBTQ+ students are a significant step backward from existing APS policy, and betray a worldview that seeks to minimize and disappear transgender students. His policies have the potential to significantly harm LGBTQ+ students who already experience higher rates of bullying, depressive symptoms, and sexual harassment than their heterosexual or cisgender peers (2019 Community Report Card on the Status of Children, Youth, and Families).

Equality Arlington said they agree with Rives’s statement that APS must implement more effective anti-bullying protections, as the organization continues to hear reports from transgender students and parents of transgender students that their peers harass and bully them due to their gender identity, with APS staff doing little to nothing about it.

The organization says refusing to recognize that a student is transgender, forcing APS to implement the Youngkin Administration’s anti-LGBTQ+ Model Policies, and making critical decisions about a student’s school experience based on political dogma instead of the medical community’s best practices will do nothing to reduce bullying and only make life worse for LGBTQ+ students.

“We hope that Rives will reconsider his harmful policy positions and that voters will consider these when casting their ballots in the 2024 Arlington School Board election,” the statement ends.

This is Not a Drill: Please Support the News-Press This Week

For just about two years, I’ve worked full-time for the Falls Church News-Press. Since moving into the City last summer (I’m now on my second apartment), I’ve increasingly found myself connecting with more and more community members, and feeling like I’m where I’m supposed to be.

The News-Press has seen some new advertisers, and it seems like there’s an appetite for additional support — but we’ve been operating on a severe deficit (in particular since the pandemic), so it’s not quite cutting it.

If just 100 of our readers became monthly donors at the Democracy Defender level or higher, it would close our annual deficit, and allow us to begin truly planning for the future. In a community like ours, I know the support is out there.

Next week’s issue isn’t guaranteed. Please become a monthly donor, or make a generous one-time contribution, by visiting www.fcnp.com/donate today.