Last night was the deadline for the public to comment on Gov. Youngkin’s proposal that the Virginia Department of Education and school boards in Virginia adopt news policies on the treatment ot transgender students.

It is downright appalling that the governor, now clearly weighing a bid for election to a national political office, would launch this broadside as a political tactic against clearly the most vulnerable of young people among us.

We “standing-o” applaud the Falls Church City Public Schools board for unanimously OKing a solid and in-depth total repudiation of the governor’s cruel action, submitted to the Department of Education yesterday. We applaud those on the F.C. City Council for moving to second that action by our school board, and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for likewise taking bold action with only one negative vote among them (see article, elsewhere this edition).

It is truly sad to see how enemies of democracy, as most of those in the current leadership of the Trumpian Republican Party in the U.S. are, have set their sights on the most vulnerable youth to aim their fire.

If anyone thought this is just a minor matter, because it is limited to the schools, they should bear in mind that Russian butcher Vladimir Putin has singled out the very issues of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender identities for his most important pronouncements about the “degeneracy” of the West made in the last month to justify his genocidal invasion and assault on the people of Ukraine.

Indeed, it is the celebration of beautiful human diversity, reflective of the glorious diversity of life on this planet, that underlies these matters in the West that are our civilization’s latest events in the pursuit of democracy’s cornerstone affirmation boomed out for the whole world to know in the U.S. Declaration of Independence that all people “are created equal.” The United States was born of this affirmation and a lot of blood has been shed defending it over the last 246 years even as the definitions and appreciations of its application have expanded to more fully include race, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity.

 As a society, we have come more and more to appreciate the invaluable contributions that we all gain from the affirmation of this diversity among us.

Its enemies have been the same type of autocratic tyrannies that have vexed human civilizations from the beginning of recorded history. Tyrannies, whether in the form of George the 3rd, the Confederacy, Hilter, Stalin or Putin and too many more, have fed off an exploitation of differences arising from our diversities, as if they are something to be opposed or feared. They’ve used their propaganda and political tools to stoke fear for the purpose of blunting the overwhelming social value of our diversity.

But they will succeed now no more than when enemies of the American revolution tried to stop us way back then.