For months a sort of aerosolized fury had hung over the Loudoun County school district. There were fights over Covid closures and mask mandates, over racial-equity programs, over library books. Now, in the weeks before the school board’s meeting on June 22, 2021, attention had shifted to a new proposal: Policy 8040, which would let transgender students choose pronouns, play sports and use bathrooms in accordance with their declared gender identity. In May, an elementary-school gym teacher announced that as a “servant of God,” he felt he could not follow the policy. The district swiftly suspended him — and just as swiftly, the antennae of conservative media outlets and politicians swiveled toward Loudoun County.
The entire Republican ticket for that fall’s statewide elections made a pilgrimage to Loudoun, a swath of Washington exurbs in Northern Virginia that is the highest-median-income county in America and the fourth-most-populous in the state. “Fox & Friends” broadcast live from a local diner. “This won’t stop in #LoudounCounty,” the Family Foundation of Virginia, a conservative religious organization in Richmond, tweeted. “It’s coming to your schools and children too.” County Democrats urged supporters of the proposed policy to make their own voices heard at the upcoming meeting, and everyone descended upon the school administration building in the town of Ashburn.
