A woman protesting Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears on Thursday held up a sign invoking segregation to denounce Republican policy on transgender bathroom use in schools.
“Hey Winsome, if trans can’t share your bathroom then Blacks can’t share my water fountain,” the sign, held by a White woman, read. Ms. Earle-Sears, the Republican candidate in the 2025 gubernatorial election, is Black.
The front of the sign read “Hey Winsome, you have a gender neutral bathroom in your house,” according to a picture posted on X by journalist Brandon Jarvis.
The woman behind the sign, who didn’t provide a name, told Washington’s WTTG that her message was satirical.
“It was satire meant to provoke conversation around the absurdity of prejudice. If anyone thinks we are actually supporting separate drinking fountains based on race, they are mistaken. In the same way that drinking fountains should be usable by all races, bathrooms should be nondiscriminatory,” she said.
The campaign of Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat candidate for Virginia governor, said in a statement that “Abigail condemns this repulsive display. It’s racist, abhorrent and unacceptable,” according to Virginia’s WRIC-TV.
Ms. Earle-Sears wrote on X, “I’m disgusted, but not surprised. This is the ’tolerant’ left Abigail Spanberger defends. I’m the sitting Lieutenant Governor, second in command in the former [Capital of the Confederate States]. I’m an immigrant, a Marine, and above all, a human being. There is no place for this disgusting hatred in our Commonwealth. Anyone who doesn’t condemn this sign is complicit in approving it.”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, said on X that the sign was “the hypocrisy of the liberal left on display again.”
State Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, a Democrat and Henrico County high school teacher, said on X, “Two wrongs don’t make a right. Been teaching my kids — and students — that for years. In the age of Trump it’s easy to get in the gutter. We should insist on betting the better angels of our nature.”
The protestor was part of a crowd outside Thursday’s Arlington County School Board meeting, where Ms. Earle-Sears made an appearance to call out the school board’s insistence on letting students use the restroom that matches their gender identity.
“There are two sexes, boys and girls, and for generations, we’ve understood this, that they deserve their own sports teams, their own locker rooms, their own bathrooms. That’s not discrimination. It is common sense,” Ms. Earle-Sears said, according to the Washington area’s WTOP-FM.
The Trump administration threatened Arlington County Public Schools, along with Alexandria City Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools, Loudoun County Public Schools and Prince William County Public Schools to withhold federal funds if they keep letting biological males share bathrooms with girls.
The administration says that letting children use bathrooms based on gender identity rather than biological sex is a violation of Title IX.
The Northern Virginia school districts are sticking to their guns and argue that the U.S. Department of Education should wait until the Supreme Court confirms that their policy violates Title IX before deciding on funding.
Ms. Earle-Sears told Washington’s WUSA that “it is interesting to me that we have these five Northern Virginia school boards who are willing to risk not millions but hundreds of millions of dollars for their ideology. They’re using our tax money for their ideology and, guess what, they won’t have to pay for any of it.”
Ms. Spanberger used to represent parts of Northern Virginia in the House of Representatives for Virginia’s 7th District. She declined to run for reelection in 2024 so she could run for governor this year.
