May 5, 2017 Family Research Council
Fairfax County, VA is ground zero in the efforts to impose transgender ideology on American school children. The Fairfax County school system is one of the largest and richest in the United States, and its close proximity to Washington, DC has made it a target for the efforts to mainstream this radical ideology. Even after the Trump Administration revoked the Obama directive threatening the nation’s public schools, the fight rages on at the state and district level.
This panel will present four of the central actors in resisting this imposition: School board member Elizabeth Schultz, who has fought district bureaucrats and the rest of the school board, practically alone, for three years; Meg Kilgannon, a parent of children in the Fairfax County school system who has created a veritable army of parent and taxpayer activists; Josh Hetzler, a legal expert who has traveled the state speaking to school boards and providing draft legal guidance letters, and FRC’s own senior legal fellow Cathy Ruse, who has testified several times on the legal and policy implications of these ill-thought policies.
Take part in this pivotal discussion as the panel exposes the tactics used by the transgender lobby and the strategies parents and taxpayers have used to fight back.
Panel Members
The Virginia Christian Alliance had previously awarded the Courage in Leadership Award to Elizabeth Schultz
Elizabeth Schultz is a Fairfax County School Board Member, serving a second term on the board of the 10th largest school division in the nation. Ms. Schultz received the first STAND Award by Bishop E.W. Jackson at the National Awakening Conference “for her bold stand for faith and values, in the face of opposition. She was the only member of the Fairfax County School Board to vote against embedding gender-identity into FCPS policies and continues to stand strong representing the otherwise ignored values of many Fairfax County parents.”
She was also received the Courage in Leadership Award by the Virginia Christian Alliance for integrity in education policy and for protecting students and parental rights while serving in public office.Ms. Schultz formerly served on the board of the Fairfax Education Coalition and was Founding President of the Republican Women of Clifton. She has worked as a senior contracts and negotiation professional, in the public and private sectors, in the areas of asset management, information technology, and global education. Ms. Schultz has Bachelor of Science degrees in Political Science and History from James Madison University. She has been married for 26 years and is the mother of four sons.
Meg Kilgannon is Executive Director of Concerned Parents and Educators of Fairfax County, a 1000+ member organization of parents and citizens. CPEFC monitors and lobbies school board members on issues important to parents, crafts effective messaging for citizen speakers at school board meetings, advocates for common sense, family friendly curriculum, budgeting, and policies, and empowers ethnic and minority communities to engage in local politics. Ms. Kilgannon also serves as Operations Director for Parentandchild.org, a parent research group which evaluates the K-12 sex education (Family Life) program for Fairfax County Public Schools and has published a color coded guide for parents to encourage opting out of the program, and has organized educational conferences to inform parents about the program and its content. Ms. Kilgannon is a FertilityCare Practitioner/Entrepreneur, providing counsel and instruction on charting bio-markers to maximize health, advising women struggling with infertility, and speaking at conferences and workshops. Ms. Kilgannon previously worked as an account executive for Creative Response Concepts and director of media relations for the United Seniors Association. Ms. Kilgannon has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics from Washington & Lee University, and is married with four children.
Josh Hetzler, Esq. is Legislative Counsel for the Family Foundation of Virginia, a state policy organization which advocates for life, marriage, parental authority, religious liberty and constitutional government. Over the past year and a half since this issue gained national attention, Josh has become intricately involved with both the policy and legal efforts at the state and local levels. In addition to advocating legislative solutions in the General Assembly in 2016 and 2017, Josh has traveled the state speaking to school boards, helping to coordinate parental and community involvement, and has drafted legal guidance letters to assist school boards across Virginia. Josh attended oral arguments in the 4th Circuit case of G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, as well as for the Fairfax County case recently heard by the Virginia Supreme Court, and he continues to follow the issue closely. Josh graduated from Liberty University School of Law and is happily married to his wife Madison, of four years. They live outside of Richmond, VA.
Cathy Ruse is the Senior Fellow for Legal Studies at the Family Research Council. Mrs. Ruse was Chief Counsel to the Constitution Subcommittee in the House of Representatives where she had oversight of civil rights and human rights issues, as well as religious freedom and free speech matters which came before the House. Mrs. Ruse received her law degree from Georgetown University and a certificate from the National Institute for trial advocacy during her work as a litigator in the District of Columbia. She holds an honorary doctoral degree from Franciscan University of Steubenville. She has published scholarly legal articles on a variety of constitutional issues, has filed “Friend of the Court” briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving abortion, euthanasia, and pornography, and has testified as an expert in congressional hearings in the U.S. House and Senate.
