“All I can say is as we continue to try and find the best way to support all our children by creating safe and inclusive schools, I wish we would enter our conversations with a bit more empathy, and an attempt to understand each other better,” he said.

Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, took issue with Salt & Light’s statement: “There are so many uneducated, unscientific and uninformed misstatements in this ‘advice’ that it is difficult to know where to begin.

“Suffice it to say that we urge Hanover officials not to accept the ideological, sham ‘science’ put forth by a discredited group of people calling themselves experts and rely instead on the peer-reviewed, medically informed counsel of the American Academy of Pediatricians and other respected professionals and make policy decisions based on objective and informed medical, psychological and legal advice, not fear and biased dogma.”

Cross delivered the statement via email to the county’s elected officials Thursday. He and the others felt compelled to make their feelings known after the government directed individual school districts to allow students to use school restrooms that correspond with the gender they identify with rather than their birth gender.