It is not about the bathroom
Just like it was not about the bubbler.
When a group of people gains the same rights the rest of us enjoy, it does not mean our group has less rights. Rights are not finite in number. Rights belong to all in equal measure under our system of government.
It has not always been so. We started with rights just for white male protestant landowners. Slowly, we white male protestant landowners begrudgingly recognized that others were just as entitled, but we did not give up easily.
We constructed arguments that the “others” were somehow intellectually and genetically inferior. Because the “others” were obviously criminals, we insisted that our “safety” was endangered with the new inclusion. We proclaimed that we were “protecting” our women and children. We proclaimed that “they” did not share in our religious beliefs. In the end, each time, we were proven wrong, that the differences did not matter, and the pool of those with whom we had to share grew larger.
The vestiges of our past discriminatory ventures remain. Even though we fought a civil war to settle the states’ rights argument and end slavery, many still deny equality to people whose skin has a different pigment. Women, who fought and died for the right to vote and equality in the workplace and the home, still are paid less than men for equal work and do not have control over their own bodies. Immigrants from non-protestant denominations ultimately found success, but faced religious purity tests when running for high public office. Gays and lesbians, now free to marry those they love, still face discrimination in the workplace because they can be fired based just on who they married.
The newest group seeking entrance into the “rights” club are those born with gender dysphoria. They are “transgendered” in common parlance and “trans” for short.
Many, still reeling from having to recognize same-sex marriage and Gay-Straight Alliances in local schools, raise the same tired arguments to oppose trans people entrance to the equal rights club.
Leading the fight are the same white male protestant landowners who seem least likely to embrace change that most others have already accepted. Recognizing they cannot win on the science, gender dysphoria is real just like evolution, they raise many of the same hackneyed objections used in past battles. As the flawed premises have been debunked, they have retreated to the last bastion of hope, the bathroom.
The argument, embodied perfectly in laws being passed with lightning speed in Deep South states North Carolina and Tennessee, is “we are just protecting our women and children.” Our own state representative Jesse Kremer (R-Kewaskum) tried to jump on this train during the last session with the help of the infamous religious freedom crusaders Juliane Appling and West Bend’s own former book burner Ginny Maziarka of Wisconsin Family Action. After his bill did not even make it out of committee in the last session, he recently vowed to bring it up again in the next.
The trans bathroom bills start with the flawed premise that the transgendered are sexual predators who will use bathrooms to prey upon defenseless women and children. Forget the fact that there are no reported valid cases where a transgendered person sexually assaulted anybody in a public bathroom. Forget all of the cases where white male political leaders made unwanted sexual advances in public bathrooms. Forget the idea that anyone can walk into any public bathroom dressed as the gender they appear to be and commit whatever crime they choose by just ignoring the sign on the door. Forget about designing a mechanism to enforce bathroom use by those with the “correct” genitals that does not embarrass the daylights of those we are trying to “protect.” The bills are merely solutions in search of a non-existent problem.
The opposition to these bills has been swift. Many large businesses already have inclusive bathroom policies for their employees and customers. When the retail giant Target announced their employees and customers could use whichever bathroom they wanted based upon their chosen gender identity, the anti-trans folks went ballistic threatening a national boycott. The boycott rapidly lost steam when the long list of the businesses with similar policies came to light. Many large business, sports leagues, and entertainers have taken their business to more inclusive venues in other states, costing them millions.
Legal consequences soon followed. The U.S. Department of Justice just announced that North Carolina’s law, HB2, violated federal civil rights laws and would cost the state and its federal education support additional millions in lost revenue, not to mention the costs they will incur to defend the litigation. Rep. Kremer just sees this as another example of President Obama’s left-wing agenda.
Changing one’s beliefs about the “others” is hard. Sometimes it takes generations to erase the hatred engrained by mistaken belief and a misplaced sense of entitlement. Accepting the change and moving on is the healthier alternative.
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