Don Rush asked for thoughts on this silly discussion regarding the fear gripping our nation about the use of bathrooms by transgender people, so I’d like to offer mine. It is, indeed, silly season.
Silly, because it is not transgender people who are asking for laws allowing them to use the bathroom of their choice, it is the state of North Carolina out of the blue passing a law for which there isn’t a problem.
I have to wonder how they will enforce it. Will there be potty police? Equipment checks in every stall?
Transgender people, after all, have been using the bathroom of their choice for generations without any problems being created. Heck, we haven’t even noticed as they’ve gone about their business of doing their business.
And why would we? Going to the bathroom seems a subject best left to ourselves without governmental interference, don’t you think?
I mean, we haven’t had the slightest surge of kids being molested by people posing as transgender people and already have laws making it illegal to sexually attack someone. Even if, by some strange reason, there were people masquerading as transgender (an absurdity when you think about it long enough) wouldn’t it make sense to punish those transgender posers and not the people who simply want to go the bathroom in peace, like everyone else?
But, no, government has to get involved in even this part of our lives. At least in the wacky southern states they do.
Southern states have suddenly gone bezerk ever since the courts decided that same sex people should be allowed to marry.
North Carolina passed a law providing a solution for something that isn’t a problem, going straight — yikes!– into our public restrooms to do so.
Tennessee tells its people that mental health counselors who have a religious phobia about gay people don’t have to counsel them (as if a gay person would want such a person to counsel them. Yeah, right!)
And Georgia almost passed a law granting “religious freedom,” so businesses can deny serving gay people — just like they used to do to black people when slavery was the thing to do in the south. That’s what I call progress.
If you happened to notice all of those laws have one thing in common (outside of being atrociously silly).
They are efforts to strike out at the LGBT (lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender) community. And you thought gay people were the ones with an agenda.
Jim Larkin
Lake Orion resident