The Restroom Wars

It’s hard to believe that anyone takes this stuff seriously, but the battle lines have been drawn over transgender restrooms.

Now that North Carolina has passed legislation mandating that schoolchildren use restrooms that correspond to their biologically visible genders, corporations like PayPal and performers like Bruce Springsteen have chosen to boycott the state.

[As a sidelight, squishy presidential candidate John Kasich has declared that he would not have signed the law. Surely, Kasich is exceptionally well qualified for the presidency, but he is not going to be nominated. He has an exceptional knack for getting on the wrong side of issues that Republican voters care about. Those who are holding out for him or for Paul Ryan are actually playing into Trump’s hands. For now, the only viable alternative to Donald Trump is Ted Cruz. It’s time for people to choose.]

Obviously, the corporations that are attacking North Carolina are virtue posturing. They have no problem doing business in countries where the laws are vastly more brutal than anything anyone ever imagined in North Carolina.

The Washington Times (via Clarice Feldman) called out PayPal on its declaration of virtue:

PayPal’s international headquarters are located in Singapore, where sexual contact between males is punishable by up to two years in prison [snip]The company has a software development center in Chennai, India, where same-sex marriage is prohibited.[snip] “PayPal does business in 25 countries where homosexual behavior is illegal, including 5 countries where the penalty is death, yet they object to the North Carolina Legislature overturning a misguided ordinance about letting men in to the women’s bathroom?” said Mr. Pittenger, a Republican, in a statement. “Perhaps PayPal would like to try and clarify this seemingly very hypocritical position.

Of course, Apple has also chosen to stand up for liberal values. Its CEO signed a letter denouncing the North Carolina law. About which Feldman remarked:

Apple’s stance is no less hypocritical. It has stores in Saudi Arabia “where gay people are regularly executed in public and cross-dressing is also a criminal offense. Pro-gay and trans advocacy are illegal, as is every religion except Islam.”

Where did this idea come from? Feldman suggested that it came from the Obama administration. Where else? Late last year the Department of Education threatened a school district in Palatine, IL with legal and administration penalties if it continued to refuse to allow a boy to have full use of the girls’ locker room.

The Chicago Tribune reported:

The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights spent nearly two years investigating Palatine-based Township High School District 211 and found "a preponderance of evidence" that school officials did not comply with Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.

The student, who has identified as a girl for a number of years, filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights in late 2013 after she was denied unrestricted access to the girls' locker room. District and federal officials negotiated for months, and a solution appeared imminent as recently as last week, when the district put up privacy curtains in the locker room.

But talks stalled after school officials said the student would be required to use the private area, as opposed to offering her a choice to use it. Although the student said she intends to use the private area or a locker room bathroom stall to change, the stipulation constitutes "blatant discrimination," said John Knight, director of the LGBT and AIDS Project at ACLU of Illinois, which is representing the student.

Under the Obama administration, America is no longer a serious country. One feels constrained to note that discrimination on the basis of race or gender is based on characteristics that are visible to the naked eye. Apparently, that is not good enough for true believing ideologues.

The administration and many leftist dimwits are claiming that your gender is what you believe it is. Keep in mind that gender, according to feminist beliefs is a social construct. If we think and talk about it differently it will change. If we keep saying that women are strong then women will be stronger than men.

Isn’t this a type of magical thinking that we outgrew during childhood?

Not the denizens of the radical left. They are imposing a rule that tells us that if you are really, really convinced that you are this or that, the nation, the school district and the girls who might like some privacy in their locker room must accommodate your belief.

How can anyone know whether you really believe what you say you believe? One cannot. Of course, no one cares about the trauma that will be visited on teenage girls when they are forced to shower with a boy. And no one really cares about the women who feel threatened by a man who walks into the women’s restroom.

And now, as I have noted in the past, when a man walks into a doctor’s office and declares that his left leg is six inches longer than his right leg, should the physician be prevented from writing down that both legs are exactly the same length. And if the man demands that his left leg be amputated, should the physician be obliged to operate? If he refuses, ought he to be sued for discrimination?

Such cases do exist. They are just as real as the transgendered. Will they be the next battleground in the struggle for civil rights, or better, the struggle to force us to think that experience most bow to the demands of ideology.