Funny how signing and then defending discriminatory legislation will put you in a “crossfire” (Washington Post, 4/13/16).
In the wake of North Carolina’s new law banning transgender people from using restrooms that correspond with their gender identity in publicly run facilities and schools, you will have heard media asking what things like the cancellation of a Bruce Springsteen concert might mean for the state’s economy.
You will have heard how Gov. Pat McCrory, who signed the law, now finds himself in the “Crossfire of GOP Civil War,” as a Washington Post headline (4/13/16) sympathetically put it.
You will have heard the question posed as a battle between freedoms: The Today show April 10 spoke of backlash against “various religious freedom laws,” and explained, “At issue: the rights of the LGBT community pitted against those of people with religious objections.”
What you have heard little or none of is what Media Matters research fellow Carlos Maza (3/24/16) called “The Question Every Reporter Should Be Asking About Transgender Bathroom Bans,” namely: “How Is the Government Supposed to Figure Out a Person’s Biological Sex?”
Maza noted that media are amplifying right-wing myths about privacy and women’s safety, even though
the idea that men will pretend to be transgender to sneak into women’s restrooms has been debunked by law enforcement experts, government officials and women’s safety advocates in cities and states across the country.
But while media are busy working through anti-LGBT talking points, they aren’t asking Republican politicians to explain how they’ll enforce laws that would require people to prove their “biological sex” at the bathroom door. The law says people must use facilities that corresponding to the sex “stated on a person’s birth certificate.” So people should carry their birth certificates with them at all times?
You can’t prove someone is transgender just by looking at them. But business owners and, hey, other bathroom-goers should make snap judgments about who does and doesn’t belong?
Scarier still, Maza notes that some states are looking at bills that would award damages to anyone who shared a bathroom with a transgender person. So if media are indeed concerned with encouraging violations of privacy and safety, there are plenty of questions to ask. They just need to be sure they’re asking the right people.
Janine Jackson is program director of FAIR and the producer and host of CounterSpin.
“award damages to anyone who shared a bathroom with a transgender person”
Beware – it would be all too easy that the plaintiff had already been damaged prior to entering the bathroom by toxic sectarian indoctrination.
Why is this issue being magnified so much by social activists and media? Take note: Current studies (and there have been many) estimate that there are upwards of 700,000 people in the US out of 310,000,000 that identify as transgendered. That’s less that .3% of the population.
Constantly raising non-issues, that are here only to get in the way of real world problems
Yawwwwwnnnnn …… more attention seekers getting more press than their tiny tiny miniscule cause deserves
In the interest of PC, please note – transgender is an adjective not a verb.
“PC” is not an argument. “Transgendered” is not the commonly preferred term now, but it has been widely used in the recent past, including by transgender people and their allies. Thanks for confirming the previous poster’s remark about obsession with trivia.
I have been a big Bruce Springsteen fan most of my life. He and others can have their views and chose not to go here or there, that is appropriate. What is not appropriate is a man regardless of what he/she wants to be walking into a women’s restroom. This is common sense and no need for discussion further. Political Correctness(Secularism) is destroying our Country. Common Sense has been replaced by feelings for the few. Feelings are fickle and we need strong people to vote out those that don’t have the stomach for proper actions and a moral compass.
I can answer that question for Mr. Marza. You see once upon a time, long ago, there was a country called the United States of America and the people living there had morals. If they had male genitalia, they knew the correct thing to do was use the male bathroom. Even if they felt like being a woman, they knew that until they had female parts, they should use the male restroom. Even though they felt uncomfortable because they were dressed up like a woman in the men’s restroom, they did it, because they weren’t selfish and knew it was the right thing to do.
Humm, someone left the Barn Door open and the trolls wondered in.
astaKASK77 says:
” “Constantly raising non-issues, that are here only to get in the way of real world problems” “.
Yes, until of course someone raises one that you have a personal stake in, as in your obsession with someones Genitalia and the idea that your religious outlook is the one and only proper one. Then I am sure we will hear some screaming about ‘serious issues’.
Lance says: ” ”
As in nothing. Nothing you said was of any significance and totally devoid sense, common or otherwise, because your too busy with a Jackass religious idea about this subject. You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts. If in fact the person has made the switch they are in fact that gender and If they haven’t they are still what they Id themselves as. That is Common sense and also history.
Johns say ” If they had male genitalia, they knew the correct thing to do was use the male bathroom. ”
No, in fact you have zero clue about what your saying because in fact, over the years many people have ‘crossed over in dress and used the other bathroom’. Simply because your not intelligent enough to know or understand this does not make you any smarter than Lance who thinks he is also “Mr History”.
Can I ask all three of you to please take your silly ass little problems down the hall, thank you. The rest of us have no problems figuring out that some folks do not Id as the Gender they were born with, and history is replete with many who were born as one or the other and ID as the opposite.
Your problems are in thinking your Religion gives you the right to say what you want, regardless of the actual facts. This is very common with those who ID as “Evangelical” and yet know nothing of their religion, and those who love to ‘nit-pick’ words, and cherry pick facts. I am betting not one of you actually knows a single transgender person because every bit of nonsense you have spewed is the same spewed by those who have no clue about the subject and were ‘taught the correct thing to say’. Hint, There are more things in Heaven and Earth, than are dreamt of in your Philosophy.
Once it becomes OK to ‘discriminate’ against people based on someone’s belief, it rarely takes long before only a very small handful of people are allowed “to be the only proper viewpoint”, and that is American History. The proper with Belief and that supposed ‘mystic Moral’ is that they are not based on facts of any type, that is why it is a belief. Belief belies Facts because Facts disprove Belief.
And that is really what this bill is all about, a small handful of people, setting up the precedence to discriminate on demand against anyone they don’t like. It starts with a small bunch of people, someone that “nobody” is going to care about, a percentage of the population, and then carefully, one by one, add this ‘person’, that ‘group’, those “folks” into the mix until we end up at “Strange Fruits”, ‘No (fill in the blank)’s need apply’ and “White” vs “Them” fountains, bathrooms, hotels, and of course Rights. Sorry folks but you only prove the rule, some people can not handle freedom if it means they aren’t freed to be asshats and discriminate beause they don’t like some one else.
Oh, and last, but not least, when someone tells me “they are worried about a man walking into a woman’s bathroom and doing something” I start counting the days until they are caught doing just that, walking into woman’s bathrooms and molesting them, because in the decades past while working as Councillor for people have sexually abuse others, the Abusers were always the first one to scream about the ‘perverts out there’ but were in fact committing those very sins they yelled about. They figured if they yelled long and loud enough, everyone’s attention would be turned away from them and they could continue their little sick soiree’s. Shall I start the clock?