Alternate headline: Paper Of Record Very Concerned Over Girls Pretending To Be Boys Forbidden From Using Boys Bathrooms. These are the types of things that keep Lefties up at night, rather than concerns over terrorism, Iran getting a nuclear weapon and a sweetheart deal, joblessness, and so on
For Transgender Americans, Legal Battles Over Restrooms
Gavin Grimm sat quietly in the audience last November as dozens of parents at a school board meeting in Gloucester County, Va., demanded that he be barred from using the boys’ restrooms at school. They discussed the transgender boy’s genitals, expressed concern that he might expose himself and cautioned that being in a men’s room would make the teenager vulnerable to rape. One person called him a “freak.â€
When Gavin, 16, got his turn at the podium, he was remarkably composed. “I didn’t ask to be this way,†Gavin said. “All I want to do is be a normal child and use the restroom in peace.â€
On Monday, Judge Robert Doumar of Federal District Court in Virginia is scheduled to consider whether the school board’s decision to prohibit Gavin from using the male restroom is unlawful discrimination. The case addresses one of the main unresolved battles in the fight for transgender equality.
Gavin is a girl. She may “identify” as a boy, but she has all the girlie bits. At least we should assume that, because nothing in the article states that she has had any sort of reassignment surgery. She may not have asked to be this way, but, she is this way, and needs to use the girl’s bathroom.
It is interesting to note that, suddenly, the opinions of dozens of parents is unimportant, when, normally, something must be totally stopped, usually having to do with religion, Christmas stuff, Halloween stuff, Easter stuff, and so on, because one parent Is Offended.
A favorable decision for the student would be the first time a federal court has ruled that refusing transgender students access to proper restrooms is discriminatory. Any other outcome would reinforce cruel policies that deny dignity to some of the most vulnerable students and subject them to more bullying and stigmatization.
Really? What about the dignity and privacy of girls being subjected to boys pretending to by girls using the girl’s bathroom and visa versa? Does the NY Times Editorial Board actually think that kids will suddenly stop being cruel because of bathrooms?
Here’s the kicker
Access to public restrooms has been a divisive issue in past civil rights struggles. During the 1950s, African-Americans challenged Jim Crow laws that barred them from so-called white restrooms.
There’s a vast difference between Black men and women being barred from using, respectively, certain men’s and women’s bathrooms, simply because they were Black, and people pretending to be the opposite sex and wanting to use those bathrooms. The former is certainly about respect and stopping discrimination, the other is about pandering to a tiny, tiny interest group, placing opposite sex members in the wrong bathrooms.
And right next to that bit is a button asking this tiny minority group to “share your story”. No, really.
The Department of Justice has submitted filings supporting both plaintiffs. The plaintiffs and federal officials argue that preventing transgender students from using restrooms that match their gender identity is a violation of Title IX, a federal law that bars discrimination based on gender in schools that receive federal funding. The Justice Department’s statement of interest in Gavin’s case notes that singling out transgender students makes it more likely that they will be bullied and harassed.
This is the same Obama DOJ which essentially ran guns into Mexico which resulted in the deaths and injuries of hundreds (that we know about) and no one was prosecuted. A DOJ which has virtually ignored the IRS targeting Conservative groups. A DOJ that sides with releasing criminal illegal aliens onto the streets of America. A DOJ that has ignored many, many subpoenas. A DOJ that refused to investigate voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers in Philly. A DOJ that stated it would not uphold duly passed laws, such as DOMA and marijuana. A DOJ that has essentially decided to enforce some things and ignore others.
But, hey, people pretending to be the other sex using bathrooms is apparently a good use of the DOJ’s time.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
terrorism ? OMG !!! we are all gonna die !!
Deadly Right Wing Attacks
Total number of people killed:
48
Plot name Persons killed
2015 Charleston Church Shooting 9
2014 Tallahassee Police Ambush 1
2014 Las Vegas Police Ambush 3
2014 Kansas Jewish Center Shooting 3
2014 Blooming Grove Police Shooting 1
2012 Tri-State Killing Spree 4
2012 St. John’s Parish Police Ambush 2
2012 Sikh Temple Shooting 6
2011 FEAR Militia 3
2010 Carlisle, PA Murder 1
2010 Austin, TX Plane Attack 1
2009 Pittsburgh Police Shootings 3
2009 Holocaust Museum Shooting 1
2009 George Tiller Assassination 1
2009 Ft. Walton, FL Shooting 2
2009 Flores Murders, Pima County, AZ 2
2009 Brockton, MA Murders 2
2008 Knoxville, TN Church Shooting 2
2004 Tulsa OK, Bank Robbery 1
Teach you are about 30 times more likely to be killed by the christian god throwing a bolt of lightning at you as to be killed by a jihhadist
who of course she probably be considered right wing rather than left wing
The New York Times wrote:
The person who referred to Mr Grimm might have been cruel, but he was brutally honest and correct. Perhaps Mr Grimm wishes to be a “normal child,” but he simply is not.
I’ve watched a lot of Star Trek, but if I started to say that I self-identified as a Vulcan, no one would think I was really a Vulcan; everyone would think that I was just plain nuts.
We do ill when we pander to mental illness, and call it normal and acceptable, when we tell the mentally ill that they are somehow really OK, when they are not.
The numbers of the “transgendered” are unknown. One common estimate was one out of 12,000, but advocates have said that the numbers are much higher, around one out of a thousand. Nevertheless, they are an unfortunate outlier of the population, and we might have sympathy for those afflicted with this mental illness, but we ought not to pander to it.
I see that I erred in my previous comment: I used the masculine pronouns, which was clearly wrong. Miss Grimm is a girl, regardless of what she says that she is, and only the feminine pronouns are correct.
It’s all fun and games until Mrs Doubtfire whips it out in front of your little girl.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/07/texas_supreme_court_flushes_houstons_bathroom_law.html
The left won’t be satisfied until all public facilities are unisex, and probably not even then. I can’t recall who originated the phrase, but it’s called defining deviancy down.
Teach, that’s a pretty good starter list of the cases where the DOJ ignores the law and serves as a political tool for POTUS. A full list would be very interesting. It would get my blood boiling, though. All of those items piss me off. I’d say the least of these issues is the medical marijuana one and that pisses me off. Filing heavy federal charges against mom and pop strip mall owners who have invested in real property for retirement income, simply because one of their tenants is a state-legal marijuana dispensary, is an oppressive gross miscarriage of justice.
Yeah, Dana, I was just thinking that at least one city in California should be the experiment and make all public restrooms unisex and see how it works. Then I thought about what goes on in the men’s beach restrooms by my city beach apartment. Gay sex acts, condoms, intravenous drug use and drug dealing, half-crazed violent dudes screaming at each other. The other day I saw a hugely-muscled black guy run out swinging a 4-foot metal pipe at another guy. If I have to use one of those restrooms, it always involves a little recon before entering. Open up the women’s room to this nightmare and see what happens after the first few women bring their children in to go pee and wash the sand off their bottoms. See what happens to unisex bathrooms then.
I guess the answer in Berkeley is to have a 3rd bathroom for everybody that doesn’t want to identify with male or female. Sounds very expensive. And who’s to say there won’t be people who are offended by being forced together with some part of the gender alphabet soup group that they don’t approve of. They’ll demand a 4th bathroom…
I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that the women’s bathrooms are not always places of peace. But I’d say it has about 1/50th of the criminal behavior. I remember seeing a crazed ratchett come out of there attacking another woman with her fists until a man punched her in the face. Then she started screaming for the police to arrest the man. Ugly scene.
Well, the city and the property owners put a big effort into fencing off access to any corners and alleys that the criminals, drug users, mentally ill, and gay prostitutes might use. So the bathrooms get a lot of that traffic.
Mr Glanton, the problem is with the description, “the men’s beach restrooms by my city beach apartment.” I’m becoming more and more convinced that the problem is urbanization, that civility — heck, civilization period! — decreases as population density increases.
Yes, by all means. Have the genital police check the junk of each person before they enter the loo to keep trangendered out. Sounds like a perfect job for Teach or Dana. They can separate the girl bits from the boy bits. And get paid for it!
So a right-wing parent is offended so it’s time to let fly at a transgendered kid. Typical.
And why would the other kids be interested in what a classmate is doing in a stall, anyway? If he has lady bits, he won’t be using the urinals, right?
Our American far right-wingnuts are most hateful, if not decidedly mentally ill. If Dana is correct, there are some 30,000 transgendered Americans.
Jeffrey wrote:
Except, of course, that in the case at hand, everybody knows what “junk” is in Miss Grimm’s pants. I s’pose that, if no one knew that “Gavin” Grimm was a girl pretending to be a boy, it wouldn’t make any commotion, until someone actually noticed, which is what would happen . . . and Miss Grimm would wind up getting beaten up or sexually assaulted.
I am continually amazed at how an educated man like you can understand so little about human nature. Like it or not, Miss Grimm is mentally ill, and you are expecting teenaged boys to understand that and be compassionate about it; only a fool or a naif would expect that to be the consistent result.
Of course, if “Gavin” Grimm is to be treated as a boy, because she says she is one, ’tisn’t just the loo — to use Jeffrey’s term — which is the problem. Perhaps Jeffrey went to some effeminate place, but when I went to high school, physical education was mandatory . . . and that meant the gang showers. Miss Grimm isn’t going to want to do girls phys ed; if she insists that she’s a boy, she’ll want to do phys ed with the real boys, which means contact sports, in which she’ll get slammed hard, and the gang showers, where she’ll be naked amongst the real, testosterone-fueled teenaged boys. Anyone with any actual common sense — a categorization which would, I suppose, exclude liberals — would immediately see that there would be major problems with this.
Jeffrey was apparently never a teenager:
And you think that such a kid wouldn’t be thoroughly ridiculed? Did you never hear “he squats to pee” used as an insult, implying that a guy isn’t masculine?
Dana (an apparent man trapped in a woman’s name),
Let’s concede your argument that gender dysmorphia is a bona fide mental illness. How would you treat the disorder? Intense psychotherapy? Intense ridicule?
Do you also consider homosexuality to be a mental illness?
I’d be more worried about how we treat John’s post that has nothing to do with the topic. But seeing as he’s off on another rant, let’s play his game. John, in your list did you recognize the fact that the total number of each group (Christians, Muslim terrorists) wasn’t factored in your “example”? Of course you didn’t-that would require reasoning. There’s more, if your correct, Christian killings because there’s more…….Christians. 48 killed, you say, but there’s literally millions of Christians, so you actually have a smaller chance to be harmed by “Christians” if you could do basic math. I’m not sure, but let’s say there’s a couple thousand terrorists in the U.S. that if they had the chance would carry out an act. Now compare the number of citizens killed by terrorists to the total number of terrorists, and you’ll see ratio wise you have a much bigger chance of being harmed by our Muslim friends.
Jeffrey wrote:
In that, you are correct. When I arrived in Kentucky, in the middle of the third grade, I was the tallest, skinniest kid there, the first one wearing glasses, with a different accent and a girl’s name. Yeah, it was tough for a while.
I suppose that, when I went off to college and got out of that small town, I could have started going by my middle name, Reed, and had no problems, but I didn’t choose to do so.
My mother told me that I was named after Dana Andrews, the actor.
Psychotherapy would be the obvious treatment; intense ridicule is what happens in real life. Johns Hopkins Medical Center no longer does sexual reassignment surgeries, after having discovered that such surgeries do not leave the patients any better adjusted mentally than transgendered persons who don’t have the surgery.
The Catechism uses the phrase “objectively disordered,” which I believe fits pretty well. Mental illness? Given that some homosexuals can function reasonably well in life, mental illness seems to me to be the wrong term, but, having said that, I would not call a condition which is apparent in only 2% of the population to be normal; homosexuals are an outlier, afflicted with a condition akin to a handicap, a condition which ought normally to preclude the normal human function of reproduction.
Were I to liken homosexuality to another mental problem, I’d guess that depression is the most similar one. If it can be treated, it should be, though not everyone will respond to treatment.