You've probably heard by now that Texas recently overturned a state law nicknamed HERO, which ensured a wide range of rights to a wide range of people. Part of it included the right to public accommodations regardless of gender identity. That means that someone who identifies as male could use the male restrooms and someone who identifies as female could use the women's restroom. Basically, you go to the restroom based on the gender you present as rather than based on your genitalia.
Unfortunately, the conservative leaders in Texas have a problem with that, and the reasons are quite off-putting to anyone who thinks transgender people shouldn't be treated like second-class citizens. Referencing both Biblical and Texan values, they state that by allowing transgender people to pick the bathroom in which they feel most comfortable, people whose religion doesn't allow them to believe in trans rights are being persecuted. This is where a fundamental understanding of what religious freedom is would come in handy. In the United States, everyone is free to practice their own religion thanks to the First Amendment of our constitution. What the First Amendment doesn't allow is -- in fact, it prohibits -- limiting someone else's religious practices in areas where they differ from yours. The point of the First Amendment is not to say that everyone who disagrees with you should conform to your standards. The First Amendment doesn't promise anyone the right to never be around people or see the practices of other religions (or those without religions). That would be a theocracy. The right has a lot to say about certain theocracies in the Middle East.
The willful ignorance of powerful politicians regarding our most basic constitutional rights is rather frightening. The fact that people of a dominant religion think that they have the right to dictate how others behave will mean that laws -- such as HERO -- that are in place to protect people are all in jeopardy. It just doesn't make sense why people would insist that a transgender individual, like the woman depicted in the image below, Jenna Talackova, should have to go to the men's bathroom because she was born with male anatomy.
Imagine how exhausting it would be for her to see stares of confusion every time she went to the men's bathroom and have to explain that she was transgender over and over again. That would cause a lot more drama than her being able to move through the world as she really is and go to the women's restroom where all the other women are. Nobody would bat an eye.
But Texan Conservative leaders claim that allowing transgender people into the bathroom would allow predatory men to openly rape little girls by pretending they are trans. First of all, sexual harassment and rape are still illegal. This law wouldn't give people free range to crash the women's restroom and go wild. The fact that they think people are dying to do this says a lot about where their minds are.
And they are the only ones. presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said out loud in a speech in February that if this had been the law while he was in school, he would have "found his feminine side" and gone to the girls' locker room to see them shower. This remark was disturbing for so many reasons (besides the obvious reason of being extremely creepy that the first thing a man running to become leader of the free world thinks of when he hears about this law is how he'd use it to harass teenage girls). It's also illustrative of a deep and harmful misunderstanding of transgender people. We won't be able to have transgender equality until our politicians stop writing transgender people off as perverts while they themselves fantasize about watching young women shower. Just because that's what Mike Huckabee would do, doesn't mean that's normal or anything resembling the motives of transgender people.
Calling someone who just wants to use the restroom in peace a pervert sounds awfully strange when they themselves are so caught up with worrying about people's genitalia. From not allowing women the rights to their own uteruses to anti-masturbation campaigns to the body parts with which you were born being more important that the person you are, this obsession the far-right has with monitoring people's genitals is bewildering. By their logic, should they themselves have to prove their anatomy every time they need to use the restroom? Is that not an invasion of their liberties and individual freedom, both of which their party glorifies? There is nothing patriotic about invading someone's privacy for something as harmless as determining where they can alleviate their bladders.
The GOP's insistence on bringing so many important political issues back to sex organs is a part of a much bigger and very dangerous pattern. Not being able to discuss human bodies outside of a sexual context is why we have demeaning dress codes, public breastfeeding controversies, debates about banning birth control, presidential candidates focusing more on women's looks than their ideas, and why the act of publicly shaming young girls for choices they make about their bodies is coming back into style. If our leaders can get their heads out of the gutter long enough to have mature conversations about the deeper more important aspects of political issues, we could stop arguing about genitals and start making decisions to let everyone move through the world with their privacy and freedom in tact.
What this ruling says, whether people claim it's about religious or imaginary safety issues, can all be traced to this relentless obsession with sex and body parts. They claim that liberals are the ones obsessed with sex, but really, the liberals I know tend to shrug and say, "You do you; I'll do me. Why are we still talking about this?" As John Oliver states, the choices transgender people make about their bodies are "medically speaking, none of your f---ing business." Transgender or not, we have a constitutional right to our own bodies. No state law will ever change that.
