Something we don’t talk a lot about is our daily routine of going to the bathroom. How often do you use the restroom? Is it usually in public or in the comfort of your own home?
This might be something that you never pay attention to. However, an issue that has risen in recent history is where people in the LGBTQ+ community should go to the restroom when they are in public. For those of you who are not familiar with the term LGBTQ, please let me explain briefly. LGBTQ+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other terms that people use to identify their gender or sexuality. These terms are sometimes used with hesitation in many conservative communities, but we are seeing more openness and awareness regarding the LGBTQ+ community.
You now might be wondering why I’m choosing to write about this as a heterosexual, female woman. And I will quickly tell you that my faith and recent classroom discussions sparked an awareness about this issue as it relates to justice.
My decision to follow Jesus Christ has shown me that I am called to care for the marginalized and the oppressed. Jesus spoke with lepers, prostitutes, eunuchs, and other people that society saw as being on the margins, sinful, or unworthy. So, I want to love my neighbor like Jesus, no matter how he/she/they identify, as a way to work toward justice in this world. And I want to be a peacemaker who makes all people feel like they have worth, value, and someone who loves them.
More than that, I am studying to be an educator. Part of my coursework involves preparing to meet the needs of all kinds of students. This includes students of various ethnicities, (dis)abilities, statuses, and gender identity. Therefore, I want to make this issue something that I care about because I love God’s people. I want to create a welcoming community for the middle school students when they may feel like society is set up in a way that seems to reject them.
Why does there need to be so much trouble regarding this topic? In the end, I understand that we are merely talking about going to the bathroom, a natural part of being human. But if you have watched the movie Hidden Figures (2017), you might have a better picture as to why this is an important topic to discuss.
I don’t want to ruin the movie for those of you who have not seen it, so I won’t go into great detail, but I strongly encourage you to watch Hidden Figures! It is a marvelous movie that addresses the problematic segregation of bathrooms in American history, among other things. The separate bathrooms were benefiting Whites while placing Blacks on the margins of society. As we see in the movie, this created an issue because there often were not enough “colored bathrooms” and it led to uncomfortable situations.
Some may argue that we are seeing an injustice in the exclusion of the LGBTQ+ community today. A point of discussion in our dilemma today is the concern that men will enter a women’s bathroom to do harm to women and children. To that aspect of this discussion, I don’t have an exact answer.
Yet, it does seem to me that we ought to meet the needs of the oppressed or marginalized people who have to struggle with more issues than I can imagine. My hope is that we can discuss this (and such topics) as a way to demonstrate justice for those who have suffered much injustice.
