As the debate over the use of bathrooms by transgender people continues on in its idiocy, I have one question. How do they plan to enforce laws requiring you to use the bathroom connected to your sex organs at birth?
Will everyone entering or leaving a bathroom be X-rayed to make sure they have the proper parts? Or will a security guard grope us all to ascertain we have the right equipment for the bathroom we are trying to enter? And if a transgender person has had reconstructive surgery, how will the bathroom police differentiate them from someone born with those sex organs? Will we be forced to undergo a vaginal exam looking for telltale scars? Will we now require DNA tests to use a public restroom to make sure the proper x's and y's are in place for the door being entered? Perhaps most importantly for those of us women of a certain age for whom facial hair is replacing the hormones we once had, will we be strip-searched to prove we just have little old lady mustaches and aren't really men?
These are questions crying out for an answer as this insane debate rages on. The arguments being made for the need for these laws are yet another example of a group of desperate politicians looking for a solution to something that has never been a problem. They are looking to divert our attention from their current state of political disarray. As the majority in this country march proudly into the 21st century, they vainly try to pull us back into the 17th.
When was the last time you heard about a transgender person being caught doing something awful in a restroom? Answer -- you didn't. Yet I can almost immediately come up with at least half a dozen politicians who have done worse things in bathrooms and locker rooms to young boys. But there is no law requiring proof that you are not a child molester to use a public restroom.
My favorite argument is that this will prevent perverts from dressing up as women and going into bathrooms looking for little girls. For starters, no man "dressing up" as a woman will ever pass for one on entering a bathroom. There is a world of difference in just dressing like the opposite sex versus identifying completely with it. And does anyone really think that these perverts were just waiting for a law allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their sexual identity before casing restrooms for victims? Perverts are perverts. If they want to get into a locker room or bathroom, they will find a way no matter the law. Once again, I refer you to any number of prominent men who have proven this to be sadly true.
And why is this so much about little girls? Little boys also get sexually abused. Check out Penn State's football program history or the Roman Catholic Church's priesthood. Little boys can be victims too. The reality is that schools, locker rooms and confessionals are more dangerous for some children than any public bathroom will ever be.
But here's the point where common sense seems to have totally fled and been replaced with verifiable insanity. Where do these politicians think transgender people have been going to the bathroom when out in public up until now? They've been using public restrooms right next to the rest of us. Or do they think that up until now transgender people have simply been holding it in?
The politicians who have suddenly decided this is a critical issue in American life tend to be conservatives who propound the theory that the least amount of government is the best and that government needs to stay out of our lives, businesses and guns. But they seem fixated on controlling our genitals and now want to privately inspect us all to make sure we are using the bathroom they believe God intended us to use. Our country is beset with infrastructure problems but the only infrastructures legislatures around the country seem interested in are our private infrastructures.
Nothing would make me more nervous about myself or my children using a restroom than knowing that someone like Dennis Hastert or Larry "Wide Stance" Craig was using that restroom too. Given a choice, I'll take the stall next to a transgender person any day.
Elise Patkotak's latest book, "Coming Into the City," is available at AlaskaBooksandCalendars.com and at local bookstores.
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