I like being comfortable. You like being comfortable. All God’s children like being comfortable. Lately, we’re concentrating a lot on that first sentence. Over a million people have signed an American Family Association boycott pledge against Target’s bathroom policy. It’s pretty much everyone’s bathroom policy and always has been, but Target happened to come right out and say it.
They decided to clarify that people can and should use the bathroom that coincides with the gender they identify with. Clarity is causing all of this hysteria, yet actual clarity on this issue continues to elude so many. Let me clarify…
Gender Dysphoria is a real thing. It’s not a punchline, so stop joking around.
This is the formal diagnosis for people (Homo Sapiens just like you) that experience significant distress with the gender they were assigned at birth. Only 0.3% of Americans suffer from this, so it’s understandable that you probably haven’t personally dealt with such a person.
I have.
My God-fearing parents, to whom I owe (almost) everything, allowed me to leave a struggling collegiate effort and tour the country in a band with a famous homosexual female. Can you believe that? I wouldn’t have either, except I only knew my parents as loving, understanding, accepting people.
On the road I earned a full education and then some. Not only did I see 48 of our 50 beautiful states… I met people. Oh, the people I met. Straight people, gay people, young people, old people, and a few transgender people. Two in particular stood out (again, we’re only talking about 0.3% of the total population). Their stories were different (one transitioned from boy to girl, and the other was in the process of girl to boy), but both intrigued me. I asked questions ad nauseam. They answered and I began to understand. This was a real thing and these people weren’t deciding on this path. It was clearly a sad, problematic, and burdensome path they had no choice but to hike.
These discriminatory laws do the opposite of what you want.
In your fear, you’re now demanding that fully transitioned people that have beards, big muscles, tattoos, and male genitalia must go into the restroom with your daughter. At the same time, you want fully transitioned people with high heels, breast, and female genitalia to go into the restroom with your husband. Remember, you’re insisting they have to use the restroom aligned with the gender listed on their birth certificate.
More importantly (since male transgender people look like men), you’re giving a FREE PASS for any man to walk into a women’s restroom. After all, that’s where you insist that transgender men should be going.
People are making a mountain where there’s not even a molehill to begin with.
Why has this been brought up? Was someone spied on or touched by a transgender person in a public bathroom? Not that I can find.
When has this bothered you? Honestly, you know this has been going on since the invention of public restrooms, right? Are you inspecting people in the public bathroom and if so, when have you seen a transgender person that you felt like was about to harm your babies? You haven’t.
There is a serious child sexual abuse problem, and this idiotic boycott and time wasting laws are abetting it.
90% of children who are sexually abused know their abuser. To my knowledge, I’ve known one pedophile. He was a white, heterosexual choir teacher that befriended me and all of my other prepubescent friends. He wore slacks and a collared shirt as he went into the restroom with all of us. This nonsense legislation wouldn’t have protected my friends from him. He raped them. It’s these situations we need to be vigilant about, not an irrational fear about transgender people (who, in reality, pose no threat–at least not according to the evidence).
American Family Association is the least aptly named association I can think of.
I’m a father with a beautiful (in my humble opinion) family. I openly talk to my children about loving and accepting people. We discuss people that are different and try to understand them. It’s the same way I was raised.
It literally makes my head hurt thinking that the American Family Association decides to focus on judging, condemning, and persecuting people, rather than helping and accepting them. Is this what we want the “American family” to be? This is no family of mine.
Stop. Just stop it.
Politicians are the worst and this debate is proving that point. Mike Huckabee jokes he should’ve “felt like a woman” and taken showers with girls in high school, while publicly defending admitted child molester Josh Duggar. Gross on all counts.
I understand that things that are different and hard to understand can be scary. Heck, I’ll never understand Florida Georgia Line. But guys, we need to focus on things that are important. This is a political, media-driven issue that does zero good and all kinds of harm. There are real predators where you go to church, where your kids go to school, and sometimes in a trusted family member’s home. Start looking there and stop peeking over the stall.
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Will Lochamy is co-host of the radio show, “Oh Brother Radio” on Birmingham Mountain Radio (107.3FM).
