TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS JUST WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE

…A sign you will be seeing more of in the future

 

Like their false “voter fraud” problem, transgender individuals have become the latest, bogus right-wing issue

 

This issue with transgender students in public school bathrooms is really getting way out of hand.

 

The number of transgender individuals in our public schools is so small, it’s strange that it has become such a major national topic of discussions.

 

The Obama administration is not introducing anything new with their latest initiatives which supports the president’s goal of elevating transgender protections to one of the central civil rights issues of his presidency.  It’s just one more attempt to keep discrimination away from transgender individuals because of their identity. 

 

Basically, as one transgender individual stated, “All we want is to be left alone and treated like everyone else.”

 

Being that I had spent a good part of my early life as a professional entertainer, in that artistic category, my exposure was to many gays, lesbians and on rare occasions, transgender individuals.  The one obvious trait for those individuals many times was that their identity was a very private issue, not to be made the subject of group discussions.

 

As an example, put yourself in the position of a transgender male. 

 

This is someone that regardless of their physical attributes and plumbing, they have come to understand that their true identity is to be female.  Assuming that they have made that physical transition from looking like the obvious male to being a female, how would it work for that female to follow the latest restroom law that was passed in North Carolina and Texas.  The law says this individual must use the public restroom that matches their birth certificate gender.

 

For the now female transgender individual to have to use the men’s room, this would be just as disruptive to the men in the restroom, as it would be to the transgender.

 

The issue is that this latest North Carolina  law is supposed to stop any males that wanted to molest young women by pretending they are a transgender. 

 

This is why they say that the current federal laws allows men into restrooms used by young female women, and the new law would supposedly prevent that from happening.

 

My first question is, “When was this issue shown to be a problem?”  As some have said, “It’s a solution looking for a problem.”

 

Transgenders have been around for a long time and they have been using the restroom of their new identity since they became that new identity.  I don’t recall that there has been a horrible problem of women being attacked by fake transgender men in women’s restrooms.  The reality is that if there were so called transgender men attacking women, they wouldn’t actually be transgender men.  They would be heterosexual men committing criminal acts.  The nation’s police departments have not been posting this issue as any kind of on-going problem anywhere in the country.

 

Hours after directing public schools nationwide to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice, the Obama administration issued a second directive prohibiting health insurers from denying transgender Americans coverage and services based on gender identity.

 

The directive from the US Education and Justice departments instructs schools to ensure that transgender students have access to the bathrooms, sports teams and other facilities of their choice. Conservative critics of the new rules have said the move amounted to a violation of states’ rights.  This is a federal rule.  If the states don’t want to follow the federal law, they can and will stop receiving federal education funds.

 

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, who in the past had expressed support for transgender individuals using the bathroom of their choice, said the kind of regulations announced Friday should be left to the states.  (A typical Republican way of passing off the issue.  Yes, let’s make anyone from one state have to act differently when they go to another state.)

 

“I don’t think it’s a federal issue where the federal government gets involved. And I see what’s happening. It’s become such a big situation,” Trump said on NBC’s “Today” show.  As with many Trump statements, that statement says absolutely nothing.

 

The Justice Department is already in a legal battle with North Carolina over that state’s law mandating that individuals can access only a bathroom that matches their gender at birth.  Last week, the state’s governor, Pat McCrory (R), cited the Justice Dept. directive as fresh evidence that the states and Congress must act to rein in the administration.  Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) predicted that “this will be the end of public education, if this prevails.”  (According to the Texas Lt. Gov, this is such a big issue, the public will stop going to public schools.) 

 

White House press secretary Josh Earnest dismissed the criticism: “I think this does underscore the risk of electing a right-wing radio host to a statewide office,” Earnest told reporters, referring to Dan Patrick, a right-wing talk-radio host for many years.

 

Winnie Stachelberg, executive vice president for the liberal think-tank Center for American Progress, said the two policies show “the administration has spoken quite clearly on what protections transgender Americans deserve.”

 

To any reasonable thinking American, this is just another non-problem like the non-existent voter-fraud problem that caused the Republican run states to add all their restrictive voter ID laws.  There was no voter fraud, and there is no transgender rest room problem, but this is one more example of putting restrictions on those individuals that would normally be voting Democratic.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016