In the locker room at my gym I frequent, there is a woman, who is a transgendered male, who uses the men’s locker room. I don’t think that “he” faces much danger in our locker room, and in our man-chats in the locker room, no one has ever mentioned “his” presence to me. But then, neither have I mentioned anything about it either. But dangerous situations may be the case far more often with men who are transgendered females who seek to use women’s facilities. In fact, women are increasingly bringing weapons to bathrooms in public facilities for their protection. The Department of Education (“DOE”) and the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) are now reinterpreting old laws to push new transgender laws. These new federal government regulations mean that a boy who identifies as female must be offered a college dorm room with female roommates. A biologically male athlete must be allowed to compete on a women’s sports team if he identifies as female. A first-grade boy who “thinks” or says that he is a girl can use the girls’ bathroom. A high school boy who say that he is a transgendered girl may use the girls’ locker rooms and showers. It has been fascinating to watch the breathtaking speed at which transgenderism in public facilities has become such a prominent issue in the waning months of the Obama Administration. I suppose that now that homosexual “marriage” was approved by the Supreme Court, it was time to move onto more foolishness.
In recent weeks, attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom (“ADF”), representing students and parents in both Illinois and North Carolina public schools and universities, filed suit against the United States DOE and DOJ for making federal student aid and educational funding dependent on students sharing restrooms and locker rooms with the opposite sex. In the case in North Carolina, the DOJ disregarded student privacy and safety when it issued letters threatening the suspension of federal funding for North Carolina’s schools and university system, as well as federal financial aid for North Carolina’s university students, unless the state government repudiated the law known as House Bill 2. That law ensures that government facilities and public schools protect personal privacy by maintaining sex-specific restrooms, locker rooms, and showers. Giving North Carolina only three days to repeal the law, the DOJ and DOE then filed suit against the state to force them to acquiesce. How much is at stake in North Carolina alone? The federal government’s actions jeopardize approximately $1.4 billion dollars in federal funding for North Carolina’s universities, approximately $800 million dollars in federal financial aid to North Carolina’s students, and all federal funding provided to all elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the state. And what is the authority for the federal government to stop educational funding? Actually, there is none, because this is simply a new interpretation of “sex” in Title IX, a 1972 federal law that specifically states that a school receiving federal funds can “provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex” without putting that funding at risk. The lawsuit by ADF attorneys contends that the DOJ and the DOE are unlawfully redefining the terms of Title IX, which is something that only Congress can alter, and only if signed by the President. (In fact, the North Carolina congressional delegation has rejected the federal government’s reinterpretation of Title IX.) Moreover, the ADF lawsuit maintains that the DOJ and DOE illegitimately force their political will on all public bodies across the nation. No federal law requires schools to allow boys into girls’ restrooms or girls into boys’ restrooms, and five courts have previously rejected the government’s re-interpretation of Title IX. The ADF lawsuit in North Carolina is North Carolinians for Privacy v. United States Department of Justice, and asks the U.S. District Court to declare that the DOJ and DOE exceeded their authority by redefining “sex” in Title IX, and for a finding that federal law does not forbid sex-specific restrooms and locker rooms. Liberty, Life, and Law Foundation attorney Deborah Dewart, one of more than 3,000 private attorneys allied with ADF, is serving as local counsel in the North Carolina case. In the Illinois lawsuit, the local counsel representing 51 families is Jocelyn Floyd, an attorney with the non-profit religious liberty law firm, the Thomas More Society. In the Illinois lawsuit, Ms. Floyd has sued on behalf of 51 families in the northwest Chicago suburb of Palatine. In Illinois, the school district secretly opened its schools’ restrooms to the opposite sex, and then opened the girls’ locker room to a boy. You may read the Illinois lawsuit here.
Please pray for the efforts of these courageous, outstanding attorneys, and for the parents and students involved in these lawsuits. The lawsuits do not seek to restrict any “civil” right of transgendered persons, but merely defend the right of girls and boys to have restrooms and locker rooms just for them, and not be forced to have biologically-opposite males and females in those private areas with them. Please pray that God will bless their work and efforts, and that the right of people to practice Biblical modesty be upheld.
Michael asks, “Why Now?” Pity the public school teacher and administrator who today is trying to deal with the federal decree that children should be allowed to use the washroom or locker room that correlates to their gender identity even if it is at odds with their physicality. However you feel about public accommodations for those who experience gender dysphoria or at what point you believe a child reaches an age of decision about a matter so fraught, the practical issues here are potentially overwhelming. Imagine yourself a teacher or principal at an overcrowded, understaffed school already groaning under federally mandated tests and the ever-lengthening demands of local and state officials. As schools have struggled and failed to meet basic educational goals, they have been freighted with even more duties: to teach “life skills,” nutrition and a school-board approved simulacrum of morality while simultaneously functioning as essentially medium-security prisons for fear of threats both internal and external. The news Thursday was that you must overhaul not just your potty policies but also those for your sports teams for fear of a federal civil rights lawsuit. Worse, you had to brace for a inundation of alarmed parents. Gender dysphoria may afflict only an estimated three-tenths of a percent of Americans, but 100 percent of your students’ parents will have questions or concerns. Now, if you believe strongly in biologically determined transgenderism, you may say that the government has no choice but to protect those in that struggle. If you are skeptical about the degree or prevalence of biological determinism in gender dysphoria, you might just think the world continues to go crazy. But whatever you think, if you’re an educator, even at a private or religious school, you’d better set your sails for the storms to come. Which brings us all, educators and non-educators alike, to the following question: why now?Clearly the state-level move to regulate bathroom usage has been part of the reason for the federal intervention. This is a continuation of the battle between states and the Obama administration over subjects that include, yes, gay marriage, but also health insurance, power plant emissions, voter identification and on and on. Activists push for transgender bathroom access, states push back and then the Justice Department retaliates. It’s all part of the circle of life in the twilight of federalism. But I suspect there is something else at work here, too. The closing argument from the last Republican to be subsumed by de facto nominee Donald Trump was to attack Trump for opposing North Carolina’s bathroom regulation. Well, that and venereal disease, but, hey, it’s been a weird year. And now the Obama administration has dumped a Costco-sized jug of accelerant on the fire. And it’s at precisely the moment that Trump and his restive party are trying to come to terms. And it’s on an issue that looks like a potential loser for conservatives with swing-state voters. We sure do live in interesting times.
These “innovations” are coming at us with breath taking speed now. I guess we need to plant our feet and prayerfully lean in the the hurricane. Stand fast brothers and sisters… respectfully, with strength and confidence preach Christ and Him crucified. It is hard for these enthusiasts to understand that God Holy and they are not. They are prisoners in chains and they are devoted to enslaving the rest of us that we may enjoy their misery.
Related to this, and pushing the envelope, I saw that today, the Obama administration sent “guidance” to schools throughout the country directing school administrators to allow self-identified “transgender” students to use the restroom and changing rooms of the student’s choosing. This “significant guidance” claims to be adding no new “requirements to applicable law.” However, its description of Title XI requirements is clearly legally binding. The administration is attempting to pressure schools to adopt the administration’s poorly-supported interpretation of “sex discrimination” (banned under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972) to cover “gender identity” under threat they may withhold federal funds from states’ education programs.
The solution is obvious, is it not? Tell the federal government to take it’s ” funding” and go home. Let’s see what a true free market in education looks like. Something tells me it would be much less expensive and much more productive.
Maria has a great point! North Carolina taxpayers may want to just stop paying their federal taxes….see if the DOJ will prosecute everyone in North Carolina jury trials. They may be too busy prosecuting anti-transgendered folks to notice. Anyway, I think those days when taxpaying Christians will say “enough is enough” grow closer daily!
This is the type of crimes coming to your town and schools:
http://www.fox32chicago.com/news/crime/140640238-story
The Alliance Defense Fund has an excellent short video that shows the plight of women and girls who have been harmed in the past and why it is unconscionable to open them and others like them to the consequences of this thoughtless edict from the executive branch of the government. Please watch this and share it with others.
The Unintended Victims of Bathroom Bills and Locker Room Policies – YouTube
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tg-MAMvkplE&ebc=ANyPxKqzvjOvZvYE1C4_hB6Qn9EluUr7KzcmPHN9_gCd2tU3BmJU5Cu7LHqIiLlm5q-fczdWJwbGmJuRSMH4HaLzVCGVV1mPkQ
Even though I generally agree with the author about the “transgender” bathroom issue, I find his inability to think logically to be rather sad. He says: ” I suppose that now that homosexual “marriage” was approved by the Supreme Court, it was time to move onto more foolishness.”
How does someone compose such stupidity and not have an internal editor to tell him to rethink it. Does Avramovich go through life thinking that every bad public policy post-June 2015 must have been caused by gay marriage? In fact, the transgender bathroom issue *pre-dates* the Obergefell decision. In fact, “transgender” litigation and lobbying over bathrooms and facilities has been going on for a very long time. Further, the transgender bathroom issue involves a different group of people (who are largely heterosexual) with a claim under a federal statute, not the Constitution. If opponents of trans activists want a solution, all they need to do is amend the Civil Rights Act to clarify that the statute does not provide any protection for “gender identity” and does not prohibit sex-segregated bathrooms. The Republicans control both Houses of Congress, so it is odd that Avramovich does not even discuss this possibility.
In his Facebook post, Rev. Franklin Graham addresses government overreach. “Who does President Barack Obama think he is? The sultan of Washington?” he asked. Rev. Graham went on to ask the question many across the country wish they could ask the president, writing, “What about the privacy and protection of all the other students? Isn’t this discrimination against all of them?” [Short answer to his rhetorical question: Why yes, it is!] According to Rev. Graham, this decision will expose many students to sexual predators. As we have seen from numerous arrests across the country already (see Valentina’s comment above), this problem will get much, much worse unless this utter foolishness is stopped. I can even see that it will spell the end of government schools in the United States. After all, what sane and responsible parent would risk their children’s safety to be in the same school with very confused children and adolescents.
Dr. Bill Owens of the Coalition of African American Pastors recently noted, “The far left is mining the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and all African Americans who participated in the struggle for civil rights to defend a few mentally ill people with bathroom issues. In truth, it seems ludicrous that this is happening. If you’ve ever tried to explain the threat to family to a dubious, non-political friend, you’ll understand what I mean. The idea that anyone could make a comparison between Jim Crow, lynchings, the KKK, and being denied voting rights with … wanting to go to a different bathroom than your biological sex–well, I can’t really blame anyone who has difficulty believing it. But it is happening, and it is critical that we step forward and voice our displeasure before this ridiculous comparison become the basis for even more encroachments on faith and family. Already the President is trying to force schools to comply, threatening their federal funding unless they allow boys into the girls’ bathroom. What’s more, forces in Congress are trying to amend the Civil Rights Act to include transgender persons.” In a recent interview, Dr. Owens spoke out against Obama who has actually shown great disrespect to African-American history. Dr. Owens said, “There is simply no relation between the struggles that Black Americans have faced and the desire of a tiny minority group to violate the dignity and privacy of women and girls. To suggest some sort of equivalence is a gross insult to all of those who marched with Dr. King and faced fire hoses and hatred in the name of equality. Black Pastors will not allow the homosexual and transgender community to rob Black Americans of their battle for civil rights! If the Rev. Martin Luther King were alive to see this today, he would be angered in the same way that Jesus was angered when he turned over the tables of the money changers.” Dr. Owens referred to attempts by the Obama Regime to make the LGBTQ+ political and social engineering agendas the equivalent of civil rights a “theft and outrageous extortion and usurpation of the Civil Rights Movement.” I agree! There is simply no relation between the struggles that Black Americans have faced and the desire of a tiny minority group to violate the dignity and privacy of women and girls. Transgendered persons are not asking for equal rights—they are asking for special rights that violate the privacy of women and simple common sense.