Here we go again with this whole transgender thing

I wish the Republican Party was as concerned about Russian interference in our presidential election, collusion with the Russians by our presidential candidate, his worldwide conflicts of interest, use of the White House as a profit center and his secret tax returns as it is with the gender identity of people using public restrooms in America.

Click to enlarge

Yesterday I posted a composite photo of 14 people with the caption, “Can you spot the transgenders?” I made that composite myself by simply googling “transgender men” and “transgender women” and having their photos appear. I confirmed each one by clicking on the link “go to page” and reading about them.

I learned that 10 of the 14 people in the composite openly identify as transgender. I’m not going to tell you who they are, and I challenge anybody to get all 10 right. The other four photos were selected more or less at random after googling such things as “sexy woman” and “geeky man.”

I don’t know any of these people so for all I know, they could all be transgenders. As for the other four, I have no idea about their gender identity so they could be gay, straight, trans or any combination. The point is, I don’t care what they are and neither should anybody else.

I wrote about this issue back in December and I still don’t understand why it’s such a thing. The federal government issued guidance under President Obama that said transgender people could use the restroom that matched their gender identity, and now Alternative President Donald Trump wants to throw out that rule.

None if this makes sense to me, for these reasons:

(1) First off, look at the composite photo. Which of those people would you deny access based on gender? You can’t tell if they are transgender, gay or straight. Even if you could, who is standing guard at the bathroom door to enforce this rule, and if you can’t expect to enforce it, then what good is it?

(2) Next, one of the first things transgender people do is get new birth certificates that show their gender identity. I clicked here and checked every state. As of 2015, only Idaho, Kansas, Ohio and Tennessee will not reissue a birth certificate to reflect a change in gender identity. With the Trump administration pushing this issue down to the states, however, I think we can expect more of them to jump on board this bandwagon.   

(3) Third, making this a states’ rights issue doesn’t simplify the law, it makes it more complicated. We could soon have 50 different laws in all 50 states. This could become a big problem for transgender students who move from state to state.

(4) And finally, other than pandering to the religious right, I can’t see who benefits from this rule. North Carolina has already lost millions in revenue because it refuses to repeal its bathroom bill, and Texas may be next. Among those opposed to the law there are the NBA and the NFL. In order for this to be an issue worthy of the attention it’s getting, you’d think that transgender people would have to cause somebody harm.

Conservatives like to scare people about bathrooms by suggesting that when transgender people begin using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, men will disguise themselves as transgender women to sneak into women's bathrooms and sexually assault women.

Riddle me this, Batman: Why couldn’t they do that anyway? 

As I posted before, I’m willing to bet that most or maybe all of us have shared a restroom with a transgender person at one time or another and not even known it, and the other argument about child molestation is ridiculous. The idea that someone is going to pretend to be transgender so he or she can molest your children in a public toilet in broad daylight with other people around and you waiting right outside the door just doesn’t make sense.

Of course, now that Steve Bannon, Trump’s brain, wants to deconstruct America as we know it and transport us back to the days of the 13 independent colonies, maybe nothing will ever make sense again. That’s a subject for another day.