Recently, our Department of Justice, gave us another wild example of un-common sense in action. They decided to file suit against one of the States because the State legislature passed a law contradicting a federal mandate that addressed who should be allowed to use which restroom in a public place. Now, as much as I travel and use public restrooms, I am amazed that I didn’t know that this was such a pressing matter. Since public restrooms have existed for some time and from the beginning, we have used the only two biological sexes known to the human species in order to determine which room we should use for our most private of needs; I thought that system was working rather well. Then again, “What were our ancestors thinking?”
Have we reached a point that we no longer can decide for ourselves; we need the government to determine which restroom we should use? Is this the best use of our tax dollars to have our enlightened, well paid elected officials and their bureaucratic partners, with their infinite wisdom, focus on restroom attendance? We must have no greater issues to address. One has to conclude that we now have to spend millions of dollars on a problem that more than 99.0079% of the population have no perceived problem with.
Due to the growing amount of press on this ever-escalating problem, I now know much more about the “why” of all this. As an example, I heard radio interview from a university professor speaking on this topic and he explained, “The transgender community has been made to endure extreme discomfort for too long. Some of these citizens have had to deal with spurnful glares and rude comments from the public, adding unnecessary anxiety to their already anxious lives. Why should they have to be so uncomfortable?”
Please do not misunderstand. I am not unsympathetic of anyone’s anxiety. We all have our own to deal with and when it is yours it is very important and will be viewed as monumental from your perspective. Personally, I am sorry whenever I see or hear of anyone forced into uncomfortable positions. It certainly is not pleasant when you find yourself or one of your loved ones in that sort of situation.
So, I thought I would try to determine just how many people are affected by this uncomfortable lifestyle inconvenience. From some quick research I uncovered that there are approximately 700,000 people who consider themselves as part of the transgender culture in the United States, this equates to approximately .0021 percent of the total population. I do not know if all of these people feel the level of discomfort that the professor suggested but for the sake of discussion let’s assume 100% do and let’s round the number up to over double that amount at 1,500,000 people; that would represent .0046 percent of all Americans. If these laws are allowed to stand, it means that we are creating laws, causing confusion to many and adding millions of dollars of cost to businesses based on a truly minute sector of the population. In addition, let’s look at it from the other people’s perspective; if only some of the non-transgender public are made uncomfortable by the resulting actions of these laws; which group would make up the larger majority? Clearly it would be the 99.0054 percent. Now let’s assume that only 10 percent of the non – transgender population is found to be uncomfortable because of this law that would still be nearly 30 times more than those the law is designed to serve; 32,000,000 compared to 1,500,000.
I guess I am still missing the point because I don’t understand what is prompting this urgent need to address a problem that the vast majority of people never viewed as an issue. Throughout the centuries, we have all had friends and family that lived a transgender lifestyle. Believe it or not, this is nothing new. I am from the New Orleans area, and I travel to Las Vegas often; it is not all that uncommon in either place to have a person dressed as a female walk into a men’s room. I have never seen anyone freak out. The other men in the facility might ask if the person is in the wrong room but that is the extent of the discourse. Besides, the people I have personally known as cross dressers would always choose to go to the restroom that fit their dress at the time; causing no one to even give them a second glance. So, who is really behind this high-cost uproar and ethically, should businesses be required to incur this large expense of capital to adapt their workplaces to potentially accommodate a very small group of potential customers or employees?
From an ethical view, a business must first conform to the laws it operates under. If the law says you must have one restroom for every 50 people, then ethically they should follow the law. If the law specifies the restroom count should be determined based of the number of each sex, then currently sex mean male or female. Transgender is currently not a sex. If the business chooses to provide one restroom for every 25 people, regardless to the cost or the law, that is perfectly fine because they are exceeding the letter of the law. Also, if a business has a high transgender clientele and chooses to add special facilities to accommodate them, they are not hampered from doing so. It is government’s ethical responsibility to pass laws that require the bare minimum of requirements so as not to unjustly hinder a business’ activities. But as you probably already know, we are living in unprecedented times. Our government bodies and the bureaucratic tentacles that they spawn continue to try to appeal to the minorities on issues that affect a ridiculously minute portion of the entire country in an attempt to sway their support but at the cost of the entire population. To make matters worse, using their control of the media, they can leverage the public belief system by quickly labeling people who do not agree as bigots, racist, fanatical, or just out in “right” field radicals. Are our laws becoming ploys to manipulate?
In conclusion, from my research of the connected events leading up to these unprecedented legal actions, I believe that it is once more the political correctness monster which is driving the bus. When all is considered, one can only determine that the effects brought about by the power of legal agendas continue to weaken the ethical and moral fabric of society as we unreasonably strive to make all people comfortable with whatever other people are doing. I fear that in my lifetime it will be viewed as an illegal assault to make someone uncomfortable regardless of what they are doing.
I pray that I am wrong.
If this is my last post, I want all to know there was only one purpose for all that I have written; to have made a positive difference in the lives of others.