Houston's publically elected Mayor y'all:
First: I don't have children and I'm not entirely concerned about a sexual predator attacking me in a gender neutral restroom. And, while I think the entire concept of public restrooms having no gender designation is a little ridiculous I would understand if you had Men's rooms, Women's rooms, and a gender neutral option. After all, we're supposed to be about "choice" right?
That out of the way what concerns me most about this is Parker's characterization of those with political, religious or moral beliefs that differ from her as "trolls". I expect this from an anonymous commenter on Chron.com or on Twitter. I would hope people would not expect this from the Mayor of the 4th largest city in America.
Sadly, because the leadership in the Houston area has been so bad, for so long, statements such as this don't even garner a reaction. Add to this the fact that there are people who go "Rah! Rah!" to boorish behavior on the sole basis that it happens to agree with their worldview and you begin to see where substandard leadership leads to substandard logic becoming the norm in political debate.
Society, in this case Houston society, gets the government that it deserves and asks for. In this case we deserve a logically challenged hothead who has conflict resolution issues. Yay us. I'd like to say that this has to be the bottom but looking at the slate of 2016 Mayoral candidates I would guess that Houston has a better than 50% chance of digging the hole even deeper.
Finally: This is not the main point of this post but it should be said. No matter what designation you give to public restrooms they are NOT "just like bathrooms at home". Unless, that is, Mayor Parker and her ideological fellow travelers make it a habit to let total strangers in to use the bathroom at their houses. I doubt, should you go knock on her door, either the Mayor or her family would let you come inside to drop off a quick No. 2 in their master bath.
Call that a hunch.
