I posted the previously that Mayor Parker, who might be suffering from stress-related issues surrounding the defeat of HER Ordinance (this would not be the first time there were questions regarding her mental state under stress) has indicated a willingness to push through HER Ordinance in a segmented form, and reiterated her unwillingness to remove the controversial portions dealing with special accommodation. (FWIW, it's not clear that Ms. Parker, or many others in Houston, realize what special accommodation is, and why it's a problem, from a legal perspective).
I talked, briefly, about the effect Parker's actions (and endorsement) might have on the Mayoral run-off and whether or not her continued push to provide the transgendered community a special accommodation would hurt Sylvester Turner's chances. Either way, it's fairly clear to me that Parker views HER Ordinance to be more important than her future political career, as she's potentially burning up any political capital she has left in her effort to push it through. If, for instance, her doggedness hurts Turner and other Democratic/Progressive candidates from winning political office, it might totally erode her support from her own party.
This is why I have posited that Parker is either a.) deciding that she's done running for office and angling for a high-paying job in the advocacy business (where she can continue to hurl either transphobic or "too stupid to understand the issue" insults at voters) or she's planning to move her family to a more liberal location after her term is up to run for office there. (For instance, seeing a Parker run for the Mayor of San Francisco would not be 100% a surprise in around 5 years).
That's all in the political realm however, but it's relevant to this question: Does the Houston Chronicle have an internal memo, regarding Parker's Folly, that's circling around internally as they did with MetroRail? And, if they do, does this mean that the entirety of their reporting on this issue is suspect?
The evidence:
Since the election the Chronicle, mainly through the "Gray Matters" blog edited by (Former - According to Ms. Gray*) Editorial Board Member** Lisa Gray, has published a series of advocacy pieces for the transgendered community. Both pieces are anecdotal in nature (which, as we know, is a logical fallacy) and neither contains any mention of the opposition view.
The Deal with transgendered people and bathrooms. Lisa Gray, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
Even on its own terms, the argument didn't make sense. Let's stipulate that HERO would have affected public restrooms. Does anyone really want trans people to use the bathrooms that match the genitals they were born with?
"I have scruff on my face," Lou said. "I've got a deep voice. Do they want me in a women's restroom?"
The sportswriter who became a woman. Randy Harvey, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
WE MET outside the restaurant. She wore a long, blonde wig, a business suit, makeup and high heels.
I told her she cleaned up nice.
When we walked into the restaurant, the greeter said, "Hello, gentlemen."
She didn't hear him. Or she acted like she didn't hear him.
That's when I knew she hadn't chosen an easy path. Or that an easy path hadn't chosen her.
The Bathroom Ordinance, "Houston I'm Disappointed." Joni Rodgers, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
I am not for a moment co-opting the disenfranchisement experienced by people who actually are trans or cisgender. I'm saying the promotion of ignorance and hate forces all of us to live in a city that is less generous, welcoming and intelligent than it should be.
I'm profoundly disappointed in you, Houston.
(note: I mocked this ladies post (and others) here)
Of course, having one staffer's opinion ring out in a "blog" is not a problem (side note: This collection of outsourced editorials actually won "Houston's Best Blog" for 2014 proving, once and for all, that blogging as a medium in Houston is not only dead, the corpse has been beheaded, cut into pieces, and burned) but having this type of activity bleed into the so-called "hard" news reporting is.
Houston's Restrooms outpace politics. Alyson Ward & Andrew Dansby. HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
Three days ago, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance went down in defeat, in what opponents dubbed the "bathroom ordinance." Although voters expressed considerable unease at the thought of a transgender woman in a woman's bathroom, Houston restrooms are way ahead of politics.
The argument, forwarded by the authors of the story and endorsed by the editors, is that because private, and a public, entity in Houston are already choosing, of their own volition, to move toward gender neutral restrooms the City is justified in requiring this special accommodation.
The problem, and it IS a big problem regardless of which side of the closet-door you find yourself, is that what might work for a small sample of businesses in specific parts of the city does not necessarily work for the population as a whole. This is the logical fallacy known as Anecdotal evidence played out across the board in the Chron's reporting.
It assumes that, because the reporters can find single, or a few, examples of something happening, then it must be true on a macro level. What this ignores is that every.single.one of these instances is an isolated incident, even the one that I believe the author either made-up, or embellished greatly to make herself the star.
Even taking all of these stories at face value it doesn't make a compelling case for the transgendered community to receive a special accommodation that is not available to other groups like the Chronicle seems to think it does.
The ONLY thing that is being proven here is that neither side understands the arguments of one another. The transgendered community is just as unwilling, or unable, to realize the valid concerns of those opposed to Parker's Folly as the opposition is unwilling, or unable, to realize that the issue of transgender rights is something that needs to be recognized whether you agree with them or not.
This shouldn't mean that you have to fully endorse them, only that you need to understand that they are people as well who have just as much right to societal inclusion as do you.
After all of that talk about the "fallacy of Anecdotal evidence" here's where I'm going to get a tad bit that way myself. And, you might be surprised, it's in favor of transgendered rights. Because, in my view, the line of demarcation that we draw should be based on adult consent. In other words, if two adults, of consenting age, decide that they love one another and wish to spend time together (not the rest of their lives, I think we realize that's a fallacy) then the American government has no business getting in the way of that happening. This is why I support, but don't endorse, the rights of GLBT couples to engage in the bonds of matrimony. It's also why I support the rights of those with truly religious objections to refuse to recognize those unions.
It's why I don't support, and will never support, the current movement by some of the more far-left publications (such as Salon.com) to try and legitimize pedophiles, or bestiality. The line is adult consent, and there is not consent between two adults there. To me (your mileage may vary) that is the hard line that we should never cross.
When you start to get into the arena of the provision of goods and services by a private entity I think the issue gets murkier. There is a fine line between equal access and special accommodation that the courts are going to have to work out. I think, over time, we'll discover the boundary for religious objection as well. (For all of the faults in Parker's Folly, even she was not stupid enough to fail to exempt religious organizations from the ordinance.)
The sad thing is, leading up to the argument over Parker's Folly I would have thought Houston to be an ideal petri dish for some of these debates to take place. It is after all, one of the most diverse cities in the world and it has a very large, and active, GLBT community that, for the most part, is thriving, successful and fairly widely accepted. I would have thought that both sides in any debate would posses the maturity and depth of understanding to carry on a decent conversation without the insipid flame-throwing that a city such as San Francisco would engage in.
The problem is that I underestimated both sides capacity to want to engage in honest debate, and I probably overestimated the intelligence of the ruling and media classes quite a bit as well. For one thing, while the pro-HER Ordinance group got steamed up about "men in women's bathrooms" they were not smart enough to understand that the worry of the anti-HER Ordinance group was not surrounding the truly transgendered at all. In fact, what they were concerned about were pedophiles using the law as a means for entry by POSING as transgendered. I would argue that the left's (and the Chronicle's) blind-spot in regards to this is transphobic in and of itself.
Finally, I've made a plea, prior to this, that both sides calm down in regards to the rhetoric they're spewing. I realize that this is a useless plea. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to keep trying to write in what I feel to be a sensible manner on this topic. The thing is, despite trying to keep things on the up-and-up I've been accused of being transphobic as well. This proves two things: 1. Those who are levying the charge (Mayor Parker for one) don't really understand the definition of transphobic, or choose to not acknowledge it (more likely) and 2. There is a large group of people in Houston who are using this not to advance equal rights, but to try and tear down what they see as the existing social order.
The goal of those people is to shame and disenfranchise, to remove entire segments of the population from the public square. The Chronicle is one of these organizations, Mayor Parker is another. That should scare you because they have both the biggest bullhorn and control the levers of power.
*Ms. Gray sent me a tweet telling me to "check my facts". Since the process behind what goes into the Chron's unsigned editorials is a black box and impossible to verify, and since her name HAS been taken off the editorial roll, we take her at face value and regret the error.
