In short: Things could be better in 'Merica right about now. Granted, they could also be a lot worse.
Based on what we're currently identifying as our top issue however I think we're well on the way.
We Need a Restroom Revolution. John Sutter, CNN.com
This isn't a binary gender world. People don't fit neatly into the "M" and "F" boxes. It's time our public restrooms reflected that. The fairest way to do so is to desegregate restrooms by sex, and that means eliminating the men's and women's rooms in favor of "all gender" restrooms.Think that's an overreaction? Take a quick look at the history of bathroom politics in the United States. We've tried time and again to control who we sit and stand next to at the toilet.In the 1960s, black civil rights activists were killed for trying to use "whites only" bathrooms. In the 1980s, gay men were harassed because the public wrongly assumed they could catch HIV-AIDS from a toilet. (AIDS was viewed then as a gay man's disease). Restrooms weren't required to be accessible to people with wheelchairs until the Americans with Disabilities act of 1990. And now, some cities and states are trying to keep transgender people out.The only justification is bigotry and ignorance.
I am not, on this blog, going to try and sort through the fuzzy mess that is gender identity in the modern era. Nor am I going to opine on whether or not the Transgender community should receive a special accommodation to pee where they like, or whether everyone should receive said accommodation by "requiring" businesses, religious organizations or any other entity providing community access to their toilets strip the gender specificity from them.
You will make up your own mind on this issue and nothing that I could type here, no matter how logical, not matter how many facts I used to back up the argument, would change your mind.
I'm not going to do that because the entire reason the Left is forwarding this debate is because there's no compromise that will work.
You are either pro-restroom de-gendering or you are not. You either want people to pick and choose or you don't. And no amount of lecturing or shaming or hollering is going to change your mind.
My argument is this.
Given all of the other issues that we are currently facing, is this really where we want to be drawing our swords right now?
We currently have an executive branch that views the citizens as the ant to their boot and they are not afraid to do some squashing if it means they get their way. We've had the IRS target political enemies of the President and no one said a peep and we now have a Justice Department who is running roughshod over pretty much anyone with whom they disagree in an attempt to force the change they cannot achieve politically.
We used to make fun of countries for doing shit like this, now they're laughing their asses off at us.
America has 5% of the world's population but we have 25% of the world's incarcerated living within our borders. Do we really want to round up all of the heretics on this issue, and the issue of climate change FWIW, and increase those numbers?
The problem with discussions surrounding all issues GLBTQ is that the default response by those in favor is either "homophobe!" or "transphobe!" which are not designed to debate, but to stifle debate. For all of the claims of the Right regarding being liberty loving and some such suggestions that A great State-wide urinal diktat is somehow superior to Parker's Folly at a municipal level is just slicing the same apple in different sizes. The same goes with North Carolina and Obama's (Increasingly) (in)Justice Department.
Those of a more libertarian lean might point out that different organizations are going to have different ideals about what is the desired potty preference for their members and should be free to implement them in a manner of their choosing. A GLBTQ nightclub might find it a positive to have gender neutral toilets while a religious institution may not. Target may choose to provide a special accommodation to its transgender shoppers while Hobby Lobby might not.
It is possible that none of the institutions above choose to do this because of bias or hate. Perhaps they just do it to reflect the mores and needs of their customers? Because that's why people are so angry about this issue.
It's not enough that they live and let live. (Although granted, some do not) Nor is it enough that they have lost the political battle on the matter of GLBTQ marriage. What both sides want is for the other side to be totally discredited, arrested or barred from the public square and the ground on which their ideas took root salted. It's the same as with conservative Caucasians in the melting pot that is America, they want everyone else to change to be just like THEM, but they don't want to change any themselves. So it is with the GLBTQ groups. Everyone must change to provide them with special accommodations, but they are unwilling to undergo any metamorphosis themselves.
On all sides our politics has turned into a zero-sum game, and the ruling class is using our lack of maturity to control us with it.
Once the issue of GLBTQ marriage was settled there was an activist who publicly stated that "there was no reason for the GLBTQ community to side with Democrats now that gay marriage was a settled issue". In order to keep control over the voting bloc the Democrats ginned up restroom special accommodations and both sides fell into lock step.
Instead of looking at one another and realizing that we all have distinct differences that make us who we are the first impulse is to morph into the worst caricature of ourselves for the pleasure of those who rule. It used to be "us vs. them" now it's "us vs. us" and they're getting more creative in finding ways to turn the people against ourselves.
One final thought: We all pee. All of us.
