The Texas Legislature begins it's bi-annual session today, and our august elected officials are going to be tasked with trying to resolve a host of issues. Of course, there's the usual, the ONE duty that they are Constitutionally REQUIRED to perform: The passing of a budget, and then there's the usual hodge-podge of other issues for which "Something! must be done."
Education funding is always a hot topic, with the Teacher's unions and school administrators associations always promising that Texas is "just around the corner" from being "world class" if ONLY the Lege could find it in their hearts to take several more Billion from the taxpayers and place it in their care. Roads need to be funded, bridges need to be repaired, all things we are firmly assured CAN be done with just a few Billion more of your dollars.
But Lt. Governor Dan Patrick has a different set of priorities. Call them Patrick's Potty Principles if you will they involve ensuring that all Texans use the restroom that God intended them to, and that there be no shuck about what is, or is not proper.
My feeling is that we don't need a law. That private businesses should be allowed to set up whatever potty arrangement they choose, that a bakery in Cleveland could have "Men's and Women's restrooms" while a restaurant in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston might opt for the gender neutral option. To each their own place to pee and all of that.
But peeing in a stall, or at a urinal with dividers etc., is a far different matter than community showers, troughs etc. Society struggles with what to do there, especially in a public school setting. Because while we can all agree that the idea of gender neutral public showers in a High School might not be the best of ideas, it's a little harder to determine what the transgender student should do should they wish to clean themselves off after a Summer's hour of physical education. (side thought: do they even require Phys Ed any longer? Or did getting rid of sodas and bake sales in schools solve our child obesity problem?)
Is it better to force a transgendered female, who FWIW might be attracted to boys, be shoe-horned in with the male population because their birth certificate shows a certain chromosome pattern? When framed in that manner this morality play is somewhat different isn't it? So while there's certain to be plenty of talk about "privacy" and "perverts" it's probably better that this whole ordeal be left unaddressed right now until we really understand the reasoning behind the special accommodations we're proposing in the first place. This bill seems to be an attempt to use a hammer to remove a splinter. Perhaps an option allowing limited individual showers and restrooms would do? I'm not sure, but right now we're only being given a choice between the two extremes. Either you allow people to enter wherever they want, or you restrict them to the room that the Christian Lord intended. That's less a choice than it is a 5 year old's debating style.
Another cost? Most of our (needed) political discussion is going to be dominated by who tinkles, and where. This is not a good thing because, and let's face the facts here, so little of Texas' political conversation is carried out among adults (hence the 5-year old's choice). Children obsess over potties, as well as social-conservatives and progressives obviously, and I can't see where any of this is going to do us any bit of good. Did it do Houston any good when then-Mayor Annise Parker pursued her folly to the bitter, acrimonious, divisive end?
Of course, the urban-centric progressives in Texas see this as an opportunity. They feel that business, pretty much standing against this law, is looking for an alternative and, by-golly, it should be them. What they fail to realize is that business doesn't WANT the party of Wendy(?!?) Davis in charge, anymore than they want Dan "Potty Principles" Patrick Republicans running the joint. They want the party of Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus, the (currently) Republican party of Straus. Because the Democratic party of Texas long ago purged itself of most of it's moderate wing, which has made their fair-trade, organic, munchy-crunchy, soak-the-wealthy and businesses brand of politics untenable except when identity politics are in play.
There's an old saying in Texas politics that, when the Texas Legislature is in session, Texans would be wise to "hold on to their wallets". That's changed in recent years, for the worse.
When the Texas Legislature's in session most Texans would be wise to keep one hand on their wallets, and the other on their private parts. Because increasingly both parties seem way too interested in either telling them what to do with them or flat-out trying to punch them there.
Meanwhile, there's likely to be less money to waste this time around which would seem, to me, to be a bigger issue than Patrick's Potty Principles.
