Now that we've talked about some good things that are in the Equality Act. Now I want to talk about the ones that I think are negative. Some I think are flat out wrong while other things may not be wrong but they are wrong for right now. Some things I feel that you simply cannot force on a society that isn't ready for it. If you try to do so you risk stagnating or even destroying previous gains depending on how it's executed.
The first one I want to talk about is how the Equality Act goes after christian universities. To research this I went to a couple universities to look at their code of conduct to see if there was anything in them expressly hateful to LBGTQ people in the language. There isn't anything in there. They have rules and as far as I can see they apply them equally to everyone. They of course are christian places so their rules do reflect the teachings of the Bible. They don't allow public displays of affection. They don't condone sex on campus between unmarried people. They have a conservative dress code. It's things like that you'd expect to find. Where you may run into some things are of course the dress code, bathroom use, and sports participation. As far as the dress code I posted a Bible verse about it earlier so I'm not going to revisit it. I will spend a little bit of time on the bathroom issue. This is something that has been an ongoing debate for awhile. I remember the first I heard of it was during the Obama administration. Certain states were allowing people to use the bathroom of their chosen gender. The issue here is that public bathrooms have nothing to do with gender. They are designed to fit the physically attributes of the biological sex. This is why women's bathrooms don't have urinals. Sure women could use a urinal. They'd need good balance and be able to post a foot up on the wall and lean back a little bit while standing on one leg but they could do it. The point is it's absurd and that would look stupid. During the Trump campaign in his business properties he allowed people to use the bathroom of their chosen gender. However, he was against a federal law mandating it, instead believing the states should decide it. I agree with this and I'll explain why. We live in a multicultural country which is both good and bad. When I say multicultural don't confuse it with multiethnic. Those are completely different things. Multiethnic is a great thing. Anyways, I'm just saying that the way people view the world in California could be drastically different from the way it's viewed in the southeast. When you push people they are going to push back. The big issue before with public bathrooms as that the laws mandating them were poorly written. They were written in such a way that they could be exploited by bad people. This wasn't necessarily saying that transgender people are child molesters but instead was about how child molesters could exploit poorly written laws to get access to children. Of course it was framed that anyone that believed this was a transphobe but there wasn't much truth to that. Sure, there will always be morons that will make claims like that but those people are ignorant and no one listens to them anyway. It wasn't so much that these things were widely happening, though their were instances of it in places, it was more about the potential for it. I mean 9 out of 10 cases of child molestation that happen are by someone known to the child. Many times it's a family member. In the self defense world barring a robbery or something to that affect stranger danger isn't as common as people think.
You are looking at a lot of bad press on this thing. Take the case of Michelle Martinez. This is a transgender woman who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 10 year old girl in a bathroom. Now this was not in a public bathroom it was at a home and Martinez was known to that family but these things happen. The research I found was posting in 2017 I don't actually know when the incident happened. I'm assuming it was within a year before that.
Just last year(2020) you had a transgender woman who went the name of Dakota, real name Jakob Nieves convicted of producing child pornography. She was really active on twitter and other platforms demanding access to women's bathrooms and locker rooms. She was arrested in Massachusetts for sexually abusing 2 girls under the age of 4. She'd even posted pictures of it on some app(note: My research told the actual name of the app but I refuse to say it because I don't want it to get any attention. You never know who reads this stuff).
You also have the case of Chad Sevearance who was very vocal in Charlotte, NC over a bill to ban transgender people using the bathroom of their chosen gender. The problem is that he's a convicted sex offender. In 1998 this guy was a youth minister and would lure boys to his apartment and show them porn then try to talk them into sex and sometimes outright sexually assaulting them.
Earlier this month(March 2020) a child court judge named Brett Blomme was arrested on child pornography charges dating back to 2017. Why is this relevant here? Well because he used to be the head of a group promoting "Drag Queen Story Hour" in local libraries in the Milwaukee area. Once again sending child porn over some damn app.
Now you may read those examples and think that, "Hey, none of those happened in public bathrooms." You'd be right to think it, but here is the issue. You keep having stories like this pop up involving either a transgender person or someone connected to an LBGTQ movement somehow. Then you push the bathroom thing for these people? What you have is a public relations problem. Do I think transgender people pose a threat to children? No, there is no part of me that believes transgender people pose any more of a threat to children than anybody else. There aren't even that many transgender people in the country. I think the number is something like 0.03%, which is less than 1 person per every 2000 people.
So people may ask what is the big deal? Why do you have to be able to use a bathroom that is for the opposite biological sex of your own? The answer is simply validation like most things. Someone believes something about themselves. They get angry when other people don't share their beliefs and want to punish them for it because it makes them feel better. The problem is that in 4 years there could be a change in government that isn't favorable to you and you'll end up taking a lot of steps back and losing some steps. This is something I alluded to it earlier about society not being ready for it. There are some things you can do to move it along at a faster rate.
Most people do not know a transgender person. Many have never met a transgender person. Some have never even seen a transgender person in real life. They have jobs and busy lives. They have a lot on their plate. They don't have time like some people to sit around and do research on things. It's just not something that is relevant to their lives. All they know is what they see on the news or what someone tells them. Now me personally I know some transgender people. I used to work security at a sci fi convention and a good number of the attendees were transgender as well as some of the other staff. The attendees were really nice people I didn't have any issues at all. One night after work I went out to dinner with some of the staff. Some of them happened to be transgender. I found them to be fun and witty and generally enjoyed being around them. Most people in the country won't have the opportunity for the same interactions.
Mostly due to the fact that there just aren't that many transgender people I don't think enough has been done to educate the public at large. There's been plenty of lobbying in Washington but that isn't really what needs to be done right now. When the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 it didn't end racism, it just forced racists to hide it better. The Equality Act won't be any different before it eventually gets gutted anyway. Gay people have done a much better job at public relations than transgender people. I think the reason for this comes down to identity. You see all most people know about transgender people is that they are transgender. With Gay people however they are doctors, lawyers, entertainers, etc. Let's take the entertainment industry for example. Look how many actors and actresses people allowed into their homes through movies and television before they knew they were gay. By this time in most cases they already felt comfortable with the person and liked them so their sexual orientation didn't really matter. A rapport had been established and that is what transgender people don't have right now. Gaining something by political means has a ceiling it will only get you so far. Forget Washington, you need to get to the people in the Midwest and southeast. If you have the facts on your side then educate without being condescending and without villainizing anyone. If you can do a better job of educating the public and you do it the right way then you will go much farther. On top of that you need to stop taking advice from misanthropic people. There's still work that needs to be done and that's why I fall on the side of not right now.
That's all for now but next week we'll talk about transgender people in sports. We'll also talk about the public accommodations clause then we'll wrap up Politics & Pawns and move on to something else.