Baker and Walsh: Over the Top on Transgender ‘Civil Rights’

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2017/02/27/baker-and-walsh-over-the-top-on-transgender-civil-rights/

What nonsense last week from Governor Charlie Baker and Mayor Marty Walsh about transgender “bathroom civil rights”! Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say that men and women born with a defined biological sex have a “civil right” to go into the bathroom of the opposite sex because they “identify” or “present” that way?  What about the civil rights of those who would be humiliated or even molested when a member of the opposite sex invades their bathroom or shower?

When did this become a “civil right”? Was it on May 13, 2016, when former president Barack Obama’s Department of Justice and Department of Education released their infamous guidelines on transgender bathrooms nationwide, threatening the withdrawal of federal funds from schools that don’t toe the line?

Thankfully, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas granted a preliminary injunction last August against these federal guidelines, which had been contested by 13 states that maintained that Title IX was being improperly used to force this controversial policy into schools nationwide.

Now, President Donald Trump’s administration has done what is apparently unthinkable to progressives by deciding that the federal government has no business getting into this issue and that it can be decided more appropriately community by community and state by state.

Governor Baker, despite having pledged to veto any bathroom bill, reneged on this commitment, and signed the infamous Massachusetts “gender identity” bill last July. Now, going from bad to worse last Thursday, Governor Baker stated,  “I’m disappointed with the decision that the [Trump] administration made to roll that back. Thankfully, here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we’ve had in place standing administrative guidance on this issue for school districts in Massachusetts for the better part of four or five years, and we signed, as you know, legislation last year protecting transgendered individuals.”

In other words, although the Trump administration’s decision to send this issue back to the states does not change a single thing in Massachusetts, Governor Baker felt it necessary to poke his finger in the eye of President Trump to grandstand before Massachusetts progressives.

Mayor Walsh went Baker one worse. He denounced President Trump’s decision this week to strip federal protection guidelines for transgender students in schools across the country as “reckless” (although a federal judge had countermanded Obama’s order).  Knowing full well that Trump’s order changed nothing in Massachusetts, he went on to state that the Trump administration’s “revoking the clarified protections for transgender students sends a message that they are not worthy of this promise.” Please.

Thankfully, the citizens of the Commonwealth will have an opportunity to vote in 2018 for the repeal of the law allowing transgender bathrooms in Massachusetts. The progressive movement sees sex as a social construct. This strange worldview contradicts one of the most basic aspects of human nature – our God-given sexuality. Our culture’s embrace of the transgender worldview will only encourage teenagers and other young people to indulge their sexual fantasies and seek sexual self-actualization – to their great detriment and that of our society. In fact, studies suggest that “only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into… adulthood.”

A tiny fraction of people in our society are sincerely confused about their sexuality. They should be treated with compassion. But their affliction — and that’s what it is — should not be encouraged in others, and it shouldn’t be allowed to put vulnerable people who identify with their biological sex (i.e.:  the overwhelming majority of us) in danger of physical or emotional harm in bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers.

Getting the federal government out of this matter, as President Trump has done, is the first step in solving it. Policies on how to deal with security and access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers must to be decided at local levels — town by town, community by community, and state by state — so that people of common sense can push back against the liberal elites.