Guy W. Farmer: A push for unisex bathrooms

Eleven states sued the Obama administration on Wednesday for ordering the nation’s public schools to permit transgender students to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity. In other words, little boys who think they’re little girls can shower with the girls. What fun!

But seriously, 11 states led by Texas accuse President Obama and his Education Department of rewriting laws by “executive fiat” and flouting the Constitution by taking actions that should be left to the states and local school districts. “Defendants (the federal government) have conspired to turn workplace and educational settings across the country into a massive social experiment,” the states’ lawsuit asserts. Just one question: Why aren’t Nevada and its ultra-conservative attorney general, Adam Laxalt, parties to this common sense lawsuit?

You might have thought President Obama’s top priority was to keep us safe by defeating ISIS and international terrorism. But think again because it appears his top priority is to appease the small LGBTQ community — and garner their votes — by mandating transgender bathroom access in every public school in America. What a brilliant move during a presidential election year. Not!

“The Hill,” an inside-Washington publication put it this way: “President Obama is opening a new front in the culture wars over gay and transgender rights — just in time for the 2016 elections.” Obama’s Justice Department filed a lawsuit to overturn a North Carolina law directing transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond to the gender identification on their birth certificates but the state counter-sued the Feds, calling Obama’s action a “radical reinterpretation” of the 1964 Civil Rights Law. Ten other states filed a similar lawsuit last Wednesday, and Nevada should be among them.

Under existing North Carolina law, former Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner, who transformed himself into Caitlyn Jenner last year, would have to use the men’s room, thereby making him/her “uncomfortable.” Political firestorms quickly erupted on the left and right. Progressives congratulated the president for defending transgender rights while conservatives branded Obama’s action as yet another unconstitutional executive overreach.

“LGBT (she forgot the “Q” for queer) people should be protected from discrimination under the law,” said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who just happens to be running for president. However, Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton fired back for the conservatives: “If President Obama thinks he can bully Texas schools into allowing men to have open access to girls’ bathrooms, he’d better prepare for yet another legal fight,” Paxton said. I’m with him and a majority of Americans on this one.

If less than five percent of Americans identify themselves as LGBTQ, and those who identify as transgender represent less than one percent of the LGBTQ community, the federal government is intervening in our public schools to “protect” few people at the expense of the vast majority, who want to keep men out of ladies’ bathrooms, or vice versa. I wouldn’t want to be a lady who walks into a men’s bathroom because it’s downright ugly in there.

The LGBTQ community is pushing the bathroom issue hard, threatening school districts that fail or refuse to accommodate an infinitesimal percentage of the school age population. Seriously, are there that many children who don’t know whether they’re little boys or little girls? We know some little boys would like to shower with the girls, but that’s a different issue.

I hope our next president is going to abandon the push for unisex bathrooms, which is a repulsive idea. So please use the bathroom corresponding to the gender on your birth certificate. Or is that too much to ask in a politically correct world?

Guy W. Farmer wants the government to stay out of our bathrooms.