I don’t know what the Right’s obsession is with protecting the sanctity of our public bathrooms, but they have recently been making it a centerpiece of their local efforts to fight proposed anti-discrimination ordinances.
They did it Colorado and now they are doing it in Montana to justify their bigotry:
An organization called NotMyBathroom.com announced this week its opposition to a city ordinance that would protect people from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity …So far, the only other group willing to identify itself as affiliated with NotMyBathroom.com is Concerned Women For America, said [Dallas] Erickson. CWA representatives already have come out against the proposed ordinance.
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The group fears the law would create “a government assigned sex,” cost businesses money “to provide toilet facilities,” and possibly “force ministers to perform homosexual marriages.”
But NotMyBathroom.com chairman Tei Nash said the chief concern is the safety of women and children in public restrooms. He said the ordinance would give a man who “is female affirmed” the freedom to use women’s restrooms.
“When he walks into the bathroom, you can’t stop them,” Nash said. “Is that going to surprise you and the kids? It probably is. Most women will be frightened to no end. Kids, too. They won’t understand.”
The argument seems to rest in part on the notion some predatory men are waiting for such an ordinance so they can attack women in bathrooms. Nash, though, said culprits will use the law as a cover and business owners won’t be able to stop them.
“I don’t mind saying this. It’s not so much trans people. It’s sexual offenders,” Nash said. “This has already happened in Portland, and it’s happened in Florida.”
Laws protect people against sexual crimes, but Erickson also said he fears for people in the Bitterroot who come to Missoula and have to use bathrooms. Society should maintain the standard that people are born a man or a woman, he said.
“If you’ve got a peeping Tom that likes to see how the other side lives, all they have to do is say they’re a woman today,” Erickson said.
If there was ever a moment when the anti-gay Right jumped the shark, I’d have to say that NotMyBathroom.com just might be it.
