Two Republican state legislators are planning to introduce a bill instructing local public schools about how to govern the use of their bathrooms. I am not making this up.
The legislators want to require schools to make sure that transgender kids use the facility that comports with their anatomical gender as opposed to the gender with which they identify.
There’s no question that the issue of transgender rights has taken society by storm and in a hurry, and it will take some time to sort out how to deal with all the issues that come up. But is this really a necessary topic for state legislation? I especially ask that question in light of the fact that it is being proposed by Republican legislators who are supposed to belong to the party of local control and staying out of people’s personal business.
Maybe it would be better for our state government to just send the simple message that these questions should be handled by local school districts and by the teachers and administrators on the front lines, in a manner that is as compassionate and as sensitive as possible, and see how that works. If discrimination is the result, well, then we might need legislation to protect the rights of transgender kids — exactly the opposite of what the legislators are proposing — but let’s see how things play out in the real world first. I trust the adults running the schools in their local communities more than I do legislators in Madison right now.
But this, of course, has nothing to do with legislators trying to solve a real problem anyway. It’s just another salvo in the culture wars. We’ve got a white, Christian, straight majority that looks around and sees the world becoming more black, brown and Asian, more secular and more Islamic, and more accepting of gay and transgender communities. For whatever reason, the current majority sees these things as a grave threat that must be resisted.
What I have a hard time understanding is why it seems so cataclysmic to them. Nobody is talking or even thinking about impinging on the rights of Christians to practice their religions or for white folks to preserve and celebrate their European cultural heritages or for heterosexuals to live and love as such. As a straight guy I could never understand the argument that gay marriages would somehow threaten my own. And it seems to me that if Christians should ever become a minority in this country, then the best way for them to put their minds at ease would be to treat those who practice other religions or who practice no religion just as they would want to be treated if they were in the minority. On the other hand, setting a tone of intolerance now doesn’t bode well for those who might find themselves in the minority going forward.
So, people have every right to hunker down if they want and retreat from a world that is changing in ways that make them uncomfortable. As a wise man once said, ‘You can just go and live in a trailer down by the river!’ But for those of us who would like to remain engaged in the world, we have to accept the changes that are happening.
I will live the rest of my life as a straight, white man and — who knows? — as I get older maybe someday I’ll even rediscover my Catholicism. There are two things I can’t change: the fundamentals of who I am and the broad demographic changes that are already well under way. To cling to a past where my people (straight, white guys) ran everything is to guarantee getting run over by the future.
The world is heading in the direction of more acceptance of beliefs and ways of living that might be described as “nontraditional” — although I know a lot of people who are extremely traditional in their views while being gay or atheist or transgender at the same time.
So, the school bathroom bill isn’t just silly; it’s a reflection of a broader, irrational fear (it’s not too much to think of it as paranoia) from a group that feels that it is losing its grip on America. They are, but it’s not the end of the world. It is the world.
