Have you heard about that thing in Gainesville, Florida?

C’mon in, stay awhile! There’s fresh coffee in the machine over there and hot water for tea, if you like. There may even be a cookie or two left in the jar, help yourself! Have you heard about that thing in Gainesville, Florida? You know, the petition drive to repeal a nondiscrimination law? They ran an ad on TV that showed a kinda scruffy looking man going into a public ladies room after a cute little blond white girl had gone in. As if he was gonna go in and hurt that poor little thing. It was really scary, that ad, and I got all upset until the thought stuck me: How does this have anything to do with protecting marginalized people from discrimination? Here, you can watch it for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10vo0jaGjsc

Seems to me that any position that has to stoop to that level of dishonesty is morally bankrupt right from the start. Gay and trans people are no more likely to molest kids than any other person. The so called “scientific” studies that reportedly proved that they did have bee thoroughly discredited, You can see that here, http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html Another thing that puts the lie to that sort of propaganda is that it simply doesn’t happen! First of all, there’s no law that would keep a criminal out of a public opposite sex restroom if they wanted to go in there, dressed in opposite sex clothes or not. Criminals, by definition, break laws. Yet these ads never give any examples of when and where it happened before! The reason for that is they can’t. There are anti-discrimination laws that protect GLBT people in may places around the country. I doubt I’d be far off in saying that the “bathroom issue” was raised every time these laws were considered. And since these laws have passed, there have been no instances of a trans person molesting someone in a public bathroom! You can be sure if there were, we’d be hearing about it over and over again from the people who want to keep their prejudicial discrimination privileges intact. I guess those people figure the ads are so emotionally intense that people won’t think much past their false assumptions. I sure hope me and mine are smarter than that.

The most ironic thing about ads and propaganda like that is that female to male people, trans men, would be forced to use public ladies rooms if the opponents of this law had their way. (How to enforce a law like that is another whole topic. Can you imagine??) A person who looked just like the man in that ad could be forced to use a ladies room because he was born with a vagina! Ridiculous, isn’t it? And, I have to wonder, if a trans man were forced by some kind of law like that to go into a ladies room, I’ll bet he’d be careful and kinda sneaky looking just before he went in too because he’d be the target of a lot of trouble, maybe even more than a trans woman in a public men’s room. The net result is that trans people would be kept from using any bathroom, I guess. It’s happened just last week, in Texas http://transpolitical.blogspot.com/2009/01/civil-rights-dont-exist-for-usas.html

Seems some people will say or do anything in order to push other people around, or get their way. Tsk! Sigh.