By Rick Flanders
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
(Genesis 1:27)
As a teenager, I lived in the state of North Carolina, and came to love the place. Nice people live there, and a part of my heart abides there, too. But we all know about the trouble they are having this year in the Tar Heel State. The fuss is over their new “bathroom law.” Now the situation has been amusing to some, but the truth is that we all need to take the controversy seriously. Dark clouds can be seen at the horizon as the “transgender rights” storm heads our way.
WHAT DOES THE LAW SAY?
It all started when the city of Charlotte passed an ordinance requiring that businesses allow people claiming to be “transgender” to use whatever public restroom they choose, regardless of the designation by sex. It actually said that no business can discriminate against homosexual and “transgender” customers, in the way that they are forbidden to discriminate against people based on their race, religion, age or biological sex. It applied to all public accommodations, including restaurants, bars, stores, and even taxicabs, in a great variety of ways. The most controversial provision allows “transgender” people to use either men’s or women’s bathrooms, depending on the gender with which they identify.
Outraged by the implications of such an ordinance, the people of North Carolina demanded that the state government do something. As a result of the popular demand, the legislature wrote and passed a law to undo the Charlotte ordinance, and the governor signed it. That law (titled the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act) states that bathrooms and dressing rooms anywhere in North Carolina must be restricted to use by people of one of the biological sexes. “Biological sex” is defined in the law to be “the physical condition of being male or female, which is stated on a person's birth certificate.” It applies to a “multiple occupancy bathroom or changing facility,” which is defined in the law as “a facility designed or designated to be used by more than one person at a time that “may be in various states of undress in the presence of other persons.” It goes on to state that “a multiple occupancy bathroom or changing facility may include, but is not limited to, a school restroom, locker room, changing room, or shower room.” “Local boards of education shall require every multiple occupancy bathroom or changing facility that is designated for student use to be designated for and used only by students based on their biological sex.” The real purpose of the North Carolina bathroom law was to undo the Charlotte bathroom non-discrimination ordinance, and that passage of the state law was at first very popular.
WHAT HAVE BEEN THE CONSEQUENCES?
However, soon after the law was passed, protests against it were raised across the nation. The National Basketball Association said that they would move the upcoming All-Star Game out of North Carolina. Businesses registered public protests against the bathroom law, and threatened to boycott the state in different ways. Major cities, such as New York, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, and states such as New York, Vermont, Washington, and Connecticut, cancelled official trips to the state. Influential political and entertainment figures called for across-the-board withdrawal from business with or travel to North Carolina, and the boycott has hurt the economy of the state. “Outrage” over the supposedly harsh discrimination imposed by the law on certain people has justified these aggressive and harmful actions, all because the state now insists that men must use the men’s room and that women will use the other one. Politically-correct organizations around the country are determined to punish the state for its bathroom law.
The reaction against the North Carolina “bathroom law” was swift, severe, and nation-wide. The cancelled events in the state, boycotted products of the state, and the action of the President of the United States against the state (he has issued a decree that threatens the cancellation of federal aid to any state or school system that would adopt such a law), are doing them harm today. Should this be?
WHO ARE “TRANS-GENDER” PEOPLE?
Of course the dispute is over what has been called the rights of transgender people. Do you know what it means to be “transgender”?
People have accused North Carolina of passing an anti-LGBT law. However, the bathroom law is not really that. The LGBT rights movement claims to represent groups with four distinct sexual orientations:
1. L stands for Lesbian, a term commonly applied to those whose activity is referred to in the Bible as “vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature” (Romans 1:26).
2. G stands for Gay, which is commonly applied to men who “leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly” (Romans 1:27).
3. B stands for Bisexual, a term for people who practice fornication of some kind with people of either sex.
4. T stands for Transgender, a term for people who claim that inwardly they are really members of the sex that is opposite to the one that is defined by their bodies.
Now the law has no effect on homosexual or bisexual folks. They have no interest in using the other bathroom or dressing room. And it doesn’t really restrict many who say that they are Transgender, I am told, because those who are serious about their orientation have sex-change operations or hormone therapy so that they actually change their bodies. Some of them can actually go to court and have their sex changed on their birth certificates. So the new law would have no effect on their lives.
The small group that is denied access to the bathroom they want to use is made up of people who want to use the other bathroom because they think of themselves as of the opposite sex. They call themselves Transgender, and many of them are also transvestite, “cross-dressers.” To use the normally appropriate bathroom would expose their masquerade. The situation is that some “Transgender” people just have mental and emotional reasons to prefer using the bathroom that corresponds to the sex they want to be.
Of course, there is no way the law can keep any male out of the ladies’ room if he says he is Transgender, if the law gives Transgender people the right to choose their rest room. The law cannot read anybody’s mind, and must function on objective facts. Perverted people, if given the “right” to use bathrooms designated for members of the opposite sex, might well and probably would take advantage of such a “standard” to commit criminal acts. For that matter, men and women expect to use for separate bathrooms and dressing areas because they expect the right to privacy, which the Charlotte ordinance completely ignored.
It is very strange that powerful people are asserting that Transgender people ought to have special rights, such as the right to use the wrong bathroom. There is not objective way to determine a Transgender person. Nothing in their medical condition or physical appearance or genetic make-up identifies people at “Transgender.” Such a person identifies himself as such. He says he is something that all objective evidence says he is not. The obvious truth is that every person is born as male or female, and that nothing can change that condition. We all have either XY or XX markers in every cell of our bodies. Remember that from high school biology class? Our genital organs reveal what we are, although they aren’t the only factor that determines our biological sex. We are male or female according to the objective facts of our genetic make-up. Even “sex-change” surgery doesn’t really change a person’s sex.
People who are deceived into the Transgender way of thinking are in for big trouble. They are denying the self-evident truth. For this reason, and others, 41% of them will attempt suicide. They are delusional, mentally sick, and dangerous. The Transgender “rights” movement wants to tell children that they are expected to choose their own gender at some point. Crazy terminology is being used by supposedly intelligent people to re-educate society about gender. We are told that we have been “assigned” a gender at birth by a diabolical conspiracy of parents and doctors. Mutilating surgery is being “gender re-assignment” surgery. All of this is happening when the plain, objective, undeniable, and scientific fact is that we all have an un-changeable sex at birth. And North Carolina is being punished for recognizing the clear facts.
George Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
The American College of Pediatricians has recently warned that “Transgender” conditioning is child abuse. In a strongly-worded statement they urge educators and law-makers “to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex.” “Facts,” they warn, “not ideology, determine reality.” The doctors go on to assert what ought to be universally-recognized facts.
“The norm for human design is to be conceived male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species.” The ACP identifies the Transgender phenomenon as a mental illness, with a name and initials, Disorders of Sexual Differentiation (DSDs). Those with these conditions need therapy and treatment. “Individuals with DSDs do not constitute a third sex.” Such treatment must begin with establishment in the patient’s mind the truth of reality and the falsehood of his delusion.
Johns Hopkins Hospital some years ago developed “gender reassignment surgery,” and of course advocated the Transgender ideology. But now they refuse to perform the operation and regard them as “discredited.” Dr. Paul McHugh, a leading doctor at the hospital now calls Transgenderism a “mental disorder,” and states that a sex-change operation is “biologically impossible.”
Studies show that the great majority of gender-confused children eventually accept their biological sex after passing through puberty. Transgender interference with their normal development is so harmful that we may regard it as criminal! The pediatricians go so far as to say that “endorsing gender discordance as normal via public education and legal policies will confuse children and parents, leading more children to present to ‘gender clinics’ where they will be given puberty-blocking drugs. This, in turn, virtually ensures that they will ‘choose’ a lifetime of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic cross-sex hormones, and likely consider unnecessary surgical mutilation of their healthy body pars as young adults.”
Walt Heyer is a writer who says that he is formerly transgender. He had the surgery, and then changed his mind. Mr. Heyer testifies to the harm that is done when politically-correct activists take advantage of the confusion in the minds of some young people who struggle with their sexuality. They need help, not recruitment by a radical cause.
Certainly it is not difficult to see that a person confused about what his true sex is must be sick. When a man starts claiming that he is Napoleon or Elvis Presley, do we not recognize that he needs help. There are plenty of people like this today in mental institution. To insist that something is true which is evidently and provably contrary to the facts is the very definition of insanity. And to support the delusion of the mentally ill is to harm them. And one southern state is being punished for refusing to further damage delusional people. Go figure.
WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS?
People whose “transgender” status is fluid and subjective are permitted by policies directed by the LGBT movement and our President to enter restrooms or locker rooms regardless of how it is designated whenever they choose. Although there is nothing objective to make them “Transgender,” such as a sex-change operation, a modified birth certificate, or even their dress, they can stroll right into a bathroom full of people of the opposite biological sex. They have no obligation to prove they have reason to do so. Of course, this means that anybody can use any bathroom. It’s an open door for sexual predators, isn’t it? And loud voices are saying that people have a right to do it, if they simply think they are something called “Transgender.” Every cell in the body says that every person is male or female, no matter what they feel or what they choose. And unless the law reflects the objective facts, all of society is plunged into insanity.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?
Of course, gender and sex are not matters of choice; they are matters of biology. People are made “male and female” literally from head to toe. Naturally, responsible authorities, for the sake of privacy and for the protection of the potential victims of sexual assault, have the duty to restrict the use of bathrooms or changing facilities to members of the same sex. States have the duty at least to protect the freedom of businesses or school administrations to do so. Irrational and subjective definitions of “sex” or “gender” ought not to be allowed to get in the way. For this reason, sensible citizens must push back against the pressure being put on society by certain groups. Otherwise our nation will be transformed into a place where perversion is further normalized and reason is punished. Individual confusion or delusion ought to be addressed by qualified counsellors, but they must not be the basis of law or pretended “rights.” The Transgender madness fundamentally derives from rebellion against God, Who made us all “male and female.” People who are saying, “I am not!” or “I will not be!” what God made them and what they in fact are, are not progressive or scientific; they are rebellious. And the first step to their cure will be repentance. The first step to the cure of our society is a return to God and to good sense.