In addition to supporting unlimited access to guns to appease lunatics in the party base and the gun manufacturers, Republican politicians in general - particularly the five Republican governors (and one gutless Democrat) who have filed briefs in a local case concerning transgender rights - support the Christofascist war against transgender Americans (and by extension, gays in general). They shamelessly seek to allow religious extremists and hate merchants to discriminate against and abuse those born transgender despite all of the modern medical and mental health knowledge about such individuals ultimately solely because the transgender and gays in general challenge the fairy tile beliefs of those who cling to the writings of ignorant Bronze Age herders. As a gay American I take this very personally and the actions of these six governors is personal since the target of their bigotry is a transgender youth that I know personally. Think Progress looks at the ongoing Christofascist war against Gavin Grimm of nearby Gloucester, Virginia. Here are highlights:
Gavin Grimm, a transgender teen in Virginia, is continuing his fight to simply access the boys’ bathroom at Gloucester High School along with his male classmates. After a federal judge ruled in September against providing immediate injunctive relief to allow Grim to continue using the bathroom, the ACLU appealed to the Fourth Circuit. This week, leaders from six states filed an amicus brief arguing that transgender teens like Grimm should not be provided any accommodations based on their gender identity.
The brief, filed by the states of South Carolina, West Virginia, Arizona, and Mississippi along with the governors of Maine and North Carolina, stipulates that transgender people deserve no protections under Title IX’s restrictions on discrimination on the basis of sex.
[T]he states’ biggest objection to accommodating transgender students is “exposure.” Because he’s transmasculine, Grimm’s case does not neatly fit the Mike Huckabee line of thinking that boys will pretend they’re girls to try to ogle girls in the locker room. But the brief assumes boys are just as at risk of having their privacy somehow violated.
Grimm, who has been on hormone therapy that has deepened his voice and given him more masculine features, “disregards the feelings of and invasion of the privacy of the many more boys who would be forced to perform intimate bodily functions in the presence and possibly view of a biological female,” the states write.
Paying particularly disturbing attention to anatomy, the brief asserts several times that boys should have the right to expose “their male reproductive organs to use urinals out of the presence of females.”
In fact, the brief argues that hiding genitals from the other sex is the whole point of sex-segregated facilities, highlighting the existence of urinals as proof. . . . . the states argue between the lines: that transgender teens are “sexual predators” engaging in “voyeurism.”
A significant flaw in these arguments — besides the ongoing demonization of transgender people as predators — is the assumption of uniform heterosexuality. If the goal is to ensure that people have access to bathrooms absent of anyone who might be inclined to ogle them, then all gay, lesbian, and bi people would also have to be prohibited from sex-segregated spaces. And those LGB people would then all have to use single use restrooms, because anyone with a same-sex orientation would have to be banned from using the restroom with someone of the same sex.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed onto the brief on his own after Attorney General Roy Cooper refused to join on behalf of the state. In a statement Tuesday, McCrory insisted “the privacy and well-being of our students is paramount. Our local school districts and parents are best equipped to make decisions based on their own unique student populations.”
These governors will do anything to prostitute themselves to the Christofascists. As for West Virginia governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, shame on you!
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