Lance Berkman campaigns against allowing boys into girls' bathrooms

Did the Mayor remove the "bathroom" phrase or propose to remove it earlier this year? I think the current draft doesn't have it and the language is pretty generic now. And yet still... oppose.

 

can't believe this kind of moral decision has to go thru politics.

 

I wasn't aware of it being removed.

 

Yea, it was removed. The version that pass in May of last year doesn't have the phrase. Just generic language now.

 

Apparently, it was removed in May 2014: http://www.chron.com/news/politics/houston/article/Mayor-drops-bathroom-provision-from-5474575.php

Supposedly, the protection for the transgendered is unaffected because the definition of gender identity hasn't been changed, and the implication of the protections awarded would still apply to the public accommodation of bathrooms. It's not surprising that dropping that clause didn't fix anything. Opponents don't like the clause that defines gender identity, which says:

"Gender identity means an individual's innate identification, appearance, expression, or behavior as either male or female, although same may not correspond to the individual's body or gender as assigned at birth."

Opposition doesn't care primarily about bathrooms, but about moving the goalposts on gender. It's the culture wars writ small. This is a lot like the gay marriage thing, where conservatives' understanding of what marriage is conflicts with the legal definition. Likewise, their understanding of what gender is conflicts with this definition. Bobby says it right out: that somebody being confused about their gender or mutilating their bodies doesn't change what gender they really are. They insist everyone understand gender the same way they do and won't tolerate any individual liberty in this arena. And if they have to sit idly by and watch someone who looks like a man go into a woman's restroom then they feel like they are complicit in affirming this person's capricious choice of gender in contradiction to their own belief that all men are born with penises and all women are born with vaginas (and we'll conveniently ignore those born hermaphrodite and other gray areas).

As a public service, here is HERO: https://www.houstontx.gov/equal_rights_ordinance.pdf. You'll notice it was pdf.ed as a picture instead of text, so you can't search for keywords or anything. Is it any surprise the HERO campaign is getting slaughtered when they can't even produce a decent .pdf?

 

Nice summary of the debate in a nutshell, jv.

 

Wow.

You know a lot of women in fact have a Y chromosome.
You know there is such thing as hermaphroditism? Things aren't all so black & white, even anatomically.

 

HERO is as good as in guys!

McNair knows nothing about winning

 

Nailed it!

 

Guaranteed to pass now.

 

Ole Uncle Bob always ahead of the curve!

 

Powerful family story from a few years ago.

Led by the child who simply knew

 

So lemme get this straight: everybody is upset protesting against a clause in a piece of legislation which was removed and is about to pass yet still does not contain the clause that they are upset about?

 

Not really. People are upset about the bill defining gender as a choice. That's still in there.

I've had campaigners come by my house twice about just supporting this Prop, when I haven't had anyone for any candidate or any other Prop. Last guy told me passage was ahead in polling by 6 points. Maybe I didn't give these guys enough credit.

 

The ignorance, with all due respect, you are displaying by describing transgender individuals as "mentally ill" and "delusional." They are different than you. Why do you find that so frightening?

 

I got an idea, why not take away the little picture of a person in a dress signifying a "womens" room and the little person in pants signifying the "mens" room and replace them with pictures of a penis and a vagina?

That way it isn't about what you identify as it's about what kind of plumbing you have.

 

Lol..