Actually this issue lost by a landslide in the city of Houston. If you look at a map, the only area of town that supported it was the montrose / midtown area, which is not surprising.
What is the national view? Honest question, what do you think the level of support will be in 3 years? What about in 5 years?
Forget 3/5 years. http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/pat-mccrory/ Thank Jeebus the GOP is in the mood to gift purple states away.
"Voters think the bill is having a bad effect on both the state's economy and its overall reputation." It's not that they agree as much as they are bowing to pressure? Whether or not people believe in the issue is irrelevent. If you have the power to affect them economically they will do what you say. PERIOD! That is is the primary moral code of America . . . If you want to change something in America. .. . go after the money. Isht changes quickly when the money is threatened Rocket River
Well said. Reminds me of the Rove move to start putting anti gay marriage amendments on the ballot in states before the 2004 Presidential election.
I generally find that having a moral code axed around selfishness and money is at least better than mumbo jumbo.
Bruce Springsteen cancelled a concert in Greensboro just 2-3 days before it was scheduled to occur over the passage of this legislation. There have been a few others such as that and, of course, some that kept their date.
My goodness, right wingers can't tell the difference between actual discrimination and political correctness. This is proof that they really are trying to justify their desire to discriminate as some college campus liberal phenomenon. Transgender people have been using their bathroom choice and the whole movement was to secure this so they wouldn't be prosecuted. There wasn't any problem before so the right's boogeyman is a puzzling at best. As typical - they want to pass laws to fix problems that don't exist. Same as voter id laws. This desire of the right to expand gov't into people's lives with all these laws needs to stop. No more regulating of minimum wages, or the court systems, or voter id laws, or who can be defined as a woman, or what the definition of marriage is, or if a mother must have a baby. Sick of the right and their big brother gov't mentality.
It's kinda funny to imagine the texxx persona having children. Do you have daughters? Probably, you shouldn't answer that because someone will use it against you later one way or the the other. I have 3 daughters. I do worry for their personal safety and about the depravity of men (with which I have a passing familiarity). But, I don't worry about the boogeyman of this bathroom law. I don't think this is a losing issue for them at all. They will eventually lose, of course, on the issue of bathroom access on civil rights grounds. But, in the meantime, they can get a lot of ignorant public support at the state-level to pass laws in conservative states to disempower municipalities and concentrate power at the state level. The goal here is not bathroom purity; the goal is block liberal city leadership from regulating businesses. By pairing the real goal with a populist position on bathrooms, they can get more support than they could be being honest about their ambitions. It's also not too much of an accident that this is happening in an election year where the base can be motivated to turn out and vote for Republicans to block the Democrats' liberal agenda to turn us all gay and/or transgender.
Explain to me how this is a civil rights issue? TG's are not being discriminated because of their gender issue. The discrimination is based on a vagina/penis. This is very similar to the gay marriage/civil union issue in that its not the rights in itself that is the issue, but the demand to be accepted. If the PC Bro's truly cared for this issue, they would be fighting for unisex bathrooms, not an exception. As usual, everyone wants to discuss the red herrings. There is a difference between a persons sex and a persons gender identity. The question is, are bathroom assignments based on sex or gender identity? And if the PC Bro's win out and state its based on gender identity, why bother with this idiotic legislation if one can not prove their gender. As anyone can claim any gender, we are essentially making all restrooms unisex. So why bother with all of this dramatic nonsense and fight for unisex facilities?
I place the safety of women and children, which comprise over half of the country's population, over that of a minuscule population of transgenders. Common sense. Safety of the masses comes first.
Woman mistaken for transgender harassed in Walmart bathroom http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Woman-mistaken-for-transgender-harassed-in-7471666.php It begins. I'm more scared of these religious nuts mistaking a woman as a man and getting confrontational than anything else. These nuts tend to carry guns as well so the situation can escalate quickly.
Unisex sounds good. To answer your question. To the individual, it's always based on identity. Most folks identify with their sex, but not all. Some very unfortunately folks might lose a penis due to an accident, sickness or worse, wouldn't suddenly change identity because the penis is gone. There are a few that are with both sexes and so whatever they identify. To the outsider, it's usually based on outside look. How often they actually look under the hood to determine actual sex, and even if they did, they could still be wrong.
can you show any actual incidents ever where a transgender person has used their outward appearance to enter a restroom and assault a woman? And if you were at all concerned with the safety of the masses you would be for saner gun safety laws like mandatory background checks. This is political hyperbole for distraction and nothing more. There are 1000 other more pressing issues that republicans just ignore,
There's already pages and pages of arguments on the civil rights issue with the bathroom laws, so it feels redundant to argue it again. In broad strokes, my argument would go: 1. Bathroom access is a public accommodation, and therefore a civil rights issue. 2. To be given equal access, one's access must be real, and not just access in theory. If the nature of the access is such that it is so distressing, shaming, or dangerous that a reasonable person wouldn't use it, then the access isn't real. 3. Mandating that a transgender person go into the bathroom of the gender opposite to their current identification is highly distressing and shaming and therefore not real access. Your distinction between discrimination based on gender vs sex seems problematic to me because they are so intertwined as phenomena. You can't make a sex distinction without also stomping all over gender's domain as well. Anyway, my point was not aimed at what was right (though I think my view is what's right) but a prediction on what will happen. I think your reference to the gay marriage issue is an apt one, and one that informs my prediction. The USSC will eventually find for transgender rights in the same way they found for gay rights. Right or wrong, I expect it to happen. I'm fine for unisex bathrooms. I think the retrofits implied are prohibitively expensive (though you could prioritize, say, shower retrofits over other kinds), but I'd be perfectly happy. In fact, even before considering any trans, criminals, pervs and whatever other complicating factor you can throw in, I don't particularly like bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, or other facilities that have limited personal privacy. My problem with the unisex bathroom solution is not the solution itself but the motivation of the people who promote it, which seems to me to be to find a way to accommodate the complaints of the trans without having to directly interface with them -- another form of separate but equal. Even so, I don't think it's totally necessary to force people to interface with trans if they don't want to. If the solution everyone can agree on is unisex bathrooms for all, so be it. You could argue, even, according to my logic above that sharing a bathroom with a trans is highly distressing to the point that bathroom access isn't real for the cisgender. To the extent that's true, unisex bathrooms would be the solution. But, I don't think it is true for the following reasons: (a) While a trans must share a public facility with a cis nearly 100% of the time, a cis will share a public facility with a trans a fraction of a percentage point of the time. It is so rare that it is of no material impact if an uncomfortable cis ends up leaving the bathroom and finding another or holding it for 10 minutes before going back in. The trans, however, cannot just wait nor find a cis-free bathroom. They must coexist with cis in public bathrooms. (b) If trans use the bathroom of their own choice, then most of the very rare instances in which cis do share a bathroom with them, they won't even know. (c) There is no public shaming involved at all for a cis to pick the bathroom that identifies both their gender and sex. But, there is public shaming for a trans to be forced to walk into the bathroom that betrays their sex (or original sex) when they want to communicate only their gender. (d) We (cis) have already been sharing facilities with trans (who have been self-identifying for bathroom choice) for awhile and real access to bathrooms hasn't been an issue. (-->) However, it is possible that SJW reactionaries will so often go into women's restrooms to prove a political point that women will genuinely not feel safe in public facilities and therefore be denied genuine access. In ordinary times, this isn't an issue and I hope and expect it to pass away.
Are ladies who are tall or tomboyish now going to have to do a 'penis check' whenever they need to use the women's restroom now? I want someone who supports this bill to answer this question and also answer how tall tomboyish looking women will not be negatively affected by this bill. In reality(not the conservative's make believe world) occurrences of actual women who look masculine being harassed will far outnumber the rare restroom pervert.
Someone who supports these types of bills, do we need to mandate long hair for women and short hair for men along with enforced by pants checks. So how is this law going to be enforced in a practical manner without resorting to ridiculous asinine means that explicitly violate civil rights? Again, someone who supports this law, answer these questions.
Why am I not surprised it was a Walmart? The stupid, ironic thing about the North Carolina law is that it'd make these confrontations more common there. Someone born a woman who transitions to be a man, looks like a man, and is equipped like a man (and perhaps even is sexually attracted to women) would nevertheless be directed to the ladies' room by dint of his birth certificate. Every time he obeys the law, some lady will tell him he's disgusting and shouldn't be there.
