Same Lies, Different Town

A month ago, I wrote about the passage of the Kalamazoo MI anti-discrimination ordinance, well a handful of vocal bigots got the City Council to repeal the law by spreading lies. They used fear and innuendos to scare the people, they said no one will be safe in the public bathrooms but the truth is there has NOT been any attacks by trans-people in bathrooms.

They are using the same tactic in Gainesville Florida, they put a vile ad on television claiming that no one is safe in bathroom. The television ad has a grubby man follow a young girl into the women’s bathroom.

Cain Davis, chairman of Citizens for Good Public Policy, said the issue is about regulating a "government gone wild" and ensuring public safety, charging that sexual predators could now simply enter a women's restroom claiming to be a transgender individual.

"We know when men go into women's restrooms, bad things can happen," Davis said.

This is just fear mongering, the truth is…

Since the ordinance took effect [one yeaar ago], police have reported no problems in public restrooms stemming from the law.

I am not a big fan of Al Sharpton but read what he had to say at the Human Rights Ecumenical Service held at Atlanta's Tabernacle Baptist Church last Sunday about this crusade against anything LGBT…

"There is something immoral and sick about using all of that power to not end brutality and poverty, but to break into people's bedrooms and claim that God sent you," Sharpton told a full house on Sunday.

"It amazes me," he said, "when I looked at California and saw churches that had nothing to say about police brutality, nothing to say when a young black boy was shot while he was wearing police handcuffs, nothing to say when they overturned affirmative action, nothing to say when people were being [relegated] into poverty, yet they were organizing and mobilizing to stop consenting adults from choosing their life partners."

"I am tired," he went on, "of seeing ministers who will preach homophobia by day, and then after they're preaching, when the lights are off they go cruising for trade...We know you're not preaching the Bible, because if you were preaching the Bible we would have heard from you. We would have heard from you when people were starving in California--when they deregulated the economy and crashed Wall Street you had nothing to say. When [accused Ponzi scammer] Madoff made off with the money, you had nothing to say. When Bush took us to war chasing weapons of mass destruction that weren't there you had nothing to say.

… "This is an issue of human rights," he said. "And I think it is dangerous to give states the right to deal with human rights questions. That's how we ended up with slavery and segregation going forward a long time...Whatever my personal feelings may be about gay and lesbian marriages, unless you are prepared to say gays and lesbians are not human beings, they should have the same constitutional right of any other human being."