BATHROOMS!!!!!!

Why is it that the right wing conservatives have such an excessive fixation on bathrooms? They're so fixated on bathrooms and who goes in them that it seems to me that it is bordering on paranoid. I think that the APA should add a disorder to the DSM V called obsessive bathroom disorder.

What's this obsession with transgender people and bathrooms?
Baltimore Sun
By Dan Rodricks
February 12, 2012

It sounds good, like something all of us would want to join: Maryland Citizens for a Responsible Government. But my perusal of the organization's website reveals little more than obsessive concern with transgender people being in society — and having to use, as all of us must at times, public restrooms. The organization suggests that transgender people are just a bunch of perverted, cross-dressing men who want access to women's bathrooms and locker rooms.

Maryland Citizens for a Responsible Government has been fighting state and local efforts to outlaw specific discrimination against the transgendered. Its latest fight is with the Baltimore County Council, which appears to be poised to pass an anti-discrimination ordinance. The organization calls Councilman Tom Quirk's bill "Baltimore County's Dangerous Peeping Tom Law." A handout says the new ordinance will "legally protect cross-dressers and transvestite behavior [and] allow cross-dressing men to enter women's bathrooms and dressing rooms even if they are sexually attracted to women."

Looking at it from a historical perspective, there has never been a case where someone masquerading as a trans-person or a trans-person was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in a bathroom. The first gender inclusive non-discrimination law was passed in Minneapolis, MN in 1975, so these laws are not new. They have been on the books for a very long time, so all the fear that these so called citizens groups are creating is based lies. CBS News reported that

“I do not want my grandkids going into the bathroom where there is a man dressed as a woman going into the bathroom,” said Jackie Auburn.

“We’d be forced to allow men to use ladies’ restrooms, women’s locker rooms, women’s gym dressing rooms at department stores, pools, beaches, women’s clubs and so forth,” said Betty Labrun.

But those wanting the protection the bill affords are quick to rebut that.

“This bill is not a bathroom bill,” said Tom Quirk.

“We live, work and play among you and pay our taxes as well as go into fast food bathrooms and have done so for many decades with no untoward consequences toward others,” said Dana Beyer.
[…]
But many of those against spoke of religious objections.

“Woe to those who call good evil and evil good,” said Labrun.

It is only through the  fear of the lies that they have feed about people who are different from themselves that people oppose this law. It is the adults who are opposed to treating everyone the same.

In Maine, a school system had no problem with a transgender student, her transition was going smoothly until a grandparent stepped in to cause trouble.

Fighting for Transgender Student Rights in Maine
GLAD
February 3, 2012

From her earliest years in her Orono, Maine, elementary school, classmates and teachers treated our client Susan* just like every other girl, even though she originally enrolled with her male birth name. Everyone involved agreed that living consistently with her female gender identity was crucial to Susan’s psychological health and educational success.

But in fifth grade, at the instigation of his grandfather, a male classmate followed Susan into the girls’ restroom and called her a “fag.” No other student had ever been bothered by Susan using the girls’ room. But instead of disciplining the boy, the school denied Susan use of the girls’ room and forced her to use a separate staff bathroom.

This segregation isolated Susan from her peers and sent a harmful message from the school that she wasn’t really a girl. Susan told us it made her feel like a “freak.”

It is the adults who come in and stir up trouble. I am reminded of the song from the play “South Pacific” called "You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught"

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

That grandfather sure taught his grandson how to all the people your relatives hate. He should be really proud of himself.