Pushback On DOJ Agreement

The conservative world is in a tizzy over the Department of Justice and the Arcadia, CA School District agreement. Our favorite “fair and balanced” news media outlet Fox News said this about the agreement…

DOJ ripped for making transgender restroom use new front in civil rights battle
By Michael Roppolo
Published July 26, 2013
FoxNews.com

The U.S. Department of Justice's latest cause - fighting for a transgendered California ninth-grader's right to use the boy's room at school - has conservative groups wondering just how far Washington will go in the name of civil rights.
[…]
Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com, said Attorney General Eric Holder is off-base in pushing the case as a matter of civil rights.

“Eric Holder needs to reread the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and find out that civil rights are based on an unchangeable, immutable characteristic,” Thomasson said. “You cannot change your genes or your gender. You have chromosomes and they are either XX or XY. This is a girl who has been environmentally warped to believe she is a boy, and, instead of coddling this confused child, her parents should have gotten her into counseling with an expert on gender confusion.”

There we go again; that chromosomes are only XX or XY and totally ignoring intersex conditions, just a simplistic 1950 view of sex. We'll just use a little reparative therapy and everything will by okay again. Hey maybe just a few jolts of electroconvulsive therapy and it will straighten them right out.

Then the article goes on to say,

But several conservative groups said the federal agency has no business getting involved in the issue as a civil rights matter, and in doing so, trampled on the rights of other students.

Um… where to even begin with that logic. Have they even heard of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? They is a whole series of federal court case going all the way back to the 1989 Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins Supreme Court case that ruled that sex discrimination can also be the way a person looks or dresses. That case was followed by numerous other court cases that ruled that gender identity and express are covered Titles IV and IX.

Using their logic about trampling the rights of other students you could say the same thing about segregation; there are people who feel their civil right trampled on being forced to integrate or be in the same class as non-Christians.

P.S. 7/28/13

“Eric Holder needs to reread the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and find out that civil rights are based on an unchangeable, immutable characteristic,” Thomasson said. “You cannot change your genes or your gender.

Some more thoughts about "unchangeable, immutable characteristic;" the best legal challenge to this logic that I have heard was from a judged who ruled (I believe from a court case in Georgia) sex discrimination covers transgender people because it is still "sex." The judges used the analogy that if a person changed their religion it is still religious discrimination and it is still sex discrimination if a person their sex.