Is Feeling Uncomfortable A Justifiable Excuse?

I am old enough to remember when segregation was the norm in the south. When I was probably ten years old we drove down south to visit the Civil War battlefields and I can vaguely remember seeing signs saying for blacks to use another facility.

One of the reasons that they gave other than the “Good Book” says it is OK to discriminate was that if a black person was in the bathroom with a white boy, the black person may sexually assault the white boy and that having a black person in the bathroom made them feel uncomfortable.

Well now those same arguments are being used against us.

Locker room lawsuit: Boy claims his transphobia outweighs trans student’s rights
LGBTQ Nation
By Dawn Ennis
March 21, 2017

Joel Doe is one very upset high school junior, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday. He is embarrassed, humiliated, “does not feel secure in the locker rooms or restrooms” at school and even avoids using the restroom during the school day, all because of his gender identity.

But Doe is not transgender. He’s cisgender, and his lawyers at the Alliance for Defending Freedom are using every legal argument cited by advocates for trans youth to win equal access to bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams, in hopes of reversing those gains with what may prove to be a landmark case of reverse discrimination.

This legal twist is just the latest outrageous maneuver by the anti-LGBTQ and far-right Christian-based ADF, a non-profit organization that has been labeled an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Doe — not his real name, of course — claims that his Pennsylvania school district has violated his civil and constitutional rights by respecting the rights of transgender classmates.

Back in the fifties it was the southern Democrats who were in favor of discrimination and blocked legislation to outlaw segregation; they finally saw the light and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What it took to change their minds was television coverage of the wanton attacks on blacks who were marching for their human rights.

Well now it is the Republicans who are attacking us for political gains and then don’t care if we get hurt in their efforts to gain political power.

No court date has yet been assigned to hear the case. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has yet to officially define how the Department of Justice will proceed on cases of Title IX although it has already removed itself from notable cases involving trans plaintiffs, including the appeal of a Michigan woman fired by her employer because she transitioned. The federal judge in that case determined a funeral home owner’s religious beliefs outweighed Aimee Stephens’ right to express her gender identity at work.

Will the Justice Department stand against discrimination or will Attorney General Jeff Sessions follow his Southern roots and come in on the side of segregation and discrimination.