Proving The Negative...

...Is always hard but there are ways to do it and one of the way is to have a control group.

This was published last year when Massachusetts had the ballot question about our use of public accommodations and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it pop up  on other ballots around the country. It deserves to be heard again.

No link between trans-inclusive policies and bathroom safety, study finds
There is no evidence that letting transgender people use public facilities that align with their gender identity increases safety risks, a UCLA study finds.
NBC News
By Julie Moreau
Sept. 19, 2018

There is no evidence that letting transgender people use public facilities that align with their gender identity increases safety risks, according to a new study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. The study is the first of its kind to rigorously test the relationship between nondiscrimination laws in public accommodations and reports of crime in public restrooms and other gender-segregated facilities.

“Opponents of public accommodations laws that include gender identity protections often claim that the laws leave women and children vulnerable to attack in public restrooms,” said lead author Amira Hasenbush. “But this study provides evidence that these incidents are rare and unrelated to the laws.”
[…]
To determine whether a relationship exists between nondiscrimination laws and crime, Hasenbush, a law and policy fellow at the Williams Institute, zeroed in on Massachusetts, where at the time of the study some localities had transgender-inclusive public accommodation laws and others did not. She and her team compared cities and towns with similar characteristics that had such laws to those that did not. They then examined police reports of assault and privacy violations in these localities both before and after the laws came into effect.
[…]
“Research has shown that transgender people are frequently denied access, verbally harassed or physically assaulted while trying to use public restrooms,” according to Jody L. Herman, one of the study’s authors and a public policy scholar at the Williams Institute. “This study should provide some assurance that these types of public accommodations laws provide necessary protections for transgender people and maintain safety and privacy for everyone.”

This study will no doubt be called upon in this coming election year and I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t come up in a brief for the up coming Supreme Court cases. We were already mentioned in the Democrat debate and I expect us to come up in the Republican ads.

One of the major attacking points the opposition uses is bathroom safety, you remember that ad that first surfaced down in Florida where that creepy follows a little girl in to a public restrooms? The opposition made it an issues in Massachusetts and I foresee it happening elsewhere.