Bathroom bill badly flawed
North Carolina is leading the charge on so-called “bathroom bills” – laws that prohibit transgender people from using the restrooms right for them – but a Michigan legislator is ready to enter that ignoble company.
Sen. Tom Casperson last week announced he would introduce a bill that would effectively ban transgender students from using the bathrooms of their choice.
Like the North Carolina law, Casperson’s promised legislation would usurp local control, once considered a bedrock of conservatism that is increasingly nothing more than a vapid contrivance of the GOP.
The North Carolina law, signed March 23 within 24 hours of its introduction, overturns and bans local anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ people. Called one of the harshest anti-LGBTQ laws in the nation, it forces transgender people in schools and government buildings to use the bathroom that matches the gender on their birth certificate rather than how they identify themselves.
Although not as broad, Casperson’s proposal is itself a preemptive strike in a response to a set of recommended guidelines released by the state Board of Education, and it is no less heavy-handed.
The senator, according to a press release on his website, would require Michigan students use bathrooms and locker rooms that conform to their genders at birth unless the students have “written consent from a parent or guardian.”
Even with that consent, transgender students would be barred from facilities for the opposite sex, “If those facilities are in use or could be in use.”
Casperson told Michigan Radio’s Stateside that the bill is “common sense.” Most constitutional scholars would say that it’s unlawful and is bound to be turned back in courts, but it’s worth examining the senator’s conventional wisdom.
“It’s going to still allow for the student, with the parent, to identify the problem,” he said, “. that if a student is struggling with their identity, clearly, we should be listening to what they have to say. Then, look at ways to make accommodations to accommodate that situation.”
It seems to us Casperson and a lot of other lawmakers aren’t really seeing “the problem.”
Transgender people aren’t problems. They aren’t inherently flawed, nor are they predisposed to immoral or deviant behavior. They are no more likely to be sexual predators than so-called “straight” people.
They are, too often, victims – of discrimination, ostracization and violence. They face it in the world, the workplace, in school – even at home, which is why the state Board of Education wisely counsels school districts not to insert themselves in students’ decisions on what and how to tell their parents about their gender identity. Most children, given the opportunity, would gratefully turn to their parents for support rather face a hostile world alone. Too often, that support just isn’t there.
Casperson’s proposed bill is legally, ethically and morally flawed, offering protection against an imagined threat while reinforcing hurtful, unfounded stereotypes against kids who, even with their gender identities, are no different than his own or anybody else’s.
And finally, the bill is unnecessary. As sound as the state board’s recommended guidelines are, they are just that: Recommendations that districts are free to incorporate or not into their own policies.
In that light, Casperson’s bill seems more like political grandstanding of the most despicable kind. We suggest he drop the notion, and we encourage his Senate colleagues, if given the opportunity, to soundly reject it.
– The Battle Creek Enquirer