The African-American woman who leads a state chapter of the ACLU has resigned, citing her own daughters’ “frightened” reaction to biological males using the women’s restroom.
The organization’s increasing focus on legislating the transgender lobby’s concerns pushed Maya Dillard Smith, interim director of the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, to tender her resignation.
“I have shared my personal experience of having taken my elementary school age daughters into a women’s restroom when shortly after three transgender young adults, over six feet [tall] with deep voices, entered,” she wrote.
“My children were visibly frightened, concerned about their safety and left asking lots of questions for which I, like many parents, was ill-prepared to answer,” she continued.
In a statement, she said that the ACLU has become “a special interest organization that promotes not all, but certain progressive rights.” (Read more from “State Leader Quits ACLU After Daughters Were ‘Visibly Frightened’ by Men Using Women’s Restroom” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/toilet-942100_960_720.jpg720960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-06-02 02:20:442016-06-05 00:09:24State Leader Quits ACLU After Daughters Were ‘Visibly Frightened’ by Men Using Women’s Restroom
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts jumped on the transgender bathroom bandwagon Wednesday when its House of Representatives voted 116-36 to move forward with a bill that legally replaces the concept of biological sex with that of gender identity.
The “Gender Identity Public Accommodations Bill,” or H.4343, seeks to further push for transgender “anti-discrimination” laws in three separate parts.
First, it would amend multiple areas of Massachusetts law to replace the word “sex,” with “gender identity.” Secondly, it would mandate that “[a]ny public accommodation…shall grant all persons admission to and the full enjoyment of such public accommodation or other entity consistent with the person’s gender identity,” while finally ordering the the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination to amend rules and policies to comply with the redefinition of sex to gender identity.
“We are doing the work the founders of our nation intended for us to do,” said co-sponsor Byron Rushing of the bill prior to its passage. “This is a great day for us and we should be very proud.”
“This is a historic day for Massachusetts,” reads a statement from pro-transgender group Freedom Massachusetts. “The wave of legislative activity #TransBillMA has seen in the last two months is the culmination of a decade-long fight to fully protect transgender people from discrimination in the Bay State.”
Others, however, were not so convinced of the law’s merit.
“This legislation takes rights away from 99.9% of the population,” said Rep. James Lyons of Andover (R), who voted against the measure. “Every parent that I have spoken with including a parent of a transgender child understands that this bill eliminates long held expectation of privacy and protection for children.”
“This is a collision of rights. Rights in conflict,” continued Lyons in his emailed statement to Conservative Review. “I have yet to see how changing the law to remove what is currently on the books helps anyone.”
Final vote on passage was delayed by a nearly five-hour round of debate over at least 36 proposed amendments which some likened to a Senate filibuster. The amendments in question included, among several others, provisions to which would have excepted facilities primarily used by minors, such as public school bathrooms and locker rooms, one that would have required proof of medical transition for individuals to use facilities that do not coincide with their biological sex, and one which would have exempted multiple use facilities, “where there is an expectation of privacy” among occupants, from the bill.
Only one of the amendments, a technical rewrite of section 2 of the bill, was adopted.
When debate on the bill began in the early afternoon, Lyons gave an impassioned speech on the House floor against the bill to a response of thunderous applause from the gallery, arguing that it was unnecessary due to the fact that transgender individuals are already protected from discrimination under current law.
“Based on my review, this is a medical issue. How does allowing the use of the bathrooms and locker facilities solve a medical issue and furthermore how does this law achieve the goal of eliminating discrimination?” reiterated Lyons in his statement to CR. “It appears both United States Supreme Court and the Massachusetts Supreme Court have provided guidance that transgender people are protected under existing statutes. MCAD is enforcing current laws. GLAAD states that transgender people are protected. So what is the issue? The issue is should we as legislators eliminate privacy rights and protection for our children.”
The bill, which has already passed in the Massachusetts Senate, now heads to Governor Charlie Baker’s desk, where it will likely receive his signature for final passage.
“We’ve certainly listened to a variety of points of view from many sides and have said, from the beginning, that we don’t want people to be discriminated against,” said the governor in an interview with the Boston Globe on Tuesday. “If the House bill were to pass in its current form, yeah, I would sign it.”
But while the Bay State has passed legislation in line with the recent cultural and legislative push to legally replace biological sex with experienced gender identity, other states are fighting back against it.
Currently, a total of 13 states across the country have banded together in filing a federal lawsuit against the Obama Administration’s recent 25-page letter that all but mandates transgender bathrooms in public schools nationwide.
“Our local schools are now in the crosshairs of the Obama administration, which maintains it will punish those schools who do not comply with its orders. These schools are facing the potential loss of school funding for simply following common sense policies that protect their students,” stated Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton at the announcement of the lawsuit last week.
Furthermore, in a statement released Tuesday, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (R) announced that his office would be sending a letter to school districts throughout the state instructing them not to comply with the federal bathroom mandate.
“The President’s threat of withholding federal funds is just a threat. By standing together we will demonstrate Texas will not be threatened or blackmailed by a policy that doesn’t make sense and puts our girls and women at risk.”
Following the announcement of the Administration’s proposed guidelines in May, Patrick accused the President of extortion due to the implied threats that public schools which do not comply could lose federal funding.
“He says he’s going to withhold funding if schools do not follow the policy,” Patrick said a few days after the Administration’s mandate was issued. “Well, in Texas, he can keep his 30 pieces of silver. We will not yield to blackmail from the president of the United States.”
“So Barack Obama, if schools don’t knuckle down to force girls showering with boys and force 8-year-old girls to have to endure boys coming into their bathroom — he’s taking money from the poorest of the poor. The president of the United States will be ending the free breakfast and free lunch program — that’s what he’s saying.”
A conference committee will convene in the coming weeks to reconcile the differences between the differences between the House and Senate versions of the Massachusetts bill. (For more from the author of “Massachusetts House Overwhelmingly Passes Bill to Abolish Biological Sex” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/274475502_1280x720.jpg7201280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-06-02 01:22:032016-06-04 23:37:56Massachusetts House Overwhelmingly Passes Bill to Abolish Biological Sex
In an official White House statement, President Obama denounced the “harmful practice of conversion therapy,” a therapeutic method designed to help people overcome unwanted same-sex attraction.
“My administration is striving to better understand the needs of LGBT adults and to provide affordable, welcoming, and supportive housing to aging LGBT Americans,” the president writes in his Presidential Proclamation for LGBT Pride Month, a declaration that has become an annual tradition. “It is also why we oppose subjecting minors to the harmful practice of conversion therapy, and why we are continuing to promote equality and foster safe and supportive learning environments for all students.”
The latter is an apparent reference to his controversial federal guidance that all public schools and universities must allow members of one sex to use the restrooms, showers, and overnight accommodations (including dorm rooms) of the opposite biological sex or lose federal funding.
However, the president took the opportunity of his last pride month proclamation to reiterate his support for a federal ban on reparative therapy for minors, a position he shares with Hillary Clinton.
Their real agenda may have nothing to do with concern over the safety of LGBT youth, an expert tells LifeSiteNews. (Read more from “Obama Touts Transgender Restrooms, Blasts ‘Harmful Practice of Conversion Therapy'” HERE)
On May 13, the Obama administration sent a letter to public schools on the topic of transgender students and where they use the restroom. But the directive, issued as “significant guidance,” didn’t just apply to the bathrooms. It also entered the space of locker rooms, showers, dorms, overnight hotels, and other places you might not expect. Watch the video to see The Daily Signal break down where exactly the Obama administration’s bathroom directive applies, and where it doesn’t.
(For more from the author of “What Obama’s Bathroom Directive Really Does” please click HERE)
Lawmakers in Oklahoma have introduced a measure that would urge Congress to impeach Barack Obama over his controversial federal transgender guidance for public schools and universities.
State Senator Anthony Sykes and State Rep. John Bennett introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution 43, which says that the threat to withhold federal funding if schools do not open their restrooms, lockers, and showers to members of the opposite biological sex “exceeds the authority of the federal government.”
The non-binding resolution asks the state’s delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives “to file articles of impeachment against the President of the United States, the Attorney General of the United States, the Secretary of Education and any other federal official liable to impeachment who has exceeded his or her constitutional authority” by participating in the guidance.
“The Constitution of the United States does not grant the executive branch of the federal government any authority whatsoever over the public education system, nor over the use of restrooms or other facilities thereof,” according to the motion, which currently has the support of 15 state legislators.
The non-binding resolution also asks the Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt “to defend, by any means necessary, the interests of this state against the overreach” of the Obama administration. (Read more from “Impeach Obama Over Transgender Rules, Oklahoma Legislators Urge” HERE)
By Peter Baklinski. A woman has been fired from a Macy’s department store for denying a man dressed as a woman access to the women’s fitting room.
“I had to either comply with Macy’s or comply with God,” said Natalie Johnson, 27, a former employee at the retail giant’s location in Rivercenter Mall, San Antonio.
According to Johnson, on November 30th she witnessed a young cross-dressing man wearing make-up and girl’s clothing exit the women’s fitting room. She told the man “politely” that the women’s fitting room was for women only, making it clear that he was not to make use of the room again.
The customer, along with five companions, argued in response that Macy’s is friendly to the LGBT community.
Johnson retorted that Macy’s doesn’t discriminate against religious beliefs, adding that it would go against her religious beliefs to act on a lie that a man was a woman. (Read more from “Macy’s Fires Woman for Refusing ‘Transgender’ Man Access to Women’s Fitting Room” HERE)
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Target Store Suing a Hero Who Saved a Young Girl
By DennisMichaelLynch. Michael Turner was shopping in Target back in 2013 when a crazed man named Leon Walls ran into the store and stabbed a 16-year-old girl, Allison Meadows. Turner responded like a true hero by grabbing a baseball bat and chasing Walls out of the store. He then proceeded to help Allison as she was bleeding. To this day, Allison thanks Turner for saving her life whenever she gets the chance.
Strangely, and sadly, Target is now suing Turner.
Target is going after the hero for “chasing Walls to the front of the store where he could have endangered more people.” However, no persons were hurt. The lawsuit against Turner comes after Meadows and her family sued Target for inadequate security measures in keeping the store safe. The decision for Target to unjustly sue Turner over a ludicrous allegation has angered the Meadows family. (Read more from “Target Store Suing a Hero Who Saved a Young Girl” HERE)
Maybe parallel universes really do exist. Maybe, as my husband and I hiked through the deep, dark forest a few years ago, we somehow crossed through a portal, a stargate into another dimension—a universe that, superficially at least, looks quite similar to the one I’d known most of my life.
I almost hope that’s true. I’d like to believe it, because in the world I now inhabit—which outwardly resembles the one I remember—everything seems to have been turned inside out and become utterly bewildering.
Yes, I find myself wanting to believe that weird matrix explanation and to resist the more likely truth that the world I grew up in could have changed so completely.
I’d like to believe that somewhere back there the world I accidently exited still exists—that world where gender was a fixed biological fact, determined at conception.
But no, this is not the Twilight Zone; it is not an inexplicable parallel universe.
This is 21st century America, and, according to an ABC news article on guidelines recently handed down by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education:
There is no obligation for a student to present a specific medical diagnosis or identification documents that reflect his or her gender identity, and equal access must be given to transgender students even in instances when it makes others uncomfortable, according to the directive.
Yes, we really do live in a nation in which our government tells us girls and boys should be able to share restrooms and locker rooms. We really do live in a culture that values transgender rights over basic morality and children’s safety.
But the very hard reality in this topsy-turvy world is that transgender people are hundreds of times more likely to attempt suicide than the general U.S. population.
And what does our enlightened culture do about this very sad statistic?
Well, we make it easier for people to transition to this sad and depressing lifestyle. Helping them struggle down the hard road of facing reality is just too judgmental; it’s better to let them move into a make-believe life in which they face a 4-in-10 chance of attempting suicide.
My father gave in to his make-believe transgender impulses and became Becky. He’d spent most of his life dreaming of making that transition. When he finally left his family and got what he’d long desired, he still wasn’t fulfilled.
He considered suicide, but, thankfully, resisted. But later, pumped full of unnatural hormones and chemicals and adorned in women’s clothing, he died a sad, confused, forgetful, and regretful old man.
I missed Harold, the one who, during his periods of resisting his impulses, treated me as a father should treat his daughter.
I miss him dancing with my little feet placed on top of his, his big hands reaching down to clasp my little five-year-old hands. I miss those days of his sexual sobriety when we worked together at his father’s seed company and went to lunch together. I miss all those times when he accepted the reality that he was Harold, a man—a husband, father, and grandfather.
I don’t miss Becky, or those transition times when my father gave in to his transgender impulses. I don’t miss him telling me, when I was just nine years old, of his desire to become a woman and then requiring me to keep that confession a secret. I don’t miss the fanciful alternate world he transported into, leaving my mother emotionally distraught and financially destitute.
My father was the one who had entered another dimension, a make-believe dimension. And rather than returning to the real world, he wanted the real world to accommodate his make-believe world.
That’s what this small but vocal minority and their enablers want from the rest of the real world.
I’d like to believe that world in which truth is objective, and children’s modesty and safety is more important than being politically correct still exists and somehow I might find the portal to return to it. Back to that world where adults looked out for children’s best interests, even if doing so meant saying no and then dealing with rather than succumbing to the resultant temper tantrum.
I’d like to think that, in that parallel universe I inadvertently ambled out of, women and children’s safety is still more important than appeasing a tiny-but-very-vocal minority.
But it appears I’m no longer in that universe. I’m in one where choices—no matter how illogical—trump obvious facts.
I find myself in a world in which stating a very plain and evident biological fact is now considered a form of hate speech.
I’m now in a world that tells me I must not only tolerate but also celebrate behaviors that in just a relative eye’s blink before were condemned as detrimental to society. (For more from the author of “My Dad Was Transgender. Why I Still Think Gender Can’t Be Changed.” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/hqdefault-8.jpg360480Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-28 23:37:282016-05-28 23:51:05My Dad Was Transgender. Why I Still Think Gender Can’t Be Changed.
The most offensive part of [the White House’s new transgender agenda] is that, under the Obama administration’s federal guidance:
School districts must allow biological males and females to spend the night together in the same hotel room on field trips;
Colleges must let men who say they are transgender be roommates with one or more women; and
School officials cannot even tell those young women or their parents in advance that their new roommate is a man, without risking a federal lawsuit.
The plain wording of the Obama administration’s diktat is clear enough, yet it has not been reported, even by conservative news outlets. (Read more from “The Most Dangerous, and Underreported, Part of Obama’s Transgender Edict” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/US_Restroom.jpg12001600Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-28 23:34:172016-05-28 23:53:44The Most Dangerous, and Underreported, Part of Obama’s Transgender Edict
On Wednesday night, 43 Republican members of Congress joined the Democrats to vote for President Barack Obama’s transgender agenda.
Whereas last week Congress voted to reject this proposal—known as the Maloney amendment—last night they voted to ratify Obama’s 2014 executive order barring federal contractors from what it describes as “discrimination” on the basis of “sexual orientation and gender identity” in their private employment policies.
And, of course, “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity” can be something as simple as having a bathroom policy based on biological sex, not gender identity, as we learned last week from Obama’s transgender directives. And “discrimination” on the basis of “sexual orientation” can be something as reasonable as an adoption agency preferring married moms and dads for orphans, than other arrangements.
Indeed, in the past few weeks we’ve seen additional examples of what counts as “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity.”
The New York City Commission on Human Rights issued official legal guidance saying employers can be fined up to $250,000 for not addressing employees by the pronoun of their choice—including pronouns such as “ze” and “hir.” As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh explains, this would require “employers and businesses to prevent [the use of “wrong” pronouns] by co-workers and patrons and not just by themselves or their own employees.”
A public school district in Oregon paid a teacher $60,000 because colleagues declined to use the pronoun “they” to describe the teacher. The teacher, Leo Soell, does “not identify as male or female but rather transmasculine and genderqueer, or androgynous.” As Volokh explains: “Soell wants people to call Soell ‘they,’ and submitted a complaint to the school district objecting (in part) that other schoolteachers engaged in ‘harassment’ by, among other things, ‘refusing to call me by my correct name and gender to me or among themselves’ (emphasis added).”
The 4th Circuit Court has said a Virginia school district must allow bathroom access based on “gender identity” not biology. The school district created a policy that says bathroom and locker room access is primarily based on biology, while also creating accommodations for transgender students: only biological girls can use the girls’ room, only biological boys can use the boys’ room, and any student can use one of the three single-occupancy bathrooms, which the school created specifically to accommodate transgender students. But the court said this commonsense policy was itself “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity.”
Congress should not be ratifying Obama’s radical transgender agenda and imposing these outcomes on private employers just because they contract with the government.
All Americans should be free to contract with the government without penalty because of their reasonable beliefs about contentious issues. The federal government should not use government contracting to reshape civil society about controversial issues that have nothing to do with the federal contract at stake.
Obama’s executive order and the Maloney amendment treat conscientious judgments about behavior as if they were invidious acts of discrimination akin to racism or sexism.
But sexual orientation and gender identity are not like race. Indeed, sexual orientation and gender identity are unclear, ambiguous terms. They can refer to voluntary behaviors as well as thoughts and inclinations, and it is reasonable for employers to make distinctions based on actions.
By contrast, “race” and “sex” clearly refer to traits, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, these traits (unlike voluntary behaviors) do not affect fitness for any job.
Congress tried to minimize the damage of the Maloney amendment with two provisions last night. One provision, introduced by Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., amended the Maloney amendment to say that it couldn’t violate the U.S. Constitution. Another provision, the Byrne Amendment, attempted to attach existing religious liberty protections to the bill. Neither adequately protects against the damage of Maloney.
Liberal activist judges will do all they can to ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity policies will trump religious liberty protections.
This is why Congress should not be elevating sexual orientation and gender identity as a protected class garnering special legal privileges.
Here is a list of the 43 Republicans who voted for the amendment:
Justin Amash, Mich.
Susan Brooks, Ind.
Mike Coffman, Colo.
Ryan Costello, Pa.
Carlos Curbelo, Fla.
Rodney Davis, Ill.
Jeff Denham, Calif.
Charlie Dent, Pa.
Mario Diaz-Balart, Fla.
Bob Dold, Ill.
Daniel Donovan, N.Y.
Tom Emmer, Minn.
Michael Fitzpatrick, Pa.
Rodney Frelinghuysen, N.J.
Chris Gibson, N.Y.
Joe Heck, Nev.
Will Hurd, Texas
Darrell Issa, Calif.
David Jolly, Fla.
John Katko, N.Y.
Adam Kinzinger, Ill.
Leonard Lance, N.J.
Frank LoBiondo, N.J.
Tom MacArthur, N.J.
Martha McSally, Ariz.
Pat Meehan, Pa.
Luke Messer, Ind.
Erik Paulsen, Minn.
Bruce Poliquin, Maine
Tom Reed, N.Y.
David Reichert, Wash.
Jim Renacci, Ohio
Tom Rooney, Fla.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Fla.
John Shimkus, Ill.
Elise Stefanik, N.Y.
Fred Upton, Mich.
David Valadao, Calif.
Greg Walden, Ore.
Mimi Walters, Calif.
David Young, Iowa
Todd Young, Ind.
Lee Zeldin, N.Y.
(For more from the author of “43 Republicans Join Democrats to Support Obama’s Transgender Agenda” please click HERE)
A recent trip to a doctor’s office in Houston, Texas, presented a heterosexual female with a conundrum. She asked where the bathroom was, and the receptionist told her down the hall. There were two bathrooms on either side of the hall, with the same signs and interior. Her choice was to use an “All Gender Restroom” along with heterosexual, homosexual, transgender, intersex, bisexual, and lesbian users, transpecies, or none at all.
She entered when the bathroom was empty, but she exited her stall to run right into a man using the urinal. A non-transgender man.
Both of their right to privacy was violated. Both of their choices were eliminated.
What about her choice to protect her body? What about his?
She could have easily taken a picture of his penis. Just recently someone was caught running out of a Target after harassing a woman. There are over 24 recent examples of the transgender bathroom policy harming women and children.
And women and children are not alone. What about protecting little boys?
What’s to stop a predator from exposing himself or abusing a child or teenager in a stall?
What about this woman’s right to choose to express her own gender as a heterosexual female?
In essence, this ludicrous bathroom policy prevents all heterosexual men and women and children from exercising their right to privacy, which is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
The 99.99 percent of heterosexuals who do not want to intermix with the opposite sex while they are sitting on the toilet are discriminated against– and not because of any transgender nonsense. Transgender people, which is a misnomer that actually hurts people suffering from gender dysphoria, represent less than half of one percent of the population in America. Less than half than one percent.
The 99.99 percent of men who would prefer for strangers to not see them using a urinal, or the parents who would like their minor children to not be exposed to a man’s private parts, are completely disregarded and discriminated against.
A woman’s right to privacy on the toilet is no longer allowed.
A man’s right to privacy at a urinal is no longer allowed.
Children, who can easily be abducted, kidnapped, or trafficked, are often targeted while alone– in bathrooms, in stores, in areas where there are no video cameras.
If bathrooms can be open to anyone at any time, then so also should there be security guards and cameras in every bathroom to prevent and hopefully minimize a crime being committed.
And, if everyone can express themselves however they want, does this mean that everyone is now disabled and can apply for disability benefits? Are all genders now handicapped? The signs seems to indicate that. But it also welcomes pedophiles who advocate that their expression is normal. And it also welcomes niblings and transpas.
Same with a man wearing a wig.
Or a woman who identifies as a cat.
Perhaps the next time she uses a bathroom in Houston she should bring her cat with her. And a camera. Or even a gun.
At least in Houston, open and concealed carry is legal.
As is insanity at every level. (For more from the author of “Houston’s ‘All Gender Bathrooms’ Discriminate Against Everyone” please click HERE)
