WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday entered the national debate over transgender rights, announcing that it would decide whether a transgender boy may use the boys’ bathroom in a Virginia high school.Does anyone really think Congress in 1972 intended a ban on sex discrimination to include the transgendered?
The court is acting just a year after it established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, as state laws and federal actions on transgender rights have prompted a welter of lawsuits. In taking the case, the court signaled that it may move more quickly in the area of transgender rights than it has in expanding gay rights.
The public debate has been ignited, in part, by a North Carolina law that requires transgender people to use bathrooms in government buildings that correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificates, a statute that has drawn protests, boycotts and lawsuits.
The case revolves around how the Obama administration is entitled to interpret a federal regulation under a 1972 law that bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in schools that receive federal money. The legal question is whether it can also ban discrimination based on gender identity.
Best of all:
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Mr. Grimm, told the justices that “girls objected to his presence in the girls’ restrooms because they perceived him to be male.” The group’s brief said requiring Mr. Grimm to use a private bathroom had been humiliating and had, quoting him, “turned him into ‘a public spectacle’ before the entire community, ‘like a walking freak show.’”Wow. I wonder why? If the Court goes all Roe v, Wade omn us over this issue, we will have another firestorm of Americans saying, "Why do they have this much power to ignore the majority?' There are good reasons for the Court to protect enumerated rights under the 14th Amendment, but not rights imagined up for reasons that would have left the 14th Ament Congress going, "What madness is this?"
"Does anyone really think Congress in 1972 intended a ban on sex discrimination to include the transgendered?"
ReplyDeleteLGBT activists waited until this century to come out of the closet about the full definition of the T, that "transgender" refers to more than just so-called "sex change" recipients. The most difficult things to prove are those things we believe to be self-evident; we are forced to put forth scientific arguments that gender is not a state of mind unrelated to chromosomes.
Offhand, I think the place to start is pointing out innate psychological sex difference. I have to wonder if any of the "gender is a social construct" folks have ever encountered children. When we tell a child that it is a boy or girl, the child doesn't understand those concepts. Ceteris paribus, the boy develops a male psyche, the girl a female psyche, without adult micromanagement.
I hearken to the Old Days when, if a woman said she was Queen Mary or Joan of Arc, or a man claimed to be Napoleon, that poor mentally-ill person was taken to a facility where medical people tried to restore them to sanity. (Yes, I'm aware that sometimes this led to abuses and improprieties.)
ReplyDeleteNow we allow those deluded people to have mutilating surgery and/or drug treatment, and pass laws to enforce society's acceptance of their insanity. Their mental illness is touted as a great and wonderful thing, to be celebrated by all!
It's particularly sad (and extremely infuriating to me) when adults force this madness on children in their care. Personally, I think hanging is too good for those adults; perhaps more medieval punishments would be appropriate. YMMV.