My previous post proposed a legal test for deciding cases involving individuals who claim their conscience does not permit them to sell goods or provide services to someone from the LGBT community who seeks a service or good directly related to their claimed status.  I ignored the “bathroom bill” in North Carolina, which has caused a stir, and which is also now implicated in a federal court case in Virginia.

As reported by the Washington Post,

“A federal appeals court in Richmond has ruled that a transgender high school student who was born as a female can sue his school board on discrimination grounds because it banned him from the boys’ bathroom. In backing high school junior Gavin Grimm, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit deferred to the U.S. Education Department’s position that transgender students should have access to the bathrooms that match their gender identities rather than being forced to use bathrooms that match their biological sex.”

We don’t yet know how this case will end up.  But because North Carolina is included within the Fourth Circuit’s boundaries this case may affect the law.  So let’s forget the legal niceties for one moment and go into “Curt Schilling” mode—with a more civil and reasoned tone.  Let me be clear.  I do not support the use of a restroom by someone who claims to identify with the opposite gender, but who is anatomically of the other gender.  But why do I take this position?  That I can explain.

First, this is not a liberal or conservative issue.  It is however an issue on which radical liberals and the general population will disagree.  But even that is irrelevant.  The real issue is what is right, versus what is clearly wrong.  If a man identifies as a woman, I can’t stop him—although I often wonder what the psychology profession has stopped labeling things like that as just plain sin (at best, bizarre) and rather labels it something like “gender dysphoria.”  Well that’s comforting.  To be sure such people need help—not arrest, so long as they don’t commit crimes.  But that brings me to another point.  If a man claiming to identify as a woman is allowed to use any bathroom he wants, including and especially a woman’s bathroom, there is a very real possibility that some of those men may be deviants who want to prey on victims.  Even if they don’t, is it good for female children to be exposed to such people in a place that is supposed to be private?  Third, what possible idiocy would drive a judge (or judges) to require that men be allowed to use any bathroom they desire, based on some subjective notion of their own identity.

I have no idea what or who influenced men like this to demand their “rights.”  I suspect (I would bet on it if I were a betting man) that there are very few of them.  And yet, the notion of rights is opposed to a custom that has been around at least ever since bathrooms were private (even when it was difficult to find such privacy in the past, do we think that men were just allowed to literally stand over a female and watch her?  Husbands and fathers I suspect would have had something to say about that).  But no, we give rights to such people, in spite of the possible and real dangers.  Moreover there are laws already in place that are intended to protect privacy.  Are we to ignore them?  I guess the courts will say yes.  And don’t our children and wives have any rights here?  Are they to be subjected to the perverse exposure of a stranger whose motives are unknown?  I guess they don’t count in the face of the demands of the LGBT community.

It is true that a good deal of the problem could be solved if the state would recognize the existence of property rights, allowing private owners to decide whether their restrooms may be used by the opposite sex, or whether they want to find some other solution.  But I fear even that option will be foreclosed by the courts.  And even if it were allowed, there are still many public restrooms that may be required to become “open.”

One other point.  I could say, well, why worry about it if the “facilities” in the women’s restroom allow a degree of privacy?  But then, why don’t they use the private facilities in the men’s restroom?  Is there some inherent claim of dignity in keeping with some asserted gender identity?  That seems a very unsupportable claim.  And what about the dignity of those of the opposite natural gender?  Again, do they not count?

I am concerned about our values today.  But I am even more concerned about “elite” values, held by people like politicians, judges and others who have influence and power.  They more than anyone seem to have easily and willingly jettisoned most all traditional ethical standards.  These standards have been in place at least as vestiges of Christianity, for a very long time.  And they have produced very good results.  But I suppose Christianity is also on the chopping block for the elites.  That includes its associated morality.  This development is not new, but it seems to me to be particularly threatening in today’s environment.

Now not to be misunderstood, I am not saying that the mere using of a restroom of the opposite sex in itself is the most crucial problem, though I have a very hard time seeing that as anything but deviance.  Rather it is what may likely occur in such a situation if it is allowed to continue.  And it is the complete and deliberate avoidance of any sense of propriety and decency.  I know, propriety and decency are old-fashioned and irrelevant in the face of all-consuming “rights.”  Sorry, but without some sense of these values, rights might not even be a subject for discussion.  In essence, my own take on this is that the recent radical claims made by various groups are claims based on group identity and to group rights.  These are special rights rooted in nothing more than newly constructed and flimsy philosophical ideas, and in some cases, they are nothing more than raw assertions of political power.   It is time for all decent people—especially Christians, but also “regular” non-Christians—to exert whatever cultural and political power they have to bring us back from this insanity.  But even more, it is time for Christians to begin to proclaim the Gospel boldly.  It is only through that that individuals will actually be changed internally.  And culture can hopefully then begin to return to some sort of normalcy, at least externally.