ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Culture challenge of the week: Government bullies gone bonkers
Good people need your help, right now to fight government bullies who have gone bonkers over bathrooms.
In August, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a provision that allows “transgender” students, from kindergarten to 12th grade, to gain access to restrooms, sports teams and locker rooms reserved for the opposite sex.
The law states, “A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.”
That’s a fancy way of saying that boys who wish they were girls need only pronounce the magic words “I AM a girl” and they are entitled by law to be treated as girls. The same switcheroo holds true for girls who wish to be boys.
This means that a biological boy can take your daughter’s spot on the girls volleyball team. As a “trans girl,” he has a right to undress while he is standing next to your daughter in the girls locker room. He can follow your daughter into the restroom and occupy the next stall. It’s awkward, embarrassing, an invasion of privacy and just plain dumb. The government bullies who already make our children’s lives miserable in so many ways are dead set on destroying what little remains of their dignity and privacy.
Imagine the scene for your son. A teenage girl declares she’s a boy and heads into the locker room, sporting strap-on genitals and breast-binding chest wraps. Is your son supposed to have no qualms at the prospect of seeing her undress? If your son blinks, blanks or blanches at the sight, will the transgender “boy” complain that your son is guilty of hostility or harassment on account of gender identity?
What if the girl-wanna-be-boy happily strips down in the locker room, is your son supposed to think nothing of it? Is your son supposed to use a urinal in front of her — or will he be tagged as having something wrong with him because he has a natural sense of modesty?
California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, who plans to remove his children from public school if the law stands, got it right when he said: “It is completely unreasonable to expect teenagers, who are uncomfortable with themselves at this age, to accept this level of privacy invasion.”
The California law is a perfect example of what happens when liberal elites force their ideological agendas on ordinary people. Our children’s world goes bonkers. The public does not want this law. The confused elites pushed the bill through the Legislature because they want our children — all of us, in fact — to affirm as true the notion that a boy or girl can switch genders simply by saying so — that gender identity is completely disconnected from a person’s bodily reality.
Here’s the truth: No matter how strongly a boy feels that he is a girl, he can no more “turn into” a girl than he can turn into a giraffe. (And no, he wasn’t secretly a giraffe all those years, either.) The same holds true for girls.
While liberals worry that “transgender” children will feel excluded or unaccepted if they are required to use facilities that conform to their natural, bodily realities, the same liberals care not a whit for the feelings and privacy of the 99.9 percent of children who know that girls are girls and boys are boys, even from before birth. The elites preferred to enact a law that is a gross violation of children’s privacy (and safety) rather than risk making “transgender youths” feel abnormal.
A few years ago, I wrote a book titled “Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That’s Gone Stark-Raving Mad” — and that was before this bonkers bathroom garbage. We must do all we can to push back on such heavy-handed, demented social engineering. This is a battle we can, and must, win. And you can help.
How to save your family: Government by the people
Some good folks in California are fighting back. They have organized a group called the Privacy for All Students coalition (visit the website at: privacyforallstudents.com/) and have filed a referendum seeking to give voters the right to reject the transgender legislation.
The transgender law takes effect Jan. 1, but if the referendum petition collects enough signatures (a half-million signatures must be collected by Nov. 12), then the law will be suspended until the voters will have a chance to decide its fate.
What can you do? If you live in California, sign the referendum petition at privacyforallstudents.com/sign-the-petition. But don’t stop there. Send this column (or links to the petition) to five of your friends and ask them to sign NOW. Make a sacrificial donation — $10, $100, $1,000 — to support this effort.
Even if you don’t live in California, you can help. You, too, can send this column or a link to the referendum drive to California friends and relatives. Tell them you stand with them and encourage them to sign the referendum petition, demanding that Californians be allowed to have a voice in this matter.
Give California families a chance to have their say. It takes just 30 seconds to sign a petition. Our children are worth it.
• Rebecca Hagelin can be reached at rebecca@howtosaveyourfamily.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.