Every four years, like clockwork, the Right-wing manufactures an anti-LGBT wedge issue with the intent to draw their conservative base to the polls in the general election. In 1996, a Republican majority passed the Defense of Marriage Act, pre-emptively attacking marriage equality before gay people could even legally marry in a single state. George W. Bush made anti-gay rhetoric a feature of both his 2000 and 2004 campaigns, and his call for an anti-gay marriage amendment won him re-election with the values voters even though the promised amendment never materialized. That same November, 11 states passed amendments banning same-sex marriage and civil unions. More statewide initiatives followed, including California’s notorious Prop 8 in 2008. The uncertain future of same-sex marriage in the courts fueled the 2012 Republican primary, even as the so-called moral majority started to lose on ballot initiatives in that election.
Now it’s no surprise that 2016 is an election year and the Republican party is fabricating yet another culture war. Conservatives seem to have come to terms with losing the marriage war and have shifted their focus towards the transgender community using public restrooms. While it may be a new target this cycle, their tactics are unchanged. The battleground has been established in the South, where states previously fought to keep people of color out of their restrooms. They may want us to think that conservative prejudice against LGBT people is different from their prejudice against black people, but it’s not mere coincidence that it’s always the same states, the same religious groups, and often the same people championing both forms of bigotry and even using the same arguments to do it. The unspoken reason for their bathroom politics is discomfort with people who are different, but their stated reason is to protect women and girls from sexual assault, which they claim would inexplicably increase if their new policy is repealed now.
Like all civil rights battles, the problem is imaginary, something that only exists in the minds of conservatives. And unlike racially segregated restrooms, transgender people have already been using the restroom appropriate to their identity all along without any problems. Not only is the issue wholly manufactured, it’s completely unnecessary. After all, they didn’t push this agenda because of an increase in bathroom-related sex offenses. The sexual predator card is being played here just as it has been in the past to demonize black and gay people. And as with previous imaginary fixes, it causes more unnecessary problems and doesn’t really fix anything. For instance, rather than having to put on a dress and claim to be a woman, their hypothetical pervert could now simply claim he used to be a woman and then he would have to use the women’s room. Similarly, it forces trans men to use the women’s room and trans women to use the men’s room, therefore having the opposite effect of gender conformity. Even people who aren’t transgender may have to face confrontations and harassment if their gender is questioned by self-appointed bathroom monitors. Lastly, it does absolutely nothing to prevent sexual assault by people of the same sex, proving that it’s specifically targeting and demonizing people based on gender and gender identity.
This fixation with gender is the moral flaw at the heart of the issue. Conservatives have a history of discriminatory, gender-based policies which reflect a disturbing inability to discern basic right from wrong. Anti-sodomy laws condemned sexual relations between consenting adults for no reason other than having the same genitals. Anti-gay Republicans have demonstrated through embarrassing statements and deplorable personal conduct that they don’t seem to understand the definition of rape. The moral failure to understand sexual ethics on the basis of consent was fully realized when Alabama failed to prosecute a rapist because his victim was a man and state laws at the time defined rape only by the opposite gender, not by consent. Just as the Right-wing fails to recognize how consensual adult sexual relationships are ethical regardless of gender, they fail to recognize unethical sexual behavior because of their obsession with gender.
The Religious Right doesn’t lose culture wars for lack of money or power, they lose because they truly lack moral authority. The Republican Party is hovering on the dangerous line between simply not knowing basic right from wrong, or just being plain evil. If this were the first time they had presented the wrong solutions to problems they themselves had invented it might almost be forgivable. But given their history of consistently being on the wrong side of civil rights, while apparently exploiting people’s prejudices to gain and hold power, their bathroom bills should be flatly rejected as having no merit. Getting their way on this issue would not only give them illusory moral superiority, it would continue to spread their flawed morality to future generations. They need to lose this fight. For the sake of the children. For goodness’ sake.
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Matthew Jensen
Matthew Jensen is a freelance writer and activist who lives in Los Angeles, California. Growing up in conservative Christian fundamentalism, he became a student of world religions and eventually broadened his views. He is a fan of silent movies and any books that have been written or copied by hand, from ancient texts to modern comic books.
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