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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
In attacking anti-discrimination laws and ordinances which would give lgbts equal protection in instances of housing and employment, religious right groups are quick to use the claim that such laws would endanger the safety of women and children.
The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) already published various inaccurate pieces including one claiming that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would lead to students being “forced” to be taught by drag queen teachers.
It's just a simple a matter of time before TVC and other religious right group pull out the “ace card” in opposing all non-discrimination ordinances in general, i.e. the claim that such laws would lead “male predators” dressing as women and invading women's bathrooms and locker rooms in order to assault prospective victims.
However before any right-wing religious group makes this claim, they would do well to read the words of Concerned Women of America's president, Wendy Wright.
Concerned Women for America is another religious right group which opposes any and all pro-lgbt non-discrimination ordinances and the organization does like to use the “men in women's bathrooms” claim. But Wright, while defending the usage of this claim in an article with the Missoulian (while attacking a pro-lgbt ordinance in Missoula), demonstrated a degree of candor in her comments about this claim:
Even one of the most staunch opponents of those laws can't point to increases in frivolous lawsuits or sexual predation. Still, Concerned Women for America president Wendy Wright said such ordinances lead the country down the wrong track.“We have a constitutional protection for religious freedom in our First Amendment,” Wright said. “There is not a constitutional protection for sexual orientation, and yet judges and city councils and others are acting as if sexual orientation trumps religious freedom.”
. . . Wright couldn't point to places that have counted increases in sexual offenses because of such laws, but she said such data is beside the point.
“It doesn't go back to numbers,” Wright said. “It goes back to the issue that people will have legal rights that will trump other people's rights. The right of a woman or a girl to feel safe in a fitting room, a locker, a restroom, their rights will be trumped by a person who is claiming their sexual orientation right has legal protection.”
While there should be some appreciation of Wright's admittance that the “men in womens bathrooms” argument is without proof, she shouldn't be able to get away with claiming that the lack of proof is beside the point, mainly because the lack of proof is the point.
In the next sentence after she admits the inaccuracy of the “men in women's bathrooms” claim, she says that that the right of women or girls to feel safe would be trumped by pro-lgbt laws.
But Wright's concern leaves me scratching my head. Didn't she just admit that she doesn't know of any example in which the safety of women and girls would be threatened?
Wright further admits why CWA opposes pro-lgbt non-discrimination ordinances and of course it has nothing to do with “safety issues.”
Wright said one big reason Concerned Women opposes such laws is because the group does not want local ordinances to be used as stepping stones toward making gay marriage legal and teaching it in the public schools.
In other words, lgbts having the right to be free from discrimination is just another way to “force gay marriage.”
Oh the horror!
It's sad that Wright and the CWA sees so many blissfully wedded lgbt boogeymen that they have to stoop to fear tactics which they freely admit aren't rooted in reality.
It's not very Christian, is it?
Hat tip to People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch.
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The Religious Right… is neither.“We have a constitutional protection for religious freedom in our First Amendment,” Wright said. “There is not a constitutional protection for sexual orientation, and yet judges and city councils and others are acting as if sexual orientation trumps religious freedom.”
Uuhhhhhhhhh… what?
Did she, or didn’t she, just claim that the right of person A to their religious beliefs, which are malleable and changeable, just ask any convert, somehow trumps the right of person B to be secure in their person (4th Amendment) regarding something as fundamental to their being as their gender, their coloration, or any other innate physical and immutable traits?
“The right of a woman or a girl to feel safe in a fitting room, a locker, a restroom, their rights will be trumped by a person who is claiming their sexual orientation right has legal protection.”
Just to be clear here, we’re not talking about the right of lesbians to use women’s restrooms and fitting rooms, or gay guys to use the men’s, right? Sexual orientation is not as issue. It’s gender identity?
And so, yes, we’re talking about the right of one class of people, apparently, the god-fearing white womenfolk, to be able to live their lives in peaceful oblivion of The Other, being trumped by the rights other womenfolk who may not be god-fearing or white or, more’s to the point, wymyn-born-wymyn.
Hmmm. I wonder what the TVC would say if they realized how much they had in common with the MWMF.
WWJPIt all comes down to one thing:
Where
Would
Jesus
Pee
?
What I can’t figure outis what prevents a man from dressing as a woman and entering a Ladies Room today for the purpose of preying on some female who goes in there?
Why do these people get to keep making their illogical and insane arguments, and the MSM can never once just call them out. It’s like the whole argument about how gay marriage somehow destroys marriage for straight people. Bigots make the comment all the time, and I’ve never heard a MSM reporter or host ask the obvious question…how, in what way will it destroy marriage?
But of course they will continue to get a free pass because MSM reporters are just too lazy to do any actual reporting.
Because men dressed as men do this already?I know people who have been assaulted by men dressed as men who have slipped into women’s rooms in out of the way places.
In other words, they don’t dress as women to do this because they really don’t have to. They can go in – dressed as men – often under the guise of “making repairs” and pull whatever shit they want. I had a guy claiming to be club staff thrown out of the lockerroom at my gym. He was lurking in the sauna room “fixing it”.
So, if a concerned womanfor Amurrika was religiously opposed to people with a darker shade of skin, religious freedom triumphs there as well, right?
Well, I’m opposed to sharing MY women’s room with bigots who might accost me because of THEIR religious beliefs. Does my religious freedom trump their religious freedom? I truly don’t feel safe from these dangerous religious predators.
In the two years…I’ve been using women’s restrooms, I have never been sexually assaulted by a drag queen. The worst I’ve ever received is being overcome by a giant cloud of hairspray.
The problem is, there’s no penalty for lying… especially if it brings in the votes and/or fundraising dollars. If these people get caught lying in their speeches and fundraising letters, they don’t have to forfeit the money. If they get caught lying during marriage amendment campaigns, the results aren’t invalidated. There’s no penalty for lying, so why shouldn’t they say any damn thing they want?
I think the main reason the LGBT side makes progress so slowly and loses so many elections is that we try to play fair and appeal to truth and logic.
It reminds me of the scene in Angels in America where Roy Cohn, after being diagnosed with AIDS, is insisting to his doctor that he isn’t “gay.” He says something to the effect of “gay people are people who haven’t been able to get a civil rights law passed in 30 years.”
Wendy Wright…is an absolute freaking psycho.
I watched an interview between her and Richard Dawkins where he talked to her about her views regarding ‘Intelligent Design’ and every last word out of her mouth sounded like it was scripted and painstakingly rehearsed to the point where she would NOT let him speak or would say ‘rewind that’ to herself, as though she was learning via audio recording or something and would run over him and his off the cuff responses.
She’s eerie and unsettling and infuriating to watch. She giggles like an idiot and is as placid and blank as a Stepford Wife.
During the 50 years in which I’ve been using women’s bathrooms I’ve never been assaulted by a drag queenor any man dressed as a woman. However, I have been made aware of heterosexual men dressed as men peeking through peepholes at women, taking photos and videos of women in bathrooms, and assaulting women in bathrooms. I’m fortunate that none of this has happened to me (that I’m aware – who knows about peepholes), but it does happen.
I think that I would feel safer if there was a big strong drag queen in the bathroom with me.
rightsagain , the complaint seems to be that their “right” to discriminate will be taken away if their fellow citizens are granted the same protections under the law that they take for granted. my religion says that i am not a second class citizen, and all rights available to my hetero neighbors should also be available to me. guess the difference is that i have no interest in trying to force straight evangelicals to deny their chosen beliefs, force them to pretend to be gay, or deny them access to services if i find their behavior distasteful.
Because clearly,Men who would risk sexually assault a woman would NEVER risk the heinous crime of going into the women’s bathroom. At least not without a disguise. I mean, you obviously need a disguise… going into the “wrong” bathroom is looking at least infinity billion consecutive life terms, if not death by cruci-lethal-hanging.
FEEL safe, not BE safeThe word is i think fully intended.
Its not about real practical safety, it’s about feellings, offence, upset.
These people cannot conceive of what it actually is like to have a real human right violated, only what its like to have a privilege diluted and they confuse one with the other.
Upset, no matter how deeply socialised the fear that it stems from and no matter how extreme it is is any measure against a real human right being violated.
White people were upset with having to deal with non-white people sharing their water fountains, bus seats, bathrooms, locker rooms.
Men were upset at having to share the classrooms with women, their clubhouses, their workplaces.
Nobility were upset at having to share their anything with the rest of the citizenry.
Find any improvement in equality and you find a group suffering very real upset and disstress. Lets not minimise that. It’s painful and upsetting for those folk. But they DO have to just suffer that and live with it for anything else is to do far greater wrong to others.
There are lots of classes of people who do not feel safe in communal bathrooms locker rooms etc. People who are indeed far less safe. If people wanted real safety they’d campain against the existence of this communal unsafe space in public ammenities!
Instead its all about protecting peoples unfounded socialised fears, generalisations, exaggerations, myths and false demonised stereotypes from being exposed to the truth. Harming others to protect myths and fears rather than fixing real dangers.
Besides what about the pro-GLBTIQ/SS&GD religions rights? Nope they never mention or think about that. Cause when they say rligious rights they mean their religion not any others.
Besides as the basis of human rights is equality, claiming any right before rights are truly enjoyed equally is to take those rights on loan. A debt is owed to society! And failing to pay, or worse trying to ensure it’s never paid is to cheat, to defraud the people. And to invalidate their claim on ALL rights.
FEEL safe, not BE safeThe word is i think fully intended.
Its not about real practical safety, it’s about feellings, offence, upset.
These people cannot conceive of what it actually is like to have a real human right violated, only what its like to have a privilege diluted and they confuse one with the other.
Upset, no matter how deeply socialised the fear that it stems from and no matter how extreme it is is any measure against a real human right being violated.
White people were upset with having to deal with non-white people sharing their water fountains, bus seats, bathrooms, locker rooms.
Men were upset at having to share the classrooms with women, their clubhouses, their workplaces.
Nobility were upset at having to share their anything with the rest of the citizenry.
Find any improvement in equality and you find a group suffering very real upset and disstress. Lets not minimise that. It’s painful and upsetting for those folk. But they DO have to just suffer that and live with it for anything else is to do far greater wrong to others.
There are lots of classes of people who do not feel safe in communal bathrooms locker rooms etc. People who are indeed far less safe. If people wanted real safety they’d campain against the existence of this communal unsafe space in public ammenities!
Instead its all about protecting peoples unfounded socialised fears, generalisations, exaggerations, myths and false demonised stereotypes from being exposed to the truth. Harming others to protect myths and fears rather than fixing real dangers.
Besides what about the pro-GLBTIQ/SS&GD religions rights? Nope they never mention or think about that. Cause when they say rligious rights they mean their religion not any others.
Besides as the basis of human rights is equality, claiming any right before rights are truly enjoyed equally is to take those rights on loan. A debt is owed to society! And failing to pay, or worse trying to ensure it’s never paid is to cheat, to defraud the people. And to invalidate their claim on ALL rights.