“Man, I feel like a woman!”

By: American Decency Staff

The culture war may soon be coming to a bathroom near you.  And if you live in Maryland, it already has.

The state of Maryland is one of the first in the nation to pass transgender rights legislation which opponents say would allow men to legally enter women’s public restrooms. 

As the Washington Times reports: 

“Maryland’s legislature this year passed the “Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2014,” which increases protections for transgender individuals by banning discrimination based on gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations.

“But opponents of the legislation … said the law was so loosely written it would permit men to legally enter women’s restrooms and other private spaces for voyeuristic or criminal purposes…”

While the bill allows for people to enter the public bathroom of which ever gender they claim to identify with, it does nothing to protect women and girls from men who, claiming to be transgender, can now legally enter women’s bathrooms or store dressing rooms. 

This law gives all new meaning to the Shania Twain song, “Man, I feel like a woman!”

Two Maryland lawmakers, however, are trying to overturn this troubling piece of legislative lunacy.  Maryland Republican Delegates Neil Parrott and Kathy Szeliga have started a petition drive to put the issue on the Maryland November ballot for the voters to decide.

MDPetitions.com is working to gather the 55,736 signatures from Maryland voters to bring the issue to a vote of the people. 

As is stated on the petition’s website:

“… The most egregious part of this bill will require businesses to open up their public facilities (bathrooms, saunas, shower rooms, locker rooms, etc.) so that men can use the ladies’ room and women can use the men’s room. They can use the wrong facilities simply based on them saying that at the time they “sincerely held as part of [their] core identity” that they were the opposite sex.

… Each person is born with a specific sex that, regardless of personal, emotional, or psychological feelings to the contrary, is maintained throughout their lives.  There is a reason that bathrooms are separated, and should continue to be.  …

Not only does this bill undermine our reasonable expectation of privacy in the bathroom, locker room, or shower room, it opens up women and girls to serious threats to their safety. …”

Maryland is following in the steps of California which passed Assembly Bill 1266 last year allowing children of either gender to enter whichever bathroom or locker room they prefer, based on the gender with which they identify.  As Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute said at the time, “AB 1266 forces San Francisco values on all California schools.   This is a very radical idea. You’re going to have first-grade boys going to the restroom next to first-grade girls without any supervision.”

In 2011 Macy’s department store sparked outrage when their radical changing room policy came to light which allows “transgender” men to enter the ladies dressing rooms, (and vice versa).  At the time, a Macy’s employee was fired for trying to keep a man from entering a ladies dressing room.

The simple solution, of course, would be for the inclusion of ‘family’ or ‘unisex’ public restrooms/changing rooms if the issue is actually “fairness” for the “transgendered.”

However, the real push behind Maryland’s “Fairness” legislation, and other similar policies and laws, is not “protection” or “fairness,” but social engineering.  The true goal is not access to restrooms – but acceptance.  A legal stamp of approval of the LGBTQ lifestyle. 

However, if those who’ve embraced the LGBTQ lifestyle want protection, the worst thing we as Christians can do for them is to affirm their lifestyle.

As Jonathan Parnell writes on desiringGod.org:

“… As Christians, we believe with deepest sincerity that the embrace of homosexual practice, along with other sins, keeps people out of the kingdom of God. And if our society celebrates it, we can’t both be caring and not say anything. Too much is at stake. This means it is an oversimplification to say that Christians — or conservative evangelicals — are simply ‘against homosexuality’. We are against any sin that restrains people from everlasting joy in God …

… we don’t celebrate homosexual practice, we acknowledge God’s clear revealed word that it is sin; and we don’t hate those who embrace homosexuality, we love them enough to not just collapse under the societal pressure. We speak the truth in love into this confusion, saying, simultaneously, “That’s wrong” and “I love you.” …

That’s our message in this debate, when society’s elites despise us, when pop songs vilify us, when no one else has the resources to say anything outside of two extremes, we have this incomparable opportunity to let the gospel shine, to reach out in grace: you’re wrong and you’re loved. … 

(http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/why-homosexuality-is-not-like-other-sins)

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