New law advances transgender rights in California: Guess who’s complaining?

Last updated on: August 13, 2013 at 9:07 am by John Shore

New law advances transgender rights in California: Guess who’s complaining? 2013-08-13T09:07:55-08:00 John Shore

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Yesterday Governor Jerry Brown of California signed into law Assembly Bill 1266, which alters the state’s education code so that all K-12 student are “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.”

Starting January 1, 2014, every bathroom, locker room, sports team, or school activity will be open to every student at that school, be they born boy or girl. What will then officially matter isn’t what gender a kid is physically, but rather with which gender they most identify.

If, though born with boy parts, I identify as a girl, then the girl’s restroom or locker room belongs to me, too. If I possess a girl’s body, but have the heart and soul of a man, then guard your equipment, football team, cuz I’m comin’ in with towel a’ snapping’.

Meanwhile, Jerry Falwell is spinning in his grave so fast he’s worm-holed himself into another dimension. [Tweet this.]

Back in this dimension, though, Jerry’s fellow Christian conservatives fought this bill tooth and nail. The organizations listed by the state as opposing AB 1266 are four: Capital Resource Institute (Christians [barely] pretending they’re not so they can get more government money), Concerned Women for America (ditto), Traditional Values Coalition (ditto), and California Catholic Conference (pfft: like they need money).

So it’s Christians who most object to boobies in the boy’s room and badoinkers in the girl’s. Apparently no one else—or no one with an organization, anyway—cared to fight the bill.

Once again it’s Christians waving high the banner of “Stop Talking About Genitals and Stuff! Girls in Pink! Boys in Blue! Everybody Straighten Up and Fly Right!”

(Oh: one thing that’ll probably get lost in the noise about AB 1266 is that as much for anyone it’s for teachers and school administrators, who can’t keep getting stuck having to make case-by-case decisions about students’ extremely personal, delicate, and complex gender identity issues. It’s fair to ask teachers to enforce rules; it’s not fair to ask them to make up the rules as they go—and especially not about this issue. Talk about being above your pay grade.)

So now we Californians are (legally! whoo-hoo!) obliged to accept girls who identify as male occupying the same locker room as their varsity football teammates, and boys who identify as female elbowing for space at the mirror in the girls’ bathroom.

Love. It. Fair is fair. Though, again, I know all of this causes many Christians paroxysms of penile-paralyzing panic.

Which I understand, of course. Who doesn’t? The world is, after all, every day becoming more confusing. We’re all just trying to keep up. I’m currently struggling to understand how to stream Amazon movies onto my TV. I can only imagine struggling to understand why it’s okay if Jane calls herself John and uses the boy’s john, with all those junior Johnsons everywhere.

See? This is why I spend so much time watching movies. Or it would be, anyway, if I could figure out how any of this dangnabbit new-fangled technology works.

Life. Has it ever been more about the proper plugs, sockets, and wiring?

Anyway: Conservative Christians! Stop trying to stop history! Stop fighting against all people being treated with equality, kindness, sensitivity. If you want to fight something happening in America, fight poverty. As of 2011, 2.8 million American children were living in extreme poverty, with 16.7 million of them living in food insecure households. I don’t recall Christ ever saying one single word about transgender people. But I know he said a whole bunch of stuff about how terribly sinful it is to leave people in poverty.

(Thanks to our friend Lymis for his great help dialing in this piece.)

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