Keep Men Out of Public Restrooms?
OK, so I’ve just finished reviewing the website for “Citizens for Good Public Policy”. If I was a man I’d be furious. We’ll I am not a man and I am still very angry about all of this.
First of all, how would allowing a man to enter a women’s restroom somehow automatically endanger women and girls? Are they saying that men can’t be trusted? That somehow just because men have access to women and/or girls they will commit crimes? And what about our boys, should we have separate restrooms for boys so that men don’t commit crimes against them?
Any time an individual (male or female) preys upon another individual and violates their right to safety and personal well being they have committed a crime. It doesn’t matter if the crime was committed in a restroom, a private home, a public park, or any other venue where women, men and children are in close proximity to each other. If a person enters a space with the intent to commit a crime they are committing an illegal act. There are already laws in place to take care of this.
Gainesville’s anti-discrimination ordinance is designed to protect individuals from crimes. It is designed to ensure everyone has access to basic human rights. The right to food, shelter, and the ability to support themselves. The ordinance does not give anyone anything they did not earn for themselves. It simply protects them from having their rights taken away by someone who is predjudiced, hateful and unethical. In theory, our society is built on the premise of freedom of personal choice. The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Gainesville’s anti-discrimination ordinance is designed to protect these rights for all citizens.
I find it sad that we even have to have a separate ordinance to specify ways in which we are not allowed to discriminate. Or criteria we are not allowed to use to take away the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our declaration of independence states these rights are unalienable. Merriam-Webster defined unalienable as “Incapable of being alienated, separated or taken away”.
We already have laws in place to protect our women, girls, boys and men from criminal acts. We need to keep anti-discrimination laws that protect the citizens of our community from crimes against their basic civil rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Please vote on March 24th, and vote your conscience. Allow all of our law abiding citizens the protection they deserve from unlawful and unethical discrimination. A vote of No on Ammendment One is a vote to keep anti-discrimination protections in place.
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Dear C,
Only came upon this today (3/31) while checking the most recent WI update. The fact that so many people had to do so much work just to defend Gainesville’s GLBT population from discrimination is deeply saddening to me. I did some precinct walking against Amendment 1 early on, then managed to mess up my hip again, so had to limit my activities to writing checks and writing to the Sun, which failed to publish my anti-1 letter to the editor. The pretext of protecting women and girls in public restrooms is so transparent that it makes me sick. Nothing like a fear-mongering myth being used to try to take rights away from people who are the most unlikely to do anything to hurt women and girls! Thank goodness the majority saw through this nasty ruse. But 58% is too small a number! You’d think more people would stand up against this attempt to enshrine bigotry in law.
On Election Day I was working at a voting precinct on the outskirts of the city, which has only two voters on the rolls who live within the city limits (!!!) but has to be opened nonetheless so everyone theoretically can vote where they live. Neither of these two showed up, but we did have to tell about 30 people who came to vote but live outside the city limits that they couldn’t cast a ballot (neither could any of us poll workers, since we too live in unincorporated Gainesville). Many of these people made it clear that they would have voted FOR the ugly Amendment if they’d been able to do so. Fortunately, they were not. I wonder if, before I die, this society will finally become mature enough to realize that sexual orientation or preference has nothing to do with an individual’s character. Probably not (sigh). But then, we still haven’t managed to figure out that character traits aren’t determined by gender, either. So I suppose we have to go on teaching people these things which to me are so self-evident. Ah well.
All the best.