First of all--really, Arizona?

This is enough of an issue that you need to specifically target this group of people--which you admit to being a small one--in a very public and rather humiliating way?

You don't have...well...other matters to attend to which require your attention?

Hell, AT LEAST your inflammatory stance on immigration dealt with something actually pertinent to the state and our nation as a whole--

Is regulating where a small group of people choose to pee REALLY a matter for the state to be involved in, and so heavily as to require an ID and potentially police intervention at that?

"This law simply restores the law of society: men are men and women are women," Mr Kavanagh said, according to the Associated Press.

1. It's their society too,
2. Who gets to decide and define matters of gender (not SEX, mind you, but gender identity)
3. Again...it's where people PEE for God's sake, this is really that big of an issue? (Maybe I'm just out of touch, but allowing for obvious logistical and security measures, does anyone here really think society would collapse if we just had co-ed bathrooms in public places? Again, so long as they're outfitted correctly and are secure...men and women can't pee alongside one another without chaos breaking out? Really?)

Obiwan reminds me so much of Lindsay Bluth...

...I don't know who that is...?

"It's a doberman - let it have its ears!"

Aaaaaand apparently this is a character on a show I've never watched.

Arrested Development, Obi, worth checking out, one of the best if not the best comedy show in recent years.

@Puddle - A.D. is on Netflix, and **new** episodes coming out on May 26.

Better question:

Where do we expect cross dressers to use the bathroom? I'd prefer for them not to use the restroom while I am in there, and it seems that women are speaking up that they don't want to share restrooms with transgendered people.

Where are they to go? Do we require a third set of restrooms in public spaces?

Increasingly, trendy restaurants are building facilities that include gender neutral restrooms. I can see some advantage in this.

Al, please don't start this argument again, that was one of the worst threads in recent history.

What argument is that, ghug?

Arizona is the only state that keeps Florida from winning the "Most Fucked Up State" award year after year. I have no idea what they are thinking. Must be the desert heat or something.

So debate on a bill in one house of a state legislature is newsworthy now? I guess things don't even have to be laws or even be voted on for obiwanobiwan to let us know how OUTRAGED he is about something.

I demand justice! Oh wait, wrong thread.

They're having a debate, why can't we... it's called transparent government and it's a good thing, Invictus. It lets us know when they're being idiots before the fact so that we can save ourselves from them.

If this is so unworthy of your precious time and attention, Invictus, why waste even more of it complaining about just how unworthy it is?

And yes. Yes, I consider it newsworthy.

I'd consider it FAR more newsworthy than the "Top 5 Ways You Can Tell If Your Spouse is Cheating On You" and like nonsense you see dotting homepages...

And far more newsworthy than the whole controversy surrounding Abercrombie & Fitch instituting a size/weight limit in terms of who they deign to allow to shop at their oh-so-special little store...

If THAT gets play across the major networks (and it did last week) I'd like to think an actual law that actively targets a minority of Americans for the heinous crime of their being a minority--one Kavanagh admits in another article he largely disregards as "weird" and nothing else--can be discussed as well.

Or, you know, we could always stick to our usual routine of discussion...

Wanna debate about God?
THIS PERSON IS A MULTI!
Fuck the mods!
Stop telling the mods to fuck off!
THIS PERSON IS A MULTI!
Wanna talk about God?
MY isn't that obiwanobiwan a handsome, intelligent young fellow!

(What? You guys don't discuss that last one? Oh well...) ;)

@ghug

Sorry, my friend. I was genuinely trying to be helpful. I usually avoid these sorts of threads but I'd had an idea that to me really seemed genuinely good.

So a grown man should be able to go into the woman's restroom while an 8 year old girl is in there using the restroom, because we don't want HIM to feel uncomfortable? Just because today he feels like a lady?

We're more concerned with his discomfort and the 1% like him, than the 99% who are uncomfortable with grown men sharing public restrooms with little girls?

It is such an obnoxious sense of entitlement to think that your discomfort as an adult who chooses an alternative lifestyle is more important than the overwhelming majority of the people in society who don't think its appropriate for men to share public restrooms with girls, just because they wore a dress to applebees that night.

And for context, although I haven't heard of this measure, and think carding people at restrooms is a dumb solution, it is in response to a recent law that said business owners could not prevent transvestites from using the womens restroom at bars and resturaunts. I'm not even sure if that one passed, but it got a lot of press a couple weeks ago.

"So a grown man should be able to go into the woman's restroom while an 8 year old girl is in there using the restroom, because we don't want HIM to feel uncomfortable? Just because today he feels like a lady?"

Yes and no...key word there is "TODAY."

If the man genuinely "feels" like a woman trapped in a man's body--and there are such cases, it's a real thing--and he lives and dresses and is in all but sexual anatomy a woman...yes, then "he" is really a "she" on the inside, yes? So "she" should be allowed to use the Ladies' Room, in my view.

That's not an impermanent, "Oh, today I'll be a woman just so I can go into the Ladies' Room" that's a living, breathing reality for that person.

"We're more concerned with his discomfort and the 1% like him, than the 99% who are uncomfortable with grown men sharing public restrooms with little girls?"

Being in the majority is NEVER a justification for denying a minority rights--

One 60 years ago could have said "Well, only 12-25% of the USA is black...why make 60-75% of our white citizens uncomfortable sharing a fountain or a bathroom with a black man when they're in the minority?"

"It is such an obnoxious sense of entitlement to think that your discomfort as an adult who chooses an alternative lifestyle is more important"

I'll stop you there and say 1. A sense of entitlement to equal rights? Yes, how obnoxious, and 2. "An alternative lifestyle," so? So they live differently than you do, that is no reason to deny them rights...and doing so implies your lifestyle has more worth or validity than theirs.

Continue:

"than the overwhelming majority of the people in society who don't think its appropriate for men to share public restrooms with girls, just because they wore a dress to applebees that night."

1. Again, being in the majority is NOT a justification for your views or for denying anyone their rights, that's a fallacy at best and malicious at worst

2. If said "grown men" identify in a gender sense as women...then society should learn to accept them as such in the same way we accept one another already based on other senses of identity.

It's NOT a spur of the moment thing we're talking about, and that's not the case I'm defending--

If they identify as women, and dress like women, and consider themselves women...

Then they are women in a man's body, and they can't help that, and to deny them their rights and, worse, denigrate their identity as an individual is orientationalist and bigoted.

Obiobi, this isn't about rights, its about discomfort. I'm going to take the side of the little girls on this one, and defend their comfort over the transvestites.

You mock the civil rights moment when you compare the struggles for racial equality to a man being able to use a woman's bathroom because he feels ucomfortable in the men's room.

And let's be practical about this, for those who actually live as women, this is a non issue. They will continue to live and pass as women in any kind of social encounter, and it won't make little girls uncomfortable because they will likely never know it was a man - exactly what the true transcender probably wants, for society to perceive them as they perceive themselves.

But again being practical, there are a LOT of Fucking perverts out there. Now the law entitles them to follow a little girl into the restroom at a mall or family resturaunts because they just have to claim that they identify as a woman, and were just exercising their rights.

You go to the room that matches you lower genitals. Don't like it? Tough shit. I'd rather not have a ladyboy in the same restroom I am in, but that is better than the ladyboy going to the ladies bathroom or lockerroom.

Of course the malls around here all have what they call "family restrooms" with something akin to a series of waterclosets with changing rooms - 4 or 6 per family restroom. And they are unisex so that mom and dad can take thek kids in but they aren't restricted to families and this is perfect for pre-op ladyboys.

Obiobi,

A man who feels like a woman wants to use a woman's restroom because he is uncomfortable using the restroom in front of men. So in turn he is willing to pass his own discomfort on to every woman who feels the same way - uncomfortable using the restroom in front of a man. Where the hell are their rights in this?

"the comfort of the many, outweigh the comfort of the few"
-Spock

Notice how the needs ofbthe few outweigh the needs of the many in obi's mind here? We talk abortion and he screams women's rights but then he'd let this maladjusted individual trample all.over the right's of women to feel.comfortable and safe when they are at their most vulnerable.

'We're more concerned with his discomfort and the 1% like him, than the 99% who are uncomfortable with grown men sharing public restrooms with little girls?'

no, it's not about those 'grown men' being uncomfortable, it is about them not being outed. Trans-women tend to be killed in horrible ways, and thus avoid being outed where possible. It is for more than a little bit uncomfortable, when they are living their lifes as the woman they are, that means presenting in public as female, and at that point not wanting to go into a men's toilet where their safety could be at risk.

And little girls are unlikely to notice a thing when a trans-woman goes into a cubicle to pee. I don't see what level of discomfort is being risked to them, and you don't see the threat to life which the trans community face. (though largely trans men don't seem to suffer from the same level of threat to their lives)

@Draug, 'mal-adjusted individual'? This is a much of a developmental issue as sexuality, but while acceptance of the gay/lesbian community has come a long way in the past 40 years, trans issues have a long way to come. I would have expected better from you.

and, the actual case here is: 'In an ongoing case, a Colorado family has filed a complaint against the state after their six-year-old, who was born a boy, was banned from using the girl's bathroom at her primary school.'

This is not about grown -men- trans women, peeing infront of other women, this is about trans children who likely don't understand why they are being treated differently from the other kids they identify with...

Well said, orathic, +1....

To deal with the "needs of the few/many" theme here--

Spock's quote is logical--NOT necessarily moral.

As much as I prize the logic Spock and Sherlock Holmes display, logic is no substitute for morality.

Again, any democracy worth its salt protects the rights and voice of its minorities...otherwise, the whole concept of democratic procedure descends into mob and majority rule and the 51% bullying the 49% into whatever the former group wishes, regardless of morality, simply because it CAN based on raw numbers.

Raw numbers never justifies a position, and doesn't in and of itself make a MORAL sentiment. (On a Trekker note, it's worth noting that Kirk famously inverts that principle and says the needs of the few outweighed the needs of the many when the 6 living Enterprise members risked their lives and careers--even blew up the Enterprise--in a mission to bring back to life the 1 deceased member, Spock...it was, in Kirk's view, the moral thing to do, and something the crew of the Enterprise agreed on...that sometimes, the few or the one is worth that extra bit of sacrifice or protection.)

"You mock the civil rights moment when you compare the struggles for racial equality to a man being able to use a woman's bathroom because he feels ucomfortable in the men's room."

Racial rights vs. Gender rights--

I maintain that the LGBT fight is OUR generation's civil right's fight, and in that sense, I see no difference in transgendered people today being given the short end of the straw not based on the content of their character but simply on what they were born as and black men and women facing a similar struggle 60 years ago.

I don't at all mock the Civil Rights movement--I uphold its core principle, that we ought to judge and be judged based on "the content of our character" and NOT on factors such as race or sex or gender or religion or anything like that.

Grown or children, either way, LGBT people should NOT face slander and persecution simply because of who they are, and should not be subject to ID procedures that is instituted with a definite degree of malice and an objective to humiliate and persecute based on gender identity.

If they harm someone, prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.

If not, let them live their lives and be treated the way YOU would want to be treated...I'm assuming, philcore, Draugnar, that you would not take kindly to having to present ID or being publicly questioned for the mere crime of being who you are publicly and wanting to use the restroom?

"We talk abortion and he screams women's rights but then he'd let this maladjusted individual trample all.over the right's of women to feel.comfortable and safe when they are at their most vulnerable"

1. How dare you describe someone's gender identity as "maladjusted"...I consider a bigot who puts down the identities of others more "maladjusted" than a transgendered individual who is good and honest and simply wants to use the restroom any day.

2. And I still scream women's rights--let the WOMEN say if they're uncomfortable with this, and uncomfortable on the whole. Who is introducing this but a MAN, John Kavanagh...who has appointed himself judge of what defines "men as men" and "women as women" apparently...wow, an older white male making such judgments--I haven't heard THAT one before!

If a great many women said they felt uncomfortable about this, I'd listen and consider.

But this is a man deciding what's best and what's "moral" for both sexes and for all gender orientations...you'll forgive me if I call him to task on that when I feel he's not qualified to make such an assessment.

Spock is being misused. The quote is about needs. Food, water, escaping the range of the Genesis Device. Substituting comfort is a category error.

What a fucking non-issue used to get conservative votes.

It really doesn't matter where you take a piss when we have nuclear war, environmental destruction, poverty, famine and disease to worry about. Who gives a flying fuck if somebody feels uncomfortable?

If you're worried about safety - it's just as easy for a man to walk into a woman's restroom and rape somebody as it is for a transgender person. Wearing stockings really won't change the fact that it is possible to do so. Are you guys completely paranoid or what? Yes the world is not safe and it's possible that somebody will molest your daughter in a bathroom. Trans-gender laws aren't going to change that significantly.

The arguments in favour of this all seem to be based upon a phobia of some kind of sexual perversion which you seen transgenderism to be, which definitely obstructs the argument as you're starting from a prejudiced viewpoint.

Seriously though, there aren't that many transgender's about to worry about, and what's at stake here is a bit of embarassment, not a rape epidemic.

It seems that to this small minority what is at stake is human dignity itself. Acceptance in society of a state of being which they had no control over. I know a number of trans people, and the most interesting coming out stories are the ones where their loved ones told them, 'oh i always knew, since you were four in the kitchen telling me you weren't a girl' - said a trans-man from eastern europe, his grandmother apparently unsurprised... What gender we identify with is something most people know before puberty (while sexual orientation is something which often becomes obvious to individuals when they start feeling sexual attraction to someone)

We have an unhealthy obsession with sex. Gender identity has little to do with sex, any woman (whether trans or not) is capable of raping your daughter - and while it is thankfully rare, the number of murders and disfiguring injuries suffered by members of the trans community each year is not.