Rico's rants: Bathroom wars

27 October 2016

Bathroom wars

Rico's friend Kelley forwards this CNS News article by Eugene Delgaudio, the President of Public Advocate of the United States, a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving traditional marriage and protecting the American family from those who would eliminate both institutions:

It’s kind of a simple rule, and here’s how it goes: Little boys use the little boys’ room. Little girls use the little girls’ room. And if you’re not sure whether you’re a little boy or a little girl, check your birth certificate.
Unfortunately, with the advent of fancy-sounding terms like “gender fluidity”, this is no longer the case. Now, by decree, President Obama has used the Department of Education and the Department of Justice to implement a radical, left-wing social science experiment on the nation’s public schools.
Most will recall that on 13 May 2016, the Department of Education (DOE) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued what they called a “guidance letter” to every one of the nation’s public schools. But this was no casual letter containing advice, rather, it was a thinly veiled threat: either schools let students use whatever bathroom and locker room they wish, according to how they feel about their “gender” on a given day, or the schools will lose their Federal funding.
What is new is information about why they did it. The same day the guidance was issued, on their official blogs, the DOE and DOJ alleged that the reason for this change was because of requests received from “a growing chorus of educators, parents, and students around the country about the need for guidance on how schools can successfully support transgender students and non-transgender students in compliance with Federal civil rights laws.”
Oh, really, a “growing chorus,” you say? Public Advocate smelled a rat. On the same day that DOE issued its “guidance” letter, Public Advocate shot off a Freedom of Information Act request to both the DOE and the DOJ, seeking copies of all the “letters, emails, petitions, etc.” that had been received from this “growing chorus” supporting bathroom desegregation.
At first, DOE balked at Public Advocate’s request for a “fee waiver”, claiming that there was “no public interest” in the information we sought. Oh really, “no public interest,” you say? In response, we explained that we believed DOE’s “growing chorus” claim was a bluff, and that we were calling them on that bluff. In our appeal letter, we wrote:
“If, for example, DOE actually had received very few or even no letters and comments on the topic, that would undermine DOE’s claim of a ‘chorus’ of voices supporting transgender bathrooms. Or, if the majority of requests to DOE were actually in support of students using bathrooms which correspond to their biological sex, that would undermine the legitimacy of DOE’s decision to force transgender bathrooms on the nation’s schools.”
Apparently our appeal letter had the intended effect. Realizing it had no leg to stand on, DOE granted our fee waiver. Then, on 12 September 2016, DOE finally sent us four hundred pages of documents in response to our FOIA request. And that’s when things got interesting.
We read through the documents and found that there was no “growing chorus” of Americans asking DOE for transgender bathroom desegregation. In fact, if there was any “growing chorus” to be found, it was on the other side of the issue, those asking DOE not to allow bathroom “flexibility.”
In fact, DOE received only six letters from individuals who requested transgendered bathrooms. Meanwhile, DOE received 42 letters from individuals specifically asking DOE not to give in to transgender bathroom demands. That means seven times as many individuals wrote DOE to oppose its plan than wrote to support it.
In addition to individual letters, DOE received 27 pre-written “form letters” in favor of bathroom desegregation, but it received at least four thousand petitions asking DOE not to desegregate school bathrooms! That’s 157 times more people opposed to the idea than in favor of it.
Additionally, DOE received a handful of letters from pro-homosexual/transgender lobbying groups, all special interest groups, much different from the individual “educators, parents, and students,” as DOE had claimed.
What about the DOJ? do they have any letters on this? Although Public Advocate filed its request with the DOJ in May of 2016, no substantive response has been forthcoming. Apparently Attorney General Loretta Lynch has been too busy explaining why Hillary Clinton has not been indicted. However, Public Advocate was recently told that there was only an “outside possibility” that DOJ received any such letters at all.
It would appear that Public Advocate hit the nail squarely on the head. There was no “growing chorus” of Americans supporting transgender access to the bathroom of their choice, as the Obama Administration claimed. In fact there were only six individual letters, not even an octet. Sadly, one of these six was from a deeply confused parent who wrote DOE to explain how she wanted to help her little boy who began his “transition” to being a little girl, which she claimed started when he was only three years old! On the other hand, there were thousands of sensible Americans who DOE knew opposed to the idea. It is now clear that the Obama Administration based this grotesque social experiment on the views of only six troubled and confused Americans, along with 27 pre-written “form letters”. Meanwhile, the “growing chorus” of thousands of Americans opposed to the idea did not fit the story that DOE wanted to tell, so it just ignored them.
The Obama Administration continues to force its radical, leftist policies on this country, even though they are opposed by a majority of Americans. If he must be a tyrant, then the least that President Obama could do is be an honest tyrant. Instead, he pretends that a “growing chorus” of Americans support his radical agenda to ensure that our children are robbed of their natural modesty while in the care of government schools.