Does the evolution of society remind you of the game: paper, scissors, rock? It does me.
An article on Townhall.com by Terence Jeffrey is entitled: Get the ACLU Out of Our Bathrooms.
It involves a suit which the ACLU filed in support of a “man” who decide that he was really a woman. Before he got a sex change operation he was hired as a bus driver. The bus company had made arrangements to have its drivers use … but here, I’ll let Jeffrey explain:
After he was hired, however, Etsitty informed his supervisor that "she was transsexual and that she would be appearing more traditionally female at work." This posed a logistical problem for the bus company. It had arranged for its drivers to have access to the public restrooms at certain businesses along its routes. Would Etsitty use the male or female restrooms?
Etsitty informed her supervisors, according to the court, "that she had some kind of written direction that required that she use female restrooms." The supervisors told Etsitty "they were concerned about potential liability from co-workers, customers and the general public as a result of plaintiff, a biological male, using female restrooms." The company let her go, notifying her, as reported by Findlaw, that she would be eligible for rehiring "once she completed the surgery."
Etsitty sued, citing a federal law that bans discrimination based on "sex."
In the ACLU's view, not only was Etsitty's anatomy irrelevant, so, too, was the right to privacy of anyone who happened to be in a women's room Etsitty might use. "(N)o court has ever held that there is any legal right to privacy that would be violated simply by permitting a transgender person to use a public bathroom that corresponds to his or her gender identity," said the ACLU.
Besides, even if privacy was an issue in public restrooms, the ACLU suggested, the architecture in such facilities protects it. As Etsitty had explained to his supervisors, according to the ACLU, his anatomy would be shielded from others using the women's rooms "because there are stalls for privacy."
Alas, the ACLU published this brief two years ago -- apparently failing to anticipate that Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho would someday seek to withdraw his guilty plea for engaging in "disorderly conduct" in a men's room stall.
In a brief submitted this month supporting Craig's claim, the ACLU argued that what the senator is alleged to have done in an airport bathroom is free speech protected by the First Amendment -- no matter what some guy seeking a little privacy in the next stall might think about it.
"The government does not have a constitutionally sufficient justification for making private sex a crime," said the ACLU. "It follows that an invitation to have private sex is constitutionally protected and may not be made a crime. This is so even where the proposition occurs in a public place, whether in a bar or a restroom."
But then the ACLU went a step further, arguing that there is not only a right to solicit sex, but also to engage in it, in a public restroom.
Ok, so we have the court deciding whose rights trump whose.
When I enter a bathroom, I don’t expect total privacy, in other words I don’t other men to leave, but I don’t expect women to walk in. Most people still do not flaunt their excretory functions. I have to admit that the idea of having women walk in does not bother me much. But I would think that women may object if men walked into the ladies room. Perhaps I’m wrong about this and I would be interested in female responses.
I admit I would be bothered by sexual activity in the bathroom since I don’t think that sex is a spectator sport, at least for most people; or unless you have been invited to an orgy or asked to pay to watch.
So the ACLU, and the court system is now tasked with the momentous decision of whose rights trump whose. The person who walks into a bathroom in the expectation that he or she will meet only other people of the same gender, or people who are anatomically of an opposite gender but feel they have the right to use the bathroom of their choice for excretory or sexual activity.
Of course this right vs. rights extends beyond the bathroom.
Does a half-delivered baby have the protection of the law that another second or so would give it, or can it be killed with impunity at the whim of its mother aided by an abortionist?
Can a white kid expect the law to punish the people who knock him unconscious and kick him while he’s on the ground if his six assailants are black, or do the black kids deserve to get a slap on the wrist as long as the white kid doesn’t die and two nooses were found on a tree near his school several months before the assault?
Can law firms make their partners wealthy by filing class action suits using fake science because we have to protect American’s precious rights to have access to the courts?
Should we be willing to accept a terrorist attack every few years because we refuse to give the government the power to use data mining to intercept communications traffic between terrorists, since calls between innocent parties may be included in the data that’s mined?
Should a tin-pot dictator who provides weapons to terrorist which kill American servicemen and women, and who is developing nuclear weapons which he promises to use to destroy Israel be invited to speak at an American University to demonstrate our commitment to free speech?
Paper, scissors, rock. Whose rights trump whose?
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