Cancer has side effects that no one tells you about. One of those side effects is that cancer changes what you care about.
My values didn’t change because of cancer, but what mattered to me certainly did. I find that I don’t care about all sorts of things that were once preeminent in my thinking; politics, and its assorted uglinesses, chief among them.
That’s why I am a late-comer to the boys-in-girls’-bathrooms debate. My opinion about this is the same as it was before, but my reaction to current events is less intense.
I heard about the Obama Administrations’ recent assault on our public schools via demands that the schools essentially do away with sex-divided bathrooms. My immediate thought was that this was an attack on little girls, and that my little girl, meaning my precious granddaughter, would, no matter the cost, never enter the doorway of a public school.
That’s what I care most about in these cancer days of my life: My God and my family. Not even my beloved country gets up on the scoreboard with those two things. My own life is second to them.
I plan to send my sweet baby girl to Catholic schools, but, if the local Catholic schools go all trendy and politically correct the way that many of our Catholic universities have done, I will not hesitate to go elsewhere. In my personal hierarchy of what I care about, my granddaughter easily outranks Catholic education. I will do what is best for her. Period.
That entirely personal assessment was pretty much the limit of my reaction to the transgender bathroom story. Then, I started getting emails about something called the “Maloney Amendment.” All these emails were couched in the take-no-prisoners language that pervades our current political discourse.
I’m used to that, so it didn’t penetrate my cancer-created indifference to current political sturm und drang. Then, mention of how the vote on the Maloney Amendment was a vote on the bathroom atrocity caught my eye.
I looked up the vote and read a bit of the name-calling and dramatics associated with it. My political instincts told me that things were not what I was being told.
The vote was disheartening to a pro-life, pro-family Democrat. The Ds lined up in a straight party vote for the Maloney Amendment, while 43 of the Rs voted to pass it. Then, in a demonstration of the power of the gavel, the Republican leadership managed to switch enough votes to kill the thing.
Afterwards the Ds chanted “shame-shame” at their Republican colleagues and Congressman Maloney, who had authored the amendment, said that he wasn’t that upset to see it die because a “poison pill” had been applied to it.
None of that was tough to uncover. There was the usual “I didn’t mean to vote for it, it was an accident” (I kid you not.) excuses from some of the Rs who had originally voted for it, and the claims of moral degeneracy leveled by the Rs against the Ds and the Ds against the Rs.
It seemed that everybody thought that they were voting the straight God ticket … except for those who had cast the “wrong” vote by accident. And they, of course, were just confused as to which way was God’s way to vote, either up or down.
It turned out — after a bit of digging — that the “poison pill” was an entirely necessary and appropriate amendment exempting religious institutions. But … exempting them from what?
The bill in question was about military contractors. The Maloney Amendment was a couple of lines referencing an Executive Order from 2014 by President Obama. The school bathroom thing just happened, and it is about public schools.
Do you see where I was going? This deal didn’t sound like it was about school bathrooms at all. It took a bit more back-tracking, but I found the executive order in question. It was an executive order requiring employment non-discrimination on the basis of sexual preference or gender identity for military contractors.
As I said earlier, I think the religious exemption was entirely appropriate and necessary. I also have real questions about the President enacting legislation by the stroke of a pen in this manner.
But, the fact remains that the entire dust up had nothing to do with the invidious school bathroom fight.
I dug deeper, and learned that the school bathroom fight wasn’t an Executive Order. It was a letter of “significant guidance” issued jointly by the Department of Justice and the Department of Education advising administrators of public schools as to how they should treat “transgender” students.
The letter contains a clear threat of withdrawal of Title IX monies from states whose schools fail to comply. Among other things, the letter requires that schools base their behavior entirely on the student’s self-assessment, without requiring any medical or psychological verification at all.
It covers a lot more than bathrooms, but here is the salient part of the letter concerning that issue:
- “Restrooms and Locker Rooms. A school may provide separate facilities on the basis of sex, but must allow transgender students access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity.14 A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so. A school may, however, make individual-user options available to all students who voluntarily seek additional privacy.15
- “ Title IX regulations permit a school to operate or sponsor sex-segregated athletics teams when selection for such teams is based upon competitive skill or when the activity involved is a contact sport.16 A school may not, however, adopt or adhere to requirements that rely on overly broad generalizations or stereotypes about the differences between transgender students and other students of the same sex (i.e., the same gender identity) or others’ discomfort with transgender students.17 Title IX does not prohibit age-appropriate, tailored requirements based on sound, current, and research-based medical knowledge about the impact of the students’ participation on the competitive fairness or physical safety of the sport.18
- “Single-Sex Classes. Although separating students by sex in classes and activities is generally prohibited, nonvocational elementary and secondary schools may offer nonvocational single-sex classes and extracurricular activities under certain circumstances.19 When offering such classes and activities, a school must allow transgender students to participate consistent with their gender identity.
These sections are also why I view this as a war on girls. It endangers young girls, subjects them to humiliating situations, and sets it up to all but destroy girls’ sports.
I could write a great deal about why I feel this is such an attack on girls. But I’ll limit my comments right now to the observation that this is just another verification of what I have believed about President Obama since he ran his misogynist political campaign against Senator Hillary Clinton and Governor Sarah Palin in 2008.
I believe that President Obama is a misogynist who favors legal abortion. Because he favors legal abortion, feminists have given a green light to every other misogynist thing he has done, including this latest.
The purpose of this post is to help readers understand what’s been happening in Congress, vis a vis their religious freedoms, and the welfare of their children.
Congress has the power to deep-six that letter any time it wants. The problem is that Congress is too mired in its own partisan bickering to look up and take notice of the needs of the American people. They won’t change until we demand better of them.