@albert69:
There is a difference between belief and the kinds of feelings that engender someone to want to transition. There is a direct parallel in evolution, there are sadly a lot of people who believe a bronze age creation myth is the truth and have tried to create ‘science’ to back up that the earth was created in 6 days 6000 years ago as it is today, but the fact is all they have is a belief that is true, whereas evolution has mega tons of evidence backing it up that can be proven. Those who believe gays are sinners or deviants or that it is a ‘choice’ are relying, not on fact, but for the most part belief inspired by supposedly what scripture says, whereas the reality is that being gay is a variation on human sexual orientation that as time has gone on, has been shown to exist in nature, and also follows the rules on typical human variations.
More importantly, the claims that for example if we allow same sex marriage kids would be hurt, or society will fall apart, have been shown to be false, studies of kids of gay parents show they are perfectly normal, and last I checked same sex marriage hasn’t cause the world to fall apart, people are still having kids, men and women are not rushing into same sex relationships because the sex is better (yes, virginia, there were a couple of people who wrote books that said that would be the result if we allowed gays to be socially acceptable, that straight relationships would disappear and kids wouldn’t be born and society would collapse, and they were given credence because they were college professors of sociology…problem was no one bothered to notice they were both fundamentalist Christians, which means anything they came up with should have been viewed as suspicious). Facts win out over bigotry, and just because someone believes something doesn’t mean it is true or more importantly, should be the law.
In terms of transgender people, the bigots would want people to believe that this is just one day someone decides “I am a woman” and that is that, which is absolutely fiction. First of all, transgender people have been working with therapists and mental health professionals for a long time, there have been signiicant studies, attempts to ‘cure’ transgender people, and over the past 50 or 60 years this has been done seriously…and in the end, this is not some will of the wisp, basically it has been shown that transgender people don’t choose this, it isn’t ‘gender expression’ that some quarters of the feminist movement claimed it was, everything indicates that people who are transgender were likely born that way, and that it is inate in who they are, it isn’t a ‘choice’, and science is backing this up, there is serious evidence that it is caused by brain structure and in turn is likely a result of some wrinkle in the hormone cycle pre natally, all of which is backed up by research, not by ‘belief’.
The other thing is, in a world of beliefs, you may have the right to your beliefs, but that is not the basis for law and shouldn’t be.The white trash down south believed that blacks were inferior, not in a small way thanks to the work of churches like the Southern Baptists, and the whole system of Jim Crow was based on that belief, but that doesn’t mean their beliefs should have been respect or worse, that the law reflect that. People have the right to believe what they wish but those beliefs end where other people’s right to live their lives as they see fit comes into play. The anti LGBT people have every right to feel as they wish, but when they want to put their beliefs, which generally are based in religious belief, into law they are over the line , especially since by what right does their religious beliefs have to be placed into laws, when other religious belief doesn’t mirror theirs?
The NC bathroom law may represent the beliefs of the great unwashed in the hills who control the legislature, but it doesn’t stand up to the test of law, that it actually does something in societies best interest. It certainly doesn’t protect women from sexual molestation, and it isn’t based on real world facts either. Plenty of towns and cities have had laws allowing transgender people to use the appropriate restroom for many years now, or simply didn’t care, and do you want to know how many times a man dressed as a woman to gawk at women or molest them in those places? Zero. And many of these places are cities with millions of people, where if it was gonna happen it would happen there, and it didn’t happen…so what is the point of the law? Its only point is to discriminate against transgender women because some people don’t like them and believe they are perverts or sinners, and what the hell is the law doing catering to that kind of belief?
I can respect people’s beliefs, what I won’t respect is their right to use them to hurt other people or tell them how to live, especially when it is based in religious belief. We had a period in history where religious belief controlled society, and it was far from a golden age, it was one of the bloodiest, darkest, lowest times in human civilization, every time religious belief was allowed to rule society you ended up with an oppressed, backward going society, whether it was the middle ages and the church, or the puritans in England.
And yes, the law wasn’t just about bathrooms, as bad as it was, it invalidated any local law proteting LGBT people, so if Charlotte or another town had anti discrimination laws, the state legislature invalidated them, made it illegal for any town or jurisdiction to pass any law not mirrored in state law, and since the statehouse is controlled by the rednecks in North Carolina, well, you get the picture. By the way, North Carolina, before the Supreme Court ruled on same sex marriage, passed a ballot initiative that not only amended the state constitution to ban same sex marriage, but it banned gay couples from using the law to get any of the rights of marriage through contracts, including things like trying to protect a surviving partners rights to the other ones 401k, to keep custody of children, medical power of attorney and so forth…so don’t tell me this law came out of nowhere, or was the result of the recent governor and legislature, the amendment I was talking about was passed more than a few years ago on a statewide ballot and passed by something like 80% of the votes…so this law is only one more indication of who is running the state, and it isn’t the ‘good minded people’, that is for sure.