Someone or some group is going to feel that their rights were not upheld no matter what…that is just the way it goes. And yes, people can vote with their feet.
Believe it or not, @momofthreeboys , you have been sharing bathrooms with trans women for years with no apparent harm to your rights. Just something to think about.
A TED talk by a young trans woman now in college – a so-called “trans male,” as one poster in this thread so disingenuously refers to trans girls in an attempt to conjure fear in his audience:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nicole-maines-tedx_us_57360103e4b060aa781a22a3
According to him, this young lady should have been compelled to use the boys’ room when she was in high school.
And locker rooms too, I have little doubt.
PS: momofthreeboys, no matter how many times you repeat it, a trans woman using a women’s restroom does not make that restroom “co-ed,” and your suggestion of making all public restrooms co-ed is an entirely different issue, which is entirely irrelevant to the subject of this thread.
It’s funny, until yesterday, I would not have thought that the issue of trans bathrooms/locker rooms has ever affected me.
I was at my athletic club, where I undressed and got into my gym clothes. As I walked towards the workout room, I passed a woman who was there as well, who just finished a class. Only until I got very close did it appear that this was a transitioning man (sheesh – is that the way to say it?)
And I realized, wow, this probably happens more often than I realized… and… no harm is being done to anyone… somehow the world still continues to turn…
Right, just like Jim Crow laws!
The problem I have is that even if one believes them to be sinners, there does not seem to be an instruction as to how one treats them accordingly. Jesus said “love one another”, which seems like it should be the guiding philosophy. KKmama above is some kind of minister, but clearly she is not one who is preaching hate and bigotry she somehow managed to glean from a book.
Katliamom, I think a preferable way to say it might be “a transitioning trans woman.”
Thank you, @DonnaL.
Kkmama has a trans friend who supply preaches for her at one of her churches when she needs a Sunday off.
The congregation enjoys my friend’s preaching and is always glad to hear her. There were a few raised eyebrows the first time but people got over seeing her as trans and now see her as a person. Of course she used the women’s bathroom. That church also hosted a gay pride service last fall.
If said friend ever showed up to preach at my other congregation I would probably be fired from there.
@sylvan8798:
You are correct, the bible says we are supposed to love others as ourselves as a prime directive, but unfortunately more than a few of the religious, especially the religious right, have forgotten that, that our job is to love and leave the judging to God. It is one of the prime reasons that so many have been turned off by religion, the religious right/fundamentalist Christians in this country have made religion as being tantamount to hate. That is sad, because there are a lot of churches and synagogues that have figured that out, that what is written in the Bible may or may not be what the faith is about, and more importantly we are supposed to love others, not judge or hate them. I wonder if some of the religious groups weighing in on this, judging transgender people, making claims that basically they are mentally ill or suspect, realize how badly it makes them appear, especially given the horrible abuse scandals that have hit many of those groups, behavior of their heads, or covering for priests and such molesting kids.
The antagonism in African-American society to gay rights has been overstated. Certainly there are people hostile to gays for religious bias and other reasons, like in every other society. But gay people have in the main, been known and accepted (admittedly grudgingly) although not venerated, for generations by their fellow citizens whom happen to be Black. Civil Rights Leader and MLK associate Bayard Rustin was “out” all through his activist years. Sure, in the recent past Black churches have at times been at the head of anti-gay protests, like in Florida and California, but by are large as regards gay people whom interact with and live among Black folks, they enjoy a live-and-let-live situation. There have been conflicts, as interestingly revealed in the PBS documentary ‘Flags,’ a few years ago.
@musicprnt Let me tell you about the day the church lost my D. It was the Sunday before the election of 08, when Prop 8 was on the ballot. Our pastor wasn’t there, and the region sent in a speaker who gave a talk (I wouldn’t call it a sermon, he didn’t once reference scripture) excoriating gays.
I was a helper in the Jr/Sr High Sunday School, and afterward we would herd them over to the worship center and sit them in a group near the front. We adults would intersperse ourselves among the kids, the better to thump them on the heads when the giggling got out of control. There were about 30 of them, and it was a challenging job.
This one Sunday, as this guy launched into his diatribe, I could see the kids were listening intently for a change, and then I could see them starting to stiffen up. I knew that D had a close friend who was a gay boy, and I knew that most of them were at least acquainted with someone who was gay. These kids knew from their own experience that gays weren’t monsters and they heard this talk for exactly what it was – hateful lies.
After a few minutes, they started whispering quietly among themselves and then D, who was directly in front of me, turned around and whispered, “Mom, we want to walk out.” A lot of things went through my head, but I told her No, that it would be inexcusably rude, and might get our youth pastor fired. They grudgingly accepted that. After, in the car, I told D that I was proud of her and her friends, and if it had just been the two of us, I would have joined her in walking out. As it was, I didn’t feel I could make that decision for other people’s children. She also understood and accepted that.
And she has never darkened the doors of a church again. To her, church means narrow-minded, out-of-date, intolerant, ignorant hate – the exact opposite of the sweet fragrance of Christ which we’re supposed to be spreading around. So, good job, Southern Baptist Convention. Good job.
^I would totally have let them walk, but then I’m not one to stand on convention.
I’ve often wondered if I should have, sylvan. I should have seen it coming. It was the part about other people’s children, and allowing them to take part in a demonstration with which I knew most of the parents would violently disagree. If the situation were reversed, I wouldn’t have appreciated it.
BTW, I also left the SBC soon after and after lying fallow for a couple years joined up with the Quakers. If nothing else, they’re sweet-spirited.
‘Supposed’ or not, who knows? There is plenty scriptural support for just about any point of view.
@sorghum :
Unfortunately, that is not uncommon, and one thing that a lot of these religious groups can’t fathom is that the hate and venom they preached, that fired up older generations, is increasingly falling on deaf ears. Younger people, even those who are religious, simply don’t abide by the whole hate thing, they don’t need/want religion to tell them they are better than others (and this is what a lot of this is, take a look at the demographics of the Southern Baptists, or the conservative mainline protestant and Catholic churches who take such a line about gays), and what you see are older, less well educated people who eat that up. One of the reasons religious conservatives have been fighting gay rights law, protested when Disney and others in commercials or at their business went after gay customers/were LGBT friends, is that they know d**n well that once people start getting to know LGBT people, that they are simply people, sharing the same struggles and whatnot…and that cat is out of the bag, young people, even younger people in the so called evangelical churches, are realizing that stance doesn’t match what they see as being God and what God wants.
It is why religion is losing its luster, for all the megachurches and conservative churches of all sorts proclaiming how they are growing, they are losing the young people, the Pew Poll, the Barma report on religion, all report that young people have been turned off by the negativity towards LGBT people and the obession with sex that many conservative churches have. Friend of mine was saying that the Catholic church he belonged to, that once was pretty open, they had gay members, had a new priest appointed who reflected the views of the Bishop, who in turn had been appointed by JPII (probably one of the most homophobic popes there has been in a long time), and the priest was openly anti gay, several gay members were made to feel unwelcome and the priest went on and on about gays as sinners and the whole nine yards, and my friend said they lost about 30% of their flock, he left, other more liberal people left, and almost everyone in their 20’s and 30’s walked out. There was a church meeting to discuss people leaving, and one young kid, probably in his 20’s, confronted the priest, who blamed the loss on kids wanting to play video games and such, and the kid told the priest that they couldn’t stand the hypocrisy, that the priest was railing against gays, claimed that same sex parents were akin to child abuse (parroting the stance of the US Bishops and the Vatican), and the kid looked at him and said "you have the gall to claim that loving parents, because they are same sex, are child abusers after everything the church has done, covering up for pedophile priests and ignoring how serious the problem was? " Of course the priest deflected, claimed it had nothing to do with things, but to the young people it does.
Polls show that many young people associate religion with hate and divisiveness, to levels often close to the way they view hate groups like the KKK, and young people are turning away in droves. It used to be that young people would leave religion when they became a young adult, then would come back when they were having families, but that is not happening any more, at least not the way it used to. Despite claims to the contrary, the Catholic Church is losing members rapidly, the claim is that 50% of Catholics attend mass regularly, but that is coming under question, and it may only be 25%, and more importantly, like many churches they are getting old, not drawing many young people (individual churches may). Many young people and even more than a few in their 30’s and up are getting tired of religion about dogma and marginalizing others, or the obsession with sex, the fastest growing group is people who believe in some sort of God or deity, but not a specific one, and would rather figure it out for themselves than be told what it is.
BTW liberal churches are not always better about LGBT people, the problem with more liberal churches is often they view LGBT people as a cause, rather than as people, and in a sense get marginalized once again. I belonged for a time to a very liberal Episcopal church, it was located in the staid burbs but had a lot of LGBT members, the problem was that they couldn’t quite see that a lot of the LGBT folk were looking for community, looking for healing from being outcasts and so forth, and it didn’t work for them because it was all “we welcome you, you are our brother”, but in the end it was only in the confines of church services. I ended up leaving when the battles were raging around the whole Anglican communion, where the conservative churches, especially in Africa, were raising a ruckus because the US had elected a gay bishop, allowed women to be priests and Bishops, and the rector of the church defended the cowardly way the Archbishop of Canterbury catered especially to the idiots in Africa, and said that we needed to maintain the communion because of the charitable programs the communion ran, including a lot of money from the US helping keeping the communion and the churches in Africa going…and I heard all the excuses, how the African churches were created by evangelical (white) missionaries, how it was our duty to help them and turn the other cheek, but do you throw your LGBT members under the bus with that as an excuse? The problem with the churches is when ideology and dogma and ‘causes’ forgets we are dealing with human beings…
btw the same trend is why the GOP is running into real trouble as well, because of their support for the religious right, many young people, even those who otherwise would be pretty conservative, can’t stand the obsession with gays and abortion and sex. Fighting to not pay for birth control isn’t going to go over well, nor is calling for a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage or as with this law, finding ways to write laws to put bigotry back on the table, to allow for example so called religious people, including medical providers and the like, the right to not treat LGBT people if it is based on their religious belief, it really is turning off the young.
@soghum:
The irony is that all the scriptures, including the Q’Ran, have pronouncements that are clear and not ambiguous, we are supposed to love other people as we love ourselves and to leave the judging to God, the New Testament, especially in Matthew, are full of pronouncements that as a follower of Christ someone is not supposed to use it to make themselves higher than other people nor are they supposed to use it to look down on others or hate them,I guess they didn’t read those sections of the scripture.
One of the churches in my area states that part of their mission is to bring people who’ve been excluded from religion into their flock. They do a lot of advocacy work with the LGBTQ+ community and other organizations. They (and other churchs nearby) have large Pride flags flying. I’ve also seen some with Black Lived Matter flags. It’s really nice that many churchs are becoming more liberal and doing more to embrace the Bible’s teachings of loving others. Though I’m not deeply religious I went to elementary school in a Sufi community (which also had many Quakers!) and everyone was very accepting. I had a few gay teachers and I met several trans and non-binary people - no one ever judged them and they were all important members of the community. It always surprises me when people use religion to justify bigotry or discrimination because the religious communities I’ve been a part of have always preached acceptance and love.
I listen to one of the nutcase end-times pastors on the radio (not because I agree, but because I monitor what they are up to) and he refers to this as “the puffledust concept of religion”. HIS god is only taking a few people to heaven, (any minute now, of course - please send us money in the meantime) where they will apparently eat banana splits and chortle and gloat over the fact that everyone else is in Hades.
H isn’t too happy that neither D nor S seems to be going to church unless they are home. I’ve told them I will support them whatever they decide to do.