NC's transgender law violates Civil Rights Act, Justice says

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It is quite interesting to read posts by people who purport to understand religion, but who clearly do not. The rather vapid definitions of love and hate being used are so elementary and twisted that they only illustrate a political use of language, not an understanding of religion. Completely expected though in the age of political correctness, where words and meanings are falsified and turned upside down.

I accept the general tenet (and I assume most people do) that religion and God in particular advocate and teach “Love thy neighbor.” On that, I believe most agree. However, no where in the Bible does God say “Love thy neighbor” at the expenses of everything else that I (God) teach. Specifically, God instructed the exact opposite - that is why Jesus had disciples. God does not say accept everything that someone else wants to do, but instructed to simultaneously spread His word, while following His word.

But, somehow, people who do not understand religion need to resort to aforementioned vapid, carefully tailored definitions of love and hate. Love is now used to mean accepting of all what others do, even if one believes morally, societally, and intellectually that what is being done is wrong. Pure nonsense. Love does not mean accepting all that others do. Love means caring about someone enough to want to help them and stop them from coin something one religion teaches is wrong. Unlike, what posters write, the opposite of love is not hate; it is apathy.

Most important, God teaches to “Love thy neighbor” by not turning a blind eye to him and being apathetic, even if you vehemently disagree with him. And true love is shown by trying to show others God’s moral code. In contrast, love is not shown by turning a blind eye to God’s teachings and accepting something one knows is, according to God and religion, is wrong. To ignore God’s teaching at the expense of making another feel good is not love; it is allowing another to be errant in his ways - the ultimate in not caring about the individual.

We even employ this true meaning of love in our daily lives with our families and friends. There is a reason that there is something called “tough love.” Interesting that people do not want to use that term here, but I bet they use “tough love” within their own families and do not look in the mirror and call themselves hateful. Therefore, no need to call others who disagree on principled grounds hateful.

And this this new definition of hate is somewhat juvenile and only really affects people of low intellect. Think about it - if one does not agree with someone on something of on moral, religious, philosophically, or even scientific grounds, it must, by default, be for only one reason; that being hate, as the other aspects of intellectual disagreements do not count. Well, who knew.

Well then, what a waste of intellectual talent throughout human history. Philosophers and great thinkers, including the Founding Fathers and the like, were/are wasting their time thinking about what makes up a stable society and what motivates humans to behave as they do, when really all they had/have to do is look at actions and beliefs and call them love-based or hate-based.

Imagine that - all the intellectual machinations of the right to (and expectation of) privacy, right to practice one’s religion, right to free speech, and right to free association are hyper-intellectual concepts, which really are only truly grounded in two aspects, love and hate. Theses concepts/rights are only sideshows masking the real simplistic driving forces.of which there are only two.

Sorry, philosophy majors. Best throw away those philosophy degrees, as they are really just overcooked ideas and simply labeling people’s logic, motives, logic, beliefs and actions as love or hate will do. Again, who knew.

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And there you have it.

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I believe a lot of them would say you can love them, sans approval or facilitation of behavior you can’t condone. As to the rest…

… why stop at Christians, other than they’re near at hand and pretty much harmless? Plenty of real-time evidence that, while Christians might make you feel a little bad about yourself, Muslims would rather see you dead. A condition non-conducive to any further sinning on your part.

And, about that hating thing… personally, I don’t see the gay couple that puts a bakery out of business for not baking a cake, nor those that cheer them, as winning any compassion awards. Could just be me but I doubt it.

There was a post on here, sometime in the last month or so, about winning the argument on youtrissue but doing it in a way that alienated most of the crowd. Think it was from Pizzagirl and I regret not hitting the like button.

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AKA “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” The problem is, a lot of churches are all too good at communicating the hate part. The love part, not so much.

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“why stop at Christians, other than they’re near at hand and pretty much harmless? Plenty of real-time evidence that, while Christians might make you feel a little bad about yourself, Muslims would rather see you dead. A condition non-conducive to any further sinning on your part.”

Not sure if you’re being serious or not, but I’m going to take your statement at face value…

That’s a bit of a sweeping generalization you’re making about Muslims :open_mouth: ISIS and other such terrorist groups are radical extremists and are just as representative of Islam’s values as the KKK is of Christianity’s.

“And, about that hating thing… personally, I don’t see the gay couple that puts a bakery out of business for not baking a cake, nor those that cheer them, as winning any compassion awards. Could just be me but I doubt it.”

If the law bans discrimination against customers based on sexual orientation then the bakery is breaking the law. If there are religious freedom laws then people can vote with their feet. Either way I don’t really see the issue with the bakery going out of business - if you refuse to serve someone then there will be fallout from that.

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Without some legal certification of male/female (e.g., getting your sex designation officially revised on your DL, passport, or whatever), what’s to stop anyone from arbitrarily saying they are the other sex and walking into that locker room/bathroom?

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I bet de Torqumada thought it was tough love too when he had people “put to the question”. For that reason and many others, I am very grateful that our founding fathers separated church and state. It was not only for religious freedom, in terms of being free to practice the religion of your choice, but also for the laws of the land to be free from the church’s influence.

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@GMTplus7 First I’m going to reiterate what I posted earlier in the thread. Much like you or me trans people want to get in and out of the bathroom and go about the rest of their day. They’re not looking to cause a big disturbance or conflict and as a result many trans people use the bathroom that matches the gender they pass as. For example my brother who is trans still uses the women’s bathroom because he doesn’t quite pass as male yet. In the same way a trans woman who still looks like a cis male will probably use the men’s bathroom to avoid being harassed. So potential sexual predators will look different than the average trans woman trying to use the bathroom.

Secondly this bill didn’t change anything. Men can still walk into women’s restrooms. Heck they don’t even need to claim they’re a woman - they can walk in at any time.

Third I don’t completely understand why sexual assault in bathrooms is such a huge risk? It doesn’t seem like a particularly opportune place to find a victim. There are lots of other people and it’s a small space - not really any way to commit a crime in a space like that. Unless of course the bathroom is nearly empty, in which case it doesn’t matter if the man claims to be a woman or not - as stated above they can enter regardless.

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@Snowybuny

I just don’t see why transgendered folk can’t get their status legally changed (note that I did NOT say surgically changed) before they use facilities designated for the other sex. I think they should demonstrate some legal commitment to their identity; otherwise, why should my modesty (it doesn’t have to rise to the level of fear of sexual assault) be subject to abuse by fakers.

I change my clothes in airport bathrooms quite often, and U don’t go into a stall to do it. You think I wouldn’t call security on some guy who would come in to leer?

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260 is an explanation of the patriarchy. Father knows best, has the authority to make rules for the family and has the power to punish the rule breakers. And if Father is omniscient, he can even tell us what someone else is thinking.

This is pretty much where religion comes from. It isn’t where all religion is today. I repeat: son’s church flies rainbow flags. Women preach.

KKmama: Thank you for everything.

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@gmtplus7:

The answer to your question comes in 2 parts:

1)Why the obsession about men claiming they are transgendered and going to the women’s room? Why are you focusing on something that even proponents of the law admit has not happened, despite the fact that transgender women in many places have been going to rest rooms for a long time, and many places have such laws…so why are you worried about something that hasn’t happened? Among other things, a man who uses the transgender argument to walk into a bathroom to molest women would have to be pretty stupid, because it would make everyone there be on guard if a guy dresses as a guy walked into the women’s room. Rapists and molestors generally don’t operate in broad daylight, they don’t operate where there are others around…so you think a molester, peeping tom, whatever is going to waltz into a women’s room in a crowded mall or something claiming to be transgender? It makes no sese.

I have also heard the argument “well, what about an isolated women’s room”…if it is an isolated bathroom, then women are vulnerable because who would stop a man intent on going in there?

So it doesn’t make sense that a molestor would be dressed as a man, and would demand the right to use the women’s room., it would be a dead tip off. BTW, transgender women when not presenting as a woman, before they go full time, would use a men’s room, for the very reason they will use a women’s room when presenting fully, because it would be the safest thing for them…which makes it even more unlikely a scenario, in that if someone in a suit wanted to use a women’s room and claimed they were transgender, it would stick out like a sore tumb, which molestors and such don’t want to do

2)There are a couple of problems with that idea, though it does seem logical:

1)Transgender women and men go through a period called transition, where they are not living full time as their gender, there is a process of getting comfortable, doing things like electrolysis, hormones, therapy, etc, and so they are only going to be living as their desired gender part time. The problem is that no places would allow this person to change their identity documents, DL’s, etc, in this phase, and they would be vulnerable. One of the big problems with the Kaitlyn Jenner story is she made it seem like you just one day jump over the fence, and poof, you are a woman, it doesn’t work like that. There is no magic id card, no process, for someone in transition to get such a document.

2)Not to mention that in many states, to be able to change your gender you need to get SRS, which many people don’t get, and in other places it is illegal to change core docs like a bc (Texas used to refuse to do it for any id documentation, I don’t know if that changed for DL’s).

The reality is such a threat is not likely to happen, if declaring oneself transgender was going to be used by men to get into women’s rooms and molest them, it would have happened already, unless NC is the home base for male molestors, experience in other places have turned up not one case of this, not in SF, where that has been law a long time, not NYC, not Portland, nowhere that has bathroom laws has experienced this, so it is a law designed for an ill that likely will never happen.

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Actually one is permitted to change their gender on one’s passport (and I assume any other document under the auspices of the federal government) when one is in the “process of transitioning.” Gender reassignment surgery is also not a requirement.

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The reason I and others mention Christians is because in the US (which is where we are talking about, folks),Muslims are a small minority, I think there is like 7 or 8 million muslims here,compared to the large majority who id as Christian or are from a Christian background (to give you an idea, fundamentalist Christians alone make up something like 10% of the population, outnumbering muslims probably 3 to 1 at least). While Orthodox Jews are not exactly gay friendly, they are a tiny minority (and Jews, as with other social issues, have generally been out front on LGBT issues, including same sex marriage). Saying that what conservative Christians do to gays is nothing compared to what a lot of Muslims would do to them is a non argument, we don 't live in Iran or Saudi Arabia or some African crap hole, we are supposed to be this land of freedom, and what conservative Christians have tried and continue to try to do to LGBT people is a major affront to what this country is supposed to be, so don’t deflect it with “it could be worse”, that is like the Chinese government under Mao when talking about the abuses in that country, saying “but look, people are not starving there, like they used to”, it is a deflection, has no relevance. It can always be worse, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be better.

@awcntdb:

“Philosophers and great thinkers, including the Founding Fathers and the like, were/are wasting their time thinking about what makes up a stable society and what motivates humans to behave as they do, when really all they had/have to do is look at actions and beliefs and call them love-based or hate-based.”

Actually, funny you mention that. The founding fathers were heavily influenced by the reformation and more importantly, the enlightenment, that turned away from the idea of religion being the ultimate guide to society. They rejected a religion fueled law by creating the first amendment and nowhere in the constitution do they make claims to religion having a special place. The problem with your reasoning, on the religious supposed to change the behavior of others, of how it is about ‘tough love’, is that in society and government when religion was given that role on a societal level, it routinely turned into hate. The inquisitors and the medieval church who burned people at the stake and tortured them claimed to be doing it out of 'God’s love", the protestants like the Calvinists and the Lutherans who took the bible literally, would stone people to death for adultery, would cut out someone’s tongue for blasphemy, and would routinely show love that way…which only someone totally off their rocker wouldn’t see what it was, hate.

The Founders and the philosophers of the enlightenment saw these horrors for what they were, hate, they had the example of the Salem Witch trials and the persecution of presbytyrians and Methodists by the Anglican church as very real examples of “God’s love” turned sideways. They decidedly pulled the law away from religion to stop that, to stop the state from becoming an instrument of religious fueled hatred, they said all faiths were the same.

The other thing is, I guess you never read the whole bible. Read Matthew sometime, and read what Jesus really taught, in terms of good living Christians are supposed to set an example to their neighbors in how they live, all this yelling the Gospel, all this trying to use the law as a weapon against LGBT people and others they don’t like, is not what Jesus taught. If the true, bible believing Christians are worried about how their neighbors behave, they should spend a lot more time cleaning up their own lives, setting an example, rather than using the bible as a cudgel.

When Christ said “Love your neighbor as you love yourselves and God”, when asked what the law was, When H’lel said “do not unto others what is distasteful to yourselves, all else is commentary”, they are specifically telling people they are in the loving business, not the judging one. You can believe something is wrong, you can express those feelings, try to make someone else see the light, but you are not supposed to be in their face yelling, and you certainly are not supposed to use the law to hurt them or ‘put them in their place’…among other things, there is no agreement among religious groups what even is the ‘true’ morality, Christ declared divorce to not be an option, yet plenty of churches allow that. At one time Adultery was a crime, now it is only used in divorce proceedings in law. Lots of Christians have no problem with LGBT people, so whose view is the truth? Among other things, those wanting to use the law to show their distaste for gay people are haters, because they are putting their beliefs above all others, they are taking on the role of God in defining “what the truth is”, when religious truth is based in a particular faith and person, there is no one true faith, there is no one true belief, so someone wanting to use their beliefs to hurt others, to make them feel less than human, to demonize them, is breaking the one universal all the faiths have, that your fellow man is a child of God/the divine and deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

Put it this way, as much as I disagree with and find the beliefs of so called conservative Christians wrong, especially the religious right political movement, I would never do anything to hurt their families, I would never deny someone emergency medical care if I came across an accident they were in, I would never write into the law that they couldn’t marry, have children, or allow a law that would allow doctors and other healing professionals to not treat them, something I cannot say for the other side.

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I know one thing for sure, if any organization allows the men to use the non-singular lady’s bathroom at any moment that the man feels like a woman all of a sudden, then I personally will have nothing to do with this organization and if I had children in this organization, I would remove them from there. They can have any laws they wish and I will obey them, I just will not be part of these places, period. If nobody cares about me and my family and our privacy rights, then I better care about it myself. The cases of singular bathroom is different. I do not care how it is called and who is allowed there or not, including pets, dogs…etc. as long as nobody is there when I am there.

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^What is your answer to where transgender persons should go to the bathroom when in public spaces?

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Omfg. No one is going to use the restroom of the “opposite sex” because they suddenly feel like a woman or man.

Good freaking grief. This is NOT a problem. It never has been and it never will be.

In the words of a very funny commercial: “That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.”

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^^^

Love that commercial.

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“at any moment that the man feels like a woman all of a sudden”

What on earth are you smoking, @MiamiDAP ? In what UNIVERSE does this happen?

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@katliamom, @romanigypsyeyes What you are seeing is the reality of this issue, it isn’t about men who want to molest women going into women 's rooms declaring they are transgender, what this points out is it is a smokescreen, that the reality is that those opposed to this see transgender women as ‘men in dresses’, not really women, freaks, sinners, whatever, it makes them uncomfortable. Why would a transgender woman in a women’s room violate someone’s privacy? Far as I know, women don’t go in there to have orgies, don’t run around naked, you go into a stall, and do your business. Locker room? A transgender woman as others have pointed out is going to be nervous going into a woman’s room and despite the popular image presented in porn, they are highly unlikely, to use an old expression, ‘let it hang out’, what the opponents assume is that a transgender woman is going to be like their image of a man is, wanting to ‘show it off’, that it will be like the locker room at a gay men’s gym or something. Among other things, most transgender women I know of are self conscious about their genitals, and would not want to stand out, so I doubt the fears expressed would happen.

This is no different than the claims we have heard from those who object to gays and lesbians on moral grounds, they have painted this false image of them to make their prejudices acceptable. With transgender women , their idea is there is no such thing as someone who is transgender, who believe either transgender people are mentally ill or are really men in a dress, are doing so to get close to women in their space so they can ‘ogle’ them or hit on them (and some feminists still think like that, thankfully a small number, but they still exist). The argument about men going into women’s rooms claiming to be transgender is nothing more than a cats paw for the real intent, to keep transgender women who likely are more evidently transgender from using the women’s room (how would they challenge someone going into the women’s room? If the person is transgender, 5’ 4" tall and is small and slight and otherwise indistinguishable from any other woman, not likely, it likely would be the person who is taller, has more masculine appearing hands and feet, etc who would be challenged, because it made someone uncomfortable). This law for this proposing it is basically “I am uncomfortable around transgender women I can identify as transgender, I think they are weirdos and perverts and mentally ill and are men underneath it all, so I don’t want them in there”, it has nothing to do with protecting women from assault or peeping toms at all, given that transgender women by law are allowed to use women’s rooms in many places, and no such thing has occurred or likely will occur.

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I can’t imagine anyone wanting more privacy, and being more discrete, in a public gym or restroom than people who are trans. They’ve likely suffered enough stares, disapproval and harassment without wanting to invite more while they’re trying to pee.