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

Parent Cafe
581

The ultimate line that shows that this has nothing to do with reality.

This is like middle school - I have no real substantive responses to refute what you say, so I am going to say that it must be because I am nicer than you are and try to make you out to be a mean person. Surely, there could be a discussion on the aforementioned merits and stop the middle school stuff.

There is a reason why the following statement survives as relevant today - “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Unfortunately for you, and thankfully for everyone else, not everyone wants to join you on that “compassion, good intentions” trip.

582

No one’s going to Hell because they show compassion to a transgender individual. Figuratively or literally.

583

There’s no such thing as the American Association of Psychiatry, Mr. Expert. And you’re completely wrong about the position held by the American Psychiatric Association. Go ahead, provide some evidence for your assertions about what that organization "holds as operational.’ And please provide evidence that the ACP is something other than a tiny fringe organization, despite your pretense to the contrary. Why should anyone credit what they say, as opposed to the American Academy of Pediatrics? What’s your scientific basis for relying on an organization with 200 members, as opposed to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has 60,000 members?

Do you also agree with the ACP that reparative therapy is effective? Do you agree that gay couples should be barred from adoption? What’s the scientific basis for those claims (if you have the courage ever to respond to me – which you have refused to do so far in this thread, for all your boasting)?

And I have yet to see any evidence from you supporting your false claim that McHugh’s input is reflected in the DSM.

As for middle school, please see the quotation from McHugh above. Where exactly does he go beyond character assassination and personal insult?

I’ll ask you again: have you ever met or spoken to a trans person? What are your qualifications to address any of this?

584

Someone cited acpeds.org as a group of health professionals citing science…

take a gander at their mission statement:

Recognizes that there are absolutes and scientific truths that transcend relative social considerations of the day.
Recognizes that good medical science cannot exist in a moral vacuum and pledges to promote such science.
Recognizes the fundamental mother-father family unit, within the context of marriage, to be the optimal setting for the development and nurturing of children and pledges to promote this unit.
Recognizes the unique value of every human life from the time of conception to natural death and pledges to promote research and clinical practice that provides for the healthiest outcome of the child from conception to adulthood.
Recognizes the essential role parents play in encouraging and correcting the child and pledges to protect and promote this role.
Recognizes the physical and emotional benefits of sexual abstinence until marriage and pledges to promote this behavior as the ideal for adolescence.
Recognizes that health professionals caring for children must maintain high ethical and scientific standards and pledges to promote such practice.
Recognizes the vital role the College has in promoting quality education for parents, physicians, and other health professionals.

While medical and science groups have codes of ethics, morality is not science, and for a group to make the statement

Recognizes that there are absolutes and scientific truths that transcend relative social considerations of the day.
Recognizes that good medical science cannot exist in a moral vacuum and pledges to promote such science.

Those are both moral arguments, not scientific ones, and says where this group is coming from. Science does not say they are absolutes and scientific truths like that, science says, always, that the theory involved has evidence to back it and is what we know at the time. Absolute truth is a claim of religion, science talks about things line preponderance of the evidence and talks about consensus, but science leaves open the door, always, for new ideas and always has.

among other things, acpeds was founded by people with moral objections to things like same sex parenting and same sex marriage, it was founded by people with a certain moral and religious outlook, which is fine, but claiming they represent science is false, their mission statement alone tells you that, and it has been around only since 2002.

acpeds is not a mainstream group, the main group of pediatricians is the American Academy of Pediatrics, and if you check their website www.aap.org, and do a search on transgender, it is eye opening how much they have on transgender kids and they cite real research on transgender kid and issues.

McHugh, the guy someone cited from Johns Hopkins, is not in the mainstream of trangender research and does not represent a consensus of psychiatrists or psychologists.However, to get an idea of how far he is out of the mainstream, here are some of his claims:

  • Refers to homosexuality as "erroneous desire"

– Argues that being medically accomodating to a transgender child is “like performing liposuction on an anorexic child”

– Filed an amicus brief arguing in favor of Proposition 8 on the basis that homosexuality is a “choice.”

–Describes post surgical trans women as “caricatures of women”

– As part of the USCCB’s Review Board, pushed the idea that the Catholic sex abuse scandal was not about pedophilia but about “homosexual predation on American Catholic youth.”

I suppose if you accept his other statements (and he also has weighed in that same sex parenting “hurts” children, when real science has said it doesn’t), then you can claim scientific truth, but I think the statements of both organizations tells you what you need to know.plus McHugh is 85 years old, not exactly in the center of psychiatric knowledge.

BTW, the reason the DSM has gender identity disorder or whatever they renamed it, these days is primarily because the DSM codes are used to be able to get paid by insurance and to get medical treatment, if Gender dysphoria wasn’t in the DSM providers would not be able to get paid, the insurance companies would not pay for it. There was a lot of debate about that, and what the DSM also says is that for those truly with gender dysphoria the only course of treatment would be for the patient to transition and live as the gender they feel they are. Personally, I think that gender dysphoria should be treated as a medical condition, that once other issues masking itself as GID are weeded out through therapy and whatnot, that it be like treating a birth defect, because in a sense that is what it is.

585

There have been quite a few posters who when talking about transgender people that it is ‘too soon’ to decide issues like transgender rights, that the ‘verdict is out’ and so forth. Just because in the last couple of years transgender folk have become a cause celebre of somewhat to people, doesn’t mean this is new. There have been transgender people likely as long as there have been human beings, and within the last 50 years it has grown from being a few whispered about people, like Christine Jorgensen, and plenty of people have transitioned with and without having SRS during that time, this wasn’t created on a fad, it is based on something that has been going on for a long time, and if in fact as so many are claiming that transgender people are disordered, that they are perverts, that transgender women going into restrooms and locker rooms do so because they want to ogle women, we should have had a ton of cases of this over the years, but it hasn’t happened. There sadly have been transgender women hassled and arrested in women’s rooms, but in every case it was because some woman decided they looked funny, or some cop decided they were a transgender person, and busted them (happened not long ago in NYC, at Grand Central, the cop got in trouble because NYC has covered bathroom law for a while).

In any event, this isn’t new. There are some elements that are new, allowing transgender children to transition is pretty new and there are some legimitate questions around that issue (like for example, letting a child hitting the puberty years taking hormones), what is new that the public is being made aware of the issues. There is a long body of work with transgender people, the medical profession has tried all kinds of ‘cures’, they have tried behavior modification, they have tried CBT, they have tried using anti depressive drugs, they have tried pumping the person full of testosterone or estrogen (testosterone for transgender women, estrogen for transgender men), to cure them, they have used electroshock and even worse treatments, and what they found is the same thing with reparative therapy (which btw tying this to the last post, both McHugh and ACPEDS both endorse as real treatment, which every psychiatric association, psychological association and the like has branded not therapy, and several states have banned the practice as being tantamount to abuse). What the overwhelming consensus of practioners in the field have found is that there is no cure, that this is deep seated in the psyche, more than likely now biological, and that the only treatment is medical, not therapeutic. You don’t cure transgender people per se, therapists help them figure out what they need, help them deal with the many negative things they have to deal with (families, friend, work) and potentially issues they have, like depression, that are treatable.

What is new is that people are being forced to see this issue, rather than was common for so many years, where this was buried, it is no different than issues like gay rights or same sex marriage. It is telling that when Prop 8 and then the later case that allowed same sex marriage, the proponents of banning same sex marriage, when they were forced to admit that their case was based on people’s discomfort and religious belief, tried to fall back on the argument that same sex marriage was new, that there was no long term track record for it, that we don’t know if it would hurt society or not, that this is an issue fundamental to our society, and the majority opinion threw that out as a basis, that claiming we needed to wait and see before doing this was basically an excuse never to do it. If in fact having transgender bathroom laws like this cause some ill, if in fact you can show that this law can be attributed to problems happening, the laws can be modified, but the burden in the law is high on that, that harm would have to be so clear and proven if we were to restrict rights, we don’t stop women from drinking (despite the fact that alcohol is a prime reason for date rape, and women are mostly the victims), we don’t stop women from wearing ‘provocative clothing’ even though an argument could be made that that can contribute to sexual harassment and the like…

586

Are you guys living in the real world?

This has been the modus operandi of science since its founding. It was/is science that took/takes down many social consideration positions that were/are proved incorrect in their substance.

A social consideration does not make something real; it is only a philosophical construct. It only says that people choose to believe that consideration. It is position that requires relativity no proof of anything; it only requires that it advances a social cause/position, even if the premise of the cause is wrong. Who wants to live in such vapidity? In the ignorance of a cause or a result, or better said, “I believe this because it makes me feel better, not because it actually is.” That is nothing, but purposeful ignorance.

And again, I note - an attack on the messenger but cannot refute the substance. Typical low brow, bully tactics. Ridiculous and people are figuring that out rather quickly. And people are also on to the lie that the is just about bathrooms as well. Keep it up, you are spilling your milk. And like political correctness, it is going to be fellow progressives that slam this shut. Intellectual progressives are now becoming the main leaders against political correctness. I wonder why?

What is really funny is that I bet the people who are advocates of such reforms cite studies from groups and people trying to advance a social position, but no one doubts or questions their results or mission statement, even if their science (methods and results) cannot be replicated. I guess their compassion and social consideration makes them more honest in their methods and reporting. Yeah, right.

This is like the compassion thing - people just claiming they are the enlightened. Ever notice that the people claiming compassion are the only ones who get to state what is compassionate? If one has compassion for females who are uncomfortable around nude men they do not know, that is not considered compassion; it is only considered hate toward the transgender. If one has compassion toward minor females who are conscious about their bodies and do not want to be around nude adult men, that is not compassion for the minors; it is only hate for the transgender.

Therefore, it is considered a good “social consideration” not to be compassionate and ignore caring for other parties if it advances the social agenda. How convenient!! The enlightened get to be the sole determinants of when compassion does not count. NOT. At some point, these people have to get serious because this is a juvenile approach to social policy and to public discourse.

However, I have faith because more and more progressives are realizing that they do no want their little girls and fellow adult females around nude adult men who are nothing but strangers. Well, duh!

587

^Yes, never fear. Everyone is just lying about accepting people for who they are. No one actually believes this stuff, they are just saying so to harass good, upstanding people who KNOW how the world is and how it should be. The unstoppable wave of the “silent majority” is going to come and take back the country.

Any day now…

For real this time…

588

“This has been the modus operandi of science since its founding. It was/is science that took/takes down many social consideration positions that were/are proved incorrect in their substance.”

That isn’t true, science never claims absolute truth and never has, despite attempts by some to do so. Richard Feynman defined science as starting, beginning and ending with a question, and that is where absolute truth never comes into the picture. Even ‘settled’ science can be upset by a revolution, in the late 19th century most people were convinced newtonian physics and Maxwell had defined the universe, Planck and Einstein and others came along and showed that only applied in a limited frame. Absolute truth is the hallmark generally of revealed religion, not of science.

No one argues that science has overturned social convention, it has. Classic example is with gay people and with same sex couples marrying, science discredited the ‘facts’ put out there by opponents of gays (to this day anti gay people say that pulling homosexuality out of the DSM was 'political", that there is clear proof gays are mentally ill…which of course usually boils down to belief and bias), not to mention the claim that same sex parents hurt kids, so you are right. However, science also overturns its own applecart, too, long held notions like continuous creation lost out to the big bang, science operates on facts and discernible proof, not belief, not ‘absolute truth’, science relies on consensus of what the facts say and if the facts overturn the apple cart.

As far as @awcntdb 's claim that posts questioning the veracity of McHugh or the so called college of pediatricians being ‘flinging mud’, when you claim expertise in something your other claims are open to investigation, too. If someone had a track record of opinions that have continuously been shown to be wrong, when a group that talks about ‘science’ of child rearing makes claims that aren’t true (that a two parent household with opposite sex partners is optimal, that kids raised by same sex parents are lacking something) that have been shown by real studies to be false, it certainly plays into how they should be viewed.McHugh’s statements on gays show that he is projecting his own belief and is not speaking as a scientist, given that the views I posted are demonstrably false…one of the things with ‘experts’ is you view where they are coming from, what their track record is, and in a court of law, for example, where there are competing ‘witnesses’, often the side that wins is the one with more credibility…if a group outright says things that have been proven patently false by science as science, how much credibility do they have?

As far as progressives ‘coming over to the side against political correctness’, only time will tell. One of the things with progressives is as a rule, when they are faced with something that makes them uncomfortable, they will attempt to wrestle with the issue and realize that their own uncomfortableness may be something they need to own. Gays and lesbians were not always comfortable with transgender people, some of them though they were an embarassment, including groups like HRC, a lot of lesbians had issues with transgender women at one point, but they wrestled with the issue and came around. No doubt some otherwise progressive people may be troubled by this, some may support the NC law even, but again progressives tend, once they wrestle with things and see the reality, change their minds. I suspect a lot more of the opponents of transgender women in bathrooms will come around to not have a problem with it, than progressives going the other way, time and history have already shown this with other issues. Interracial marriage, gay rights, same sex marriage, all kind of followed the same curve. 40 years ago a lot of people would have said kids have an openly gay teacher was a bad thing and support firing them, today a large majority of peopel in the US would be shocked at that.

589

You forgot to mention people who married themselves and people who married a building.

590

@ccdd14: lol, I forgot about that, or marrying cows, cats, dogs, and of course the huge upsurge in marrying children to adults, too…

591

Everyone can share one bathroom, for all I care. But on the other hand, I’m male and grew up cleaning game. When, and if, a lady shakes off at a urinal, I suspect I’ll yawn.

The comment that ‘science never claims absolute truth’ isn’t something that will float anymore, though. See: Climate Change: the issue is settled.

Maybe it’s 'cause they’re government paid?

592

I feel like I’m playing Whack-a-mole.

593

Figuratively? How in the world do you know that others “figuratively” would not be in hell by this policy? You can speak for others you do not know? Who are you? Anyway, all the saying means is that good intentions often create more ills than they solve.

Specifically, the poster does not get to choose what is considered “hell” for others. You are nothing special in that you have no agency over other independent human beings, which means you expressly DO NOT have any power to determine the effect of a policy on another human being. Therefore, your post is empty of meaning and substance, as it relates to others for you have no standing at all to make the claim in your post.

For example, being nude around a stranger of the opposite sex darn sure could be “hell” for a female victim of sexual assault who chooses not to be in such position in a public place, but can be forced to endure this. You go tell her that she just has to buck up and learn to live with this and that her adverse reaction to nude stranger men in an enclosed space is not "hell’ for her. (I personally know several females who fall in this category, as they are in my concealed weapons class)

And for a 5 year-old girl seeing full-blown nude adult men in the female locker room could also be very traumatizing and be considered her personal “hell,” as this is something her own Dad probably does not do in her home. (It was exactly this that prompted a local business to tell the transgendered to use the unisex family bathroom and shower)

Let’s not leave out the adult female who chooses not to be nude around opposite sex strangers because she believes, as taught by the feminist movement no less, that she has personal agency over her body and is free to decide who sees her nude body and who does not. (If I recall correctly, @Momofthreeboys declared that this is her position)

Overall, you do not get to decide how people are affected by situations that involve their personal bodies, and you surely do not get to determine what another considers out-of-bounds for them in terms of who sees her body.

However, one thing is clear - you and posters who think like you DO NOT have compassion for the females I describe above, as you have for the transgendered who what to force this new policy upon said females. Until this thread, I did not know that transgender females treated anatomical females so shabbily and rudely.

This is in stark contrast to those, like myself, who do have compassion for the females above and do not want to see such a policy forced upon them. And, in no way does our compassion for these females take a back seat to your compassion for the transgendered.

So there you have it people, right out in the open. The supposedly compassionate posters exhibit out front that compassion is ruse argument for it is only compassion they deem legitimate that counts - meaning that this is really only a political/ideological agenda where the feelings and beliefs of others do not matter and no need to be compassionate towards them. The goal is to just bully and drive the ideological platform forward - who cares about others, as only the compassion towards the transgendered counts.

The quote above could not make this political/ideological scenario more clear if it tried.

594

@awcntdb by the same token you do not get to speak for me, I have been the victim of an assault and I am also aware that my fears are irrational. If I see movies that inadvertently gives me flashbacks I do not demand such movies be banned, I take care of myself and leave. If you are uneasy using a bathroom with a transgendered person maybe you could wait until they are finished, we are all responsible for our own well being and destiny. I have lost 2 transgendered friends one to suicide and I will not sit back while innocent people are being bullied and maligned.

595

@awcntdb,

You can talk about all kinds of imaginary hypothetical all you want. The reality doesn’t support those scenarios. What has been real is that trans people had been physically assaulted by being forced to use bathrooms that match their gender. You obviously don’t appear to care. It’s truly disgusting for people like you that try to lump them with sexual predators to further your agenda.

596

awcntdb, you’re the one who proclaimed that McHugh is some kind of scientific authority. You’re the one who tried to present his organization as being a reputable mainstream organization, while failing to note that it’s a tiny fringe group. You’re the one who lied about McHugh supposedly having input into the contents of the current DSM. You’re the one who falsely presented McHugh as some kind of objective scientist, despite the fact that his own words (which I quoted, and there’s plenty more where that came from) demonstrate that he’s motivated by nothing but personal prejudice and distaste. You’re the one who lied about what the DSM says about trans people. You’re the one who falsely claimed that there are no scientific studies showing that transness and gender identity are, in fact, biological phenomena. You’re the one who didn’t even know, or bother to find out, the actual name of the American Psychiatric Association. You’re the one who failed to respond substantively to one single fact that anyone pointed out refuting your claims, or refuting the fantastic myths you’ve tried to propagate throughout this thread – such as your unsupported contentions about what laws protecting trans people supposedly permit. In fact, you’ve refused to respond directly to me, or answer a single question I’ve asked you, a single time in this entire thread. In light of all that, your repeated chest-beating on various threads about conservatives never running away from a debate (by contrast to cowardly quivering liberals) isn’t exactly convincing.

When you make arguments to authority, and make false claims of both fact and law, it isn’t slinging mud, and doesn’t constitute an ad hominem attack, to point out that that your so-called “authority” is as far out of the mainstream as McHugh and his group on every possible subject – or to point out that he hasn’t actually dealt with trans people or conducted any “studies” on the subject in 40 years – or to point out that he has equally insupportable “scientific” positions about homosexuality and adoption by gay people and reparative therapy. Next you’ll be citing Samuel Wilberforce on evolution or Trofim Lysenko on genetics, right?

As to that smoke-filled response of yours at 1:30 pm yesterday, it failed to address a single argument anyone made, resorting instead to the cheap trick of claiming (without showing) that nobody had refuted your arguments, and bleating about naked men in women’s locker rooms. I’ve said it before and said it again: in the 16 states and 200 municipalities where laws protecting trans people have been in effect (for years), none of that has happened. The only “naked men” in women’s locker rooms have been provocateurs who share your opinions on this issue, and have deliberately created problems where no problems would otherwise exist, in an attempt to generate public hysteria. (Hey, I wouldn’t want to see naked men in a women’s bathroom or locker room either. And guess what, I never have. And haven’t ever seen nudity of any kind in a women’s bathroom, for that matter. Even in sinful New York City, where the City Human Rights Law has prohibited discrimination against trans people in public accommodations since 2003!) Fortunately, most people here aren’t as easily deceived as you think… Nor are most people deceived by your pretended concern for women’s privacy.

597

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kasey-rosehodge/dear-creepy-heterosexual-men-guarding-our-bathrooms_b_10105512.html

598

I thought it was unconstitutional to pass laws due to animus, at the very least they require higher scrutiny.
I’m very happy that some commenters on this thread are not responsible for passing these laws. Surely these ‘bathrooms laws’ can be shown to be based on animus (as no harm has ever been done by a transgendered individual) when the best some people can do is post fake news articles and debunked studies.

599

@alh Great article. It really sums up this North Carolinian’s feelings. I am angered that the legislature is using HB2 as a way to pretend they are protecting women without doing anything to really protect women from sexual assault or harassment. Patriarchy hurts us all.

I fail to see how me, a flat chested female usually dressed in unisex clothes, walking into the bathroom is less disturbing than a transgender female who looks more feminine than myself walking into the same bathroom. How do we care or tell who is female? I am a bit of an exercise fanatic and have been in many public locker rooms. I can’t recall one that didn’t have a private changing room. Guess what, those with male genitals will be there or be changing at home. Transgender individuals are much more sensitive to gender identity issues than those of us who naturally assume our identity. They don’t want to make you uncomfortable.

600

Well said, @DonnaL.