This week, Time examines the debate over the use of public bathrooms by transgender Americans. Washington Bureau Chief Michael Scherer reports why the Obama administration took action on this issue, its rich history in the context of civil rights and how it may impact the political landscape at the local, state and federal level.
Scherer writes: “In a divided country, the social battle lines have been drawn once again in our most private of public places. State legislatures have been besieged, and school committees have split. Pastors have become politicized in the pulpit, and the gay-rights lobby has abandoned its past hesitancy to embrace the transgender cause. Courtrooms are filling with legal motions that are certain to end up at the Supreme Court. The fight—political and legal, personal and collective—is just getting going…. Like all great political battles, this one is distinguished by the decision on both sides to commit loudly and completely, to elevate the issue and to force it on the American public…. The 2016 battle over bathrooms is, after all, about far more than public facilities—it’s about gender roles, social change, federalism, physical danger, political polarization and, most strikingly, a breakdown in the ability of anyone in this country to speak across our divides, or appeal to common humanity.”
Judy Chiasson, of the Los Angeles Unified School district, which allowed transgender students to use the bathrooms they identify with since 2005, tells Time: “I have never had misconduct by a transgender student. A lot of fears people expressed, we have never realized those, we have never seen them. We’ve been doing this for 11 years. It works.”
Gavin Grimm, who was labeled a girl at birth, but identifies as a boy,tells Time: “I don’t know of many people who would endure the humiliation and ostracization of changing your name and changing your gender presentation and asking people to refer to you with pronouns and mannerisms of the opposite sex just so they could go into a restroom and ogle men or women.”
Pastor Irvin “Jack” Cunningham, leader of the 750-active-member Bible World Church, tells Time: “I have a 5-year-old granddaughter, I have a 35-year-old daughter. I just simply don’t want anybody that is male going in the restroom with my family. We just no longer have the luxury of sitting back and doing nothing.”
Scherer concludes: “Never mind the fights to come. That sentiment alone is a sign of how much our nation has already changed.” http://ti.me/1sBfFJd
The May 30 issue of Time goes on sale today.
