Just when you thought the world couldn't get any crazier, someone in Maine opens the door to a whole new kind of crazy. The Maine Human Rights Commission has issued guidelines that will ban schools in that state from "enforcing gender divisions" through such out-dated and outrageous things as having separate bathrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls.
You heard me right. Under this new proposal, which was crafted after a 12-year-old transgender boy (that's a whole other blog post) was allegedly discriminated against when he was denied access to the girls' room, boys and girls will be able to use each others' restroom and locker room facilities and join all-male or all-female sports teams or organizations, regardless of gender. I don't know about your kids, but my 13- and almost-10-year-old would panic if he or she walked into the bathroom or locker room and found someone of the opposite sex in there. And with good reason.
Have we moved so far away from our ability to understand biology and sexual identity that we simply refuse to acknowledge that there are physical differences between boys and girls, men and women? At a time when the world is hyper-focused on the safety of children -- as we should be -- are we really going to turn a blind eye to eighth-grade boys sharing bathrooms with fourth-grade girls or, heaven forbid, high school boys sharing locker rooms with girls of any age? The icing on the cake is that students will not be obligated to provide medical documentation proving they are "transgendered." Are the folks on the Maine Human Rights Commission caught in a collective brain freeze?
From a FoxNews story on the issue:
When I walk into a ladies' room at church or the locker room at the YMCA, I kind of assume the only other people in there will be women, or, in some cases, girls with their mothers. If I were to walk into a restroom and find a man or boy there, I'd do an about face and leave. Only once did I have to use a men's room -- at an insanely chaotic outdoor concert where there was no other choice. The other women and I dragged in our husbands and boyfriends and stationed them as guards outside our doors, and we are grown women. Doesn't matter. We are different, and we know it. Let's not try to pretend otherwise."Ken Trump, President of National School Safety and Security Services, says the guidelines set out in the commission's draft brochure pose some serious safety issues as well.
"'If my kid walks into a girls' bathroom and sees a man in there, the child is going to instinctively feel that something’s wrong. If you create an entirely new climate where anything goes, you’re going to create increased confusion, and those with ill intentions could take advantage of that confusion and decreased ability to make a distinction,' Trump told FoxNews.com.
"'The reality is, every day we’re seeing more and more cases of exploitation of children and others, and this would be creating an environment where the risk is increased for that exploitation.
"...'Educators at the middle school level struggle every day in trying to keep student hormonal issues under control so that the focus can be on education,' he said. 'We certainly don’t need to create an environment to accelerate and exacerbate the issue and further the experimentation, the inappropriate comments, inappropriate touching, groping, grabbing, sexual assaults and in some cases, rapes in schools.'"
The Church is so often the punch line in jokes about sexuality, or repressed sexuality. And yet it is the Church that seems to be one of the few places were male and female sexuality is recognized and honored for exactly what it is. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it like this:
"Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life (2333)...Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way." (2335)
I think the popular translation of that reads: No co-ed locker rooms! To read the full story about the Maine decision, click HERE.
