Matt Walsh:
This week, Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi signed a religious liberty bill protecting businesses and individuals from being forced to participate in gay marriages.
The legislation also fortifies the rights of business owners to keep their bathrooms segregated by sex, as all business owners have done up until 4.5 seconds ago. Meanwhile, a few weeks earlier, North Carolina signed a now infamous bill that will require men to pee in rooms with other men, and women in rooms with other women. Again in keeping with the reasonable and totally normal policies that have been in place everywhere in America for the entirety of your life and your grandparents’ lives.
These two laws indicate that, apparently, not everyone in the nation is on board with liberalism’s designs to turn our civilization into a debauched, androgynous dystopia where gays and “transgenders” occupy the highest position in the social and legal hierarchy. But the left is not accustomed to being disobeyed in such a manner, which explains the utterly shocked and stunned reaction from leftists across the country to these two pieces of legislation. While the vicious attacks against Mississippi over their bill are just beginning, the outrage over the “anti-trans” law in North Carolina has reached apocalyptic volumes.
Immediately upon the bill’s passage, the internet was clogged like a constipated bowel with thinkpieces somberly explaining how “transgenders” will kill themselves if they are forced to endure 98 seconds in a bathroom that correlates with their biological sex. “Transgender” people are now gravely at risk, they shrieked. Cross-dressing men will be subjected to violence and other forms of torment, they insisted. Liberals cried that laws protecting the safety and security of women and children are ”shameful,” “horrific,” “deplorable,” “insane,” “dangerous,” and “embarrassing.”
A man tweeted an image of himself wearing fake breasts and women’s clothes standing in a men’s room, accompanied by the caption: “According to North Carolina law, this is the bathroom I belong in. So I ask you, who’s the one in danger?” The tweet went viral with thousands of comments and retweets, but nobody on the Internet thought to suggest the obvious solution: take off the girl costume and maybe you won’t be so uncomfortable in the men’s restroom.
It seems a bit contradictory to go through the herculean effort to doll yourself up to look like some cartoonish caricature of a woman, only to complain that other people are making you feel ridiculous. That’s like covering yourself in red paint and running through a shopping mall nude while yodeling into a megaphone and then reacting with indignation and alarm when people cast sideways glances at you. If you don’t want to feel ridiculous, stop doing ridiculous things. Easy solution. Let’s try that.
Anyway, the next step in this North Carolina “controversy” was inevitable. Dozens of massive corporation began putting pressure on North Carolina to scrap the law. Mayors of major American cities banned travel to the state, prohibiting people from going to a place in order to protest North Carolina’s attempt to prohibit people from going to a place. The federal government got into the extortion game, threatening to pull federal funds if North Carolina continues its unthinkable persecution of men who wear skirts in public. Even the state’s attorney general refuses to defend the law, claiming it’s “unconstitutional.” Predictably, Mississippi is starting to feel a similar backlash.
Now, there’s plenty to be said in support of laws like these, but considering how Christians and conservatives are constantly lectured for their alleged lack of “compassion” and “tolerance” and so on, I think it must be noted that these laws would not be needed if compassion and tolerance, along with humility and prudence, were traits commonly found in the “LGBT community.” It is the seemingly total lack of kindness, magnanimity, and rationality displayed by many in their camp that necessitates this sort of legislation. If gays would simply respect the beliefs of Christian business owners, and if “transgenders” would simply respect the privacy of women and children, there would be no need for laws forcing the matter. But here we are. And it’s not the fault of Christians and conservatives that we arrived here. On the contrary, it’s the fault of the very people now whining about being persecuted.
Here’s the reality: gays and “transgenders” are not being victimized, nor are they are being martyred, oppressed, bullied or otherwise put upon. You can walk through Mississippi and find nary a business with a “We Won’t Serve Gays” sign hanging in the window. You can travel down to North Carolina and not find a single instance where a government agent showed up at a so-called transgender’s house and instructed him to take off his wig and blouse. For the most part, these people are free to do what they want and be who they are — or, in the case of “transgenders,” who they aren’t.
The only caveat is that the half dozen “transgenders” in North Carolina have to do what every other human in North Carolina has to do, and what most humans in the civilized world have to do, and share public restrooms with people who share their anatomy. In Mississippi, gays can get married, as per the royal decree of the Supreme Court, but if they happen to stumble upon a baker or photographer who’d rather not participate in the event, they simply must find someone else. That’s it. In other words, they are just being asked, and now being forced, to display the faintest modicum of tolerance and respect for their fellow citizens.
There is no real burden being put on these people. They are not being asked to make a sacrifice of any kind. They are not even being asked to change their behavior, even if their behavior is morally outrageous and self-destructive. They are not being asked to do anything, really. They are not being imposed upon. They are simply being told they cannot impose themselves on others.
Whether they like it or not, many women are not comfortable unchanging or using the toilet in the same room as penis-bearing males. I believe this is quite reasonable, but even if you don’t think it’s reasonable, it is nonetheless how the majority of women feel. Likewise, a small minority of especially devout Christians would sacrifice income and business in order to avoid taking part in something they (and billions of other people) find sinful and perverse. Liberals can tsk-tsk at these women and these Christians all they want, but they are real, they exist, and they have rights. And all they want to do is claim what belongs to them.
To be clear, the Christian’s business belongs to him. The woman’s privacy belongs to her. The Christian should, and in some states does, have domain over that which belongs to him when he is conducting his business in his own establishment, just as the woman should, and in some states does, have a guarantee that her privacy will be respected when she is “conducting her business” in a private room built and intended for use by females. Again, neither group is asking to take anything away from anyone. They simply want what is theirs and what was intended for them. That’s it. That’s all.