Houston Repeals ”LGBT Discrimination Law” That Allowed Transgendered People to Use Any Public Bathroom They Want

Yes, there were other provisions of Houston’s HERO nondiscrimination city law, but the one that got the entire kit and caboodle repealed by a pretty high margin of voters involved one very, very simple premise: the idea that people who were born with girl parts use a female restroom, and people who were born with male parts use a male restroom.

Results showed 61% of voters said no to HERO, while only 39% voted to keep it.

By the way, proponents of this law outspent opponents THREE to ONE in advertising, and still it did not pass.

As Buzzfeed reported earlier this week, most voters in Houston didn’t even realize there were other provisions to the law or that it had much to do with discrimination per se.

Getting down to brass tacks, all people talked about was whether or not transgendered individuals, and in particular men who live and dress like women, would be allowed to use the women’s restrooms in public places in town.

“I haven’t heard it bans discrimination,” Cory Alters told BuzzFeed News as he waited for the bus on a blustery Friday afternoon. With four days remaining before the vote, Alters said he had only heard that the measure required letting men and transgender women into women’s bathrooms.

“Bathrooms are the hot-ticket item — that’s what everybody is talking about,” he said. “I don’t want girls in my bathroom, and girls don’t want guys in their bathroom.”

One block down Travis Street, 44-year old Donna L., who refused to give her full last name, said the same: “I heard people saying pedophiles would be going into restrooms. That is the main thing everybody is talking about. I hadn’t heard anything else.”

Buzzfeed even interviewed a cop who was voting against. Why? Because adults follow children into bathrooms and assault them as it is, without HERO making access easier for some people to do so:

“I know it covers a lot of areas — veterans of course,” Sharome Robinson, a Houston Police Department officer told me while she waited for her bus near the agency’s downtown headquarters. “I’m for some of it, and against some of it. If I understand, part is about picking the restroom you want. I am a police officer, so males entering the restrooms, that does not sit well with me. It’s not legal now, but it still happens. People follow kids into bathrooms and assault them today. But if this passes, who would have the authority to stop them? If there is no longer any rule against it, who can question that person?”

“I am going to vote against it because of that reason,” she said. “All of the other good things go by the wayside.”

And that, right there, is a huge fear most people have with this law. That, and being made to feel uncomfortable in a bathroom because you have to share it with strangers of the opposite sex (regardless of how they dress and present themselves in public).

While Buzzfeed seemed to imply that people were ignorant for not realizing how awful discrimination is and how horrible the setback of repealing this law would be for the LGBT cause, the point appeared to be missed entirely.

Now, a rant.

The reality is, this law could have all kinds of glowing, wonderful things in it. This isn’t about how 61% of Houston voters are just merrily skipping around all day smiling about how great and wonderful discrimination is.

The problem here is how the definition of discrimination keeps getting blurred and screwed with. Not hiring someone on their merits and ability to do the job based on something totally unrelated like gender or age or disability or sexual preference or whether or not they like the color yellow? That’s obviously discrimination.

But when and how did the idea of discrimination get automatically linked to not allowing whoever says they are whatever to use whatever bathroom in public they want to?

The vote in Houston just proves that for most people, the line on this issue clearly gets drawn at the bathroom door.

A bathroom is not discriminatory. A bathroom cannot judge you. A bathroom is not about someone’s brain or how they perceive themselves in society. It is about someone’s excretory system and how it works.

Quite simply, it goes back to the beginning of this article: people born with girl parts should use a female restroom, and people born with male parts should use a male restroom.

The truth is, fewer people are as concerned about how “stigmatized” some middle-aged guy in a wig with gender issues feels when he’s not allowed into the girl’s bathroom, because most people are far more concerned about how traumatized, say, a six-year-old little girl might be if she runs into a grown man in a wig in the bathroom.

(Sorry, guess that wasn’t very politically correct, was it?)

And that’s before you even get to the part the cop mentioned about the potential for pedophiles to dress as women in order to gain easier access to victims in public restrooms. Pedophiles have preyed on victims in bathrooms. That is a thing that has happened in this society. What makes anyone think a pedophile wouldn’t use this law to their advantage? No one can say with certainty it wouldn’t go down just like the cop said it might.

Proponents thought focusing on the bathroom part of the law was ridiculous according to Buzzfeed. The Executive Director of the Texas ACLU was quoted as saying they weren’t going to “waste our precious dollars on talking about friggin’ bathrooms”…

Maybe they should take people’s bathrooms a little more seriously next time.

It’s not the news we wanted, but #HERO is repealed. This setback is temporary. Together, we fight on. pic.twitter.com/Izj2CCCwui

— Houston Unites (@Houston_Unites) November 4, 2015