Missouri Teenagers Protest a Transgender Student’s Use of the Girls’ Bathroom

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Missouri Teenagers Protest a Transgender Student’s Use of the Girls’ Bathroom

I can’t blame the students for protesting. Kids can be cruel, and kind of dumb. I certainly was.

But parents and attorneys like Derrick Good display a shameful vacuity in couching their bigotry in terms like “physical privacy.”

Karen Workman quotes one such parent:

"My goal is for the district and parents to have a policy discussion,” said Derrick Good, a lawyer who has two daughters in the district and wants students to use either facilities based on their biological sex or other gender-neutral facilities.

Requiring the teen in question, Lila Perry, to use the men’s room is no different than requiring Mr. Good’s daughters to use the men’s room. The absurdity of Good’s position is that it presumes Lila is a male pretending that she is a female so she can infiltrate Mr. Good’s daughters' physical privacy in the ladies' room.

And the twisted aspect of this circumstance is that Good’s “fight” for that privacy has obliterated Lila’s own physical privacy by turning her gender dysmorphia, with which she appears to have otherwise been coping rather well, into a national news story and an indictment of her morals.

This isn’t the first time the Christian advocacy group with which Good worked have used the plight of a child to their benefit. The hilariously named “Alliance Defending Freedom” compared “threats to its freedom,” which, hilariously, it claims are “multiplying,” to the death of a small boy on its Who We Are page.

It’s not impossible though for such people to change their minds. Consider the father of D.W. Trantham, speaking in a story about parents pulling a child out of D.W.’s school after the school allowed her to choose which bathroom she would use:

Her father Tim believes people getting mad over transgender bathroom choice is a red herring. He thinks most people are just uncomfortable or scared of what they don't understand.

Tim admits he used to be the same way.

“I was some of those people myself at one point in my life,” Tim said. “I didn’t understand what transgender was or the issues involved.”

Ms. Perry is not discouraged:

She said she knows of other, younger transgender students in the district and wants to open a dialogue so they have a better high school experience.

Years of data suggest that between 30 percent and 50 percent of transgender people attempt suicide at least once.¹ There is a mountain of data since then, and the Wikipedia article on suicide among LGBT youth is a good starting point if you’re interested in further research.

My point it that as a former Catholic of about 18 years I’m certain it’s rather unChristian to consciously exacerbate what is already a difficult process for transgender youth.

Image is the transgender pride flag

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