CRC Pushing Referendum

The Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum now are trying to gear up for a referendum to allow discrimination against transgender people. You wonder what drives them, don't you? Today they sent out a long email trying to get people to sign their petition to overturn bill 23-07.

They are trying to turn this into a bill about bathrooms. It is scary to think of perverted men going into ladies restrooms, so, even though the bill doesn't have anything to do with that, they are going to use that to get signatures on their petition.

Q: How many stupid people are there in Mongtomery County? A: Let me see those petitions and I'll tell you.

Look, either you're on their mailing list or you're not. I seem to be on it under several names, whatever, I have to keep track of their nuttiness, hopefully you don't. Plus people send these things to me, and by the way I thank you for that, don't stop. If you're on their list, you know what they're saying. If you're not on their list, there's probably a reason for that, and I'm not going to copy and paste this whole thing for you.

But I found it intriguing to see the approach they used:

FOLKS, THIS IS A POWER TO THE PEOPLE MOMENT!!!

The legislative and executive branches of Montgomery County have failed miserably in their duties to use their power wisely. As you know, Bill 23-07 passed effortlessly. It requires that we citizens accept men dressed as women as normal, even in women’s restrooms, showers, and locker rooms in public accommodations ...

And so on.

You see, they're going to try to upset people about men lurking in ladies rooms, whatever, I don't think people are really that going to sign this, but I am cynical enough to be open to surprise. They need 25,000 valid signatures to put this on the ballot.

Will people sign a petition to keep men out of the ladies room? Probably.

Will people sign a petition to make discrimination against transgender people legal? I doubt it.

Though, of course, that's what the bill is actually about.

Let me go back to that "power to the people" thing. Look, I'm old enough to remember the sixties, I remember "power to the people." Man, this would make some of those old-time guys -- John Lennon made a record called that -- roll over in their graves, to see that their slogan has been appropriated in the name of this kind of ugliness. I suppose a referendum gives power to the people, but still ... are we going to see the CRC amassed in the streets (all six of them), chanting "Hell No, We Won't Go," pumping their fists in the air? Are they going to start burning their bras in protest of bill 23-07? Actually, I think I'd want to see that. I can see them with their yellow signs, singing, "One two three four, what are we fighting for," as they pass anti-transgender fliers out to puzzled-looking people in some public place.

The Fish Cheer. What do you think? Inappropriate for this? It's hard to tell if anything is out of bounds for them.

There is one line in this email that I want to show you. Here's what it's all about, for them:

... Thanks to the passage of bill 23-07, they must absolutely consider transgenders, cross dressers and transvestites as hires if they have the job’s qualifications, even though they may find hiring such a person is contrary to their deeply held religious beliefs.

I'm a little naive here, I was raised Presbyterian, we were kind of low-key, we just sang Bible songs and learned about Jesus and stuff. But will someone please put something in the comments that indicates what religion has the "deeply held belief" that it's necessary to discriminate against transgender people?

Here's their nightmare: a person is qualified for a job, and you can't not-hire them. Woo, that's scary. They'll get a lot of signatures for that one, I'll just betcha.

I'll tell you what, I'll toss them a hanging change-up, right over the plate, and I'll have the catcher tell them it's coming. Here, swing at this one: what religion has the deeply held belief that men have to use a different bathroom from women?

I'm guessing someone will find something in Leviticus about unclean women bathing downstream or something. Go ahead, show it to us. And explain how "deeply held" your belief in that particular rule is.

Well, here we go, they're off. They say they need 25,000 valid signatures. Well, there are nearly a million people in this county, it might happen. I'm too old and cynical to expect people to be reasonable every minute of the day.

Mainly it will depend on the news media. The number of signatures will correlate precisely with the number of times the news shows and newspapers mention men in ladies rooms when they talk about this story, and it will correlate inversely with the number of times the press mentions what the bill is actually about, which is discrimination against transgender people. How will the press handle this? I wouldn't try to predict. So far most of them have been pretty good. And, by the way, it's no good to mention that men won't lurk around ladies rooms -- you're still talking about men in ladies rooms, and that's a red herring. That's like a story saying Trent Lott didn't resign because of ... the stuff that turned out not to be true.

Will the referendum pass?

Not a chance.