"An Activist Was In The Lobby At The Time"

Some of this is second-hand information, so I recommend that journalists and interested parties go to the sources for quotes and details to verify it.

Background: The Citizens for a Responsible Whatever (Curriculum, Government, whatever) are campaigning for a referendum to throw out a new county law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Rather than argue the actual point having to do with discrimination, they have pretended that the new law will make it legal for male voyeurs and exhibitionists to go into women's restrooms, simply by claiming to be transgender. They need petition signatures and they aren't getting them.

Last Tuesday, Channel 7 News reported breathlessly that the new law had been "tested" when a man in a dress went into a ladies locker room at Rio Sport and Health Club in Gaithersburg. The Examiner also picked up the story. Both media outlets presented it in terms of the CRW's frame, as if this event had something to do with the new antidiscrimination law or tested it in some way. (Note that the law doesn't go into effect until February 19th.) Soon the rightwing web sites, starting with World Net Daily, were relaying the important information to their readers.

Last night a trustworthy friend of TTF had a discussion with a manager at the gym -- we will not use their name since it wasn't an official interview -- who said that there was "an activist" in the lobby of the gym at the time that this "man in a dress" went in. She described the activist as being like one of the people at the Giant grocery store with petitions [see previous post for some background on that].

According to this manager, the person in a dress signed in with a crowd of other guests so it is not clear who it was or if it was a man or a woman; they then proceeded directly to the ladies locker room, went into it and to the back of the room, and then came out and left the building. When this person came in, the employee at the door thought something strange was going on and called for an attendant to go check the ladies room, but the person left before they got there. Rio staff say they do not know who the person was.

The manager at Rio said she did not know who called the media, but she said the activist in the lobby was filmed in an interview after the event. The only "activist" interviewed by Channel 7 (the only media outlet indiscriminate enough to send a reporter to the scene) was Theresa Rickman of the CRW, who has written in our comments section that she goes to the Bethesda Sport and Health gym, not the one in Rio -- so why would she have been there? In its newscast, Channel 7 failed to mention Ms. Rickman's connection to the anti-gay, anti-transgender group, quoting her as if she were an ordinary citizen on the scene.

The manager at Rio told our friend, quote: "I think it was a publicity stunt."

I think it was a publicity stunt, too. The CRW needs signatures for their petition -- 12,500 of them by February 4th, and so far they say they have 3,000.

It does not appear that the women who were in the locker room at the time were in on the hoax; one of them went to management and asked them to call the police, and the manager explained that there really is no law against people going into the wrong bathroom -- there isn't now, never was, isn't one planned. The manager also made a point to our friend of noting that the Rio gym has a third bathroom that can be used by a transitioning transgender person, and she emphasized that the club has a policy of not discriminating. In fact they have had such a policy for a long time, long before this law was being discussed.

We also have seen an email from the Maryland Bureau Chief at Channel 7 saying:

... I must say I was offended by suggestions that this incident was fabricated by this group and that Channel 7 got sucked into reporting it as part of an "agenda." This is an affront to me professionally and not backed by any facts.

Nonetheless, I will not be relying on Channel 7 for my news. I guess they just might be a little under-skeptical for my tastes. Really, it would be a lot better for them to admit they screwed up here, to find out how this happened, and to correct the situation so that this sort of thing doesn't happen again, if they want to retain any credibility as a news source.

Just to get it on the record, it is worth re-emphasizing that it is not now illegal for a man to go into the ladies room or vice versa, but peeping is illegal. So whatever this person did was not against the law. Maryland Code, Criminal Law 3-901 and 3-902 prohibit "visual surveillance of another individual, with or without prurient interest, without the consent of that individual." Under this law, it doesn't matter if a woman is peeping at another woman, a man at a man, men at women, women at men, you just can't peep. You can't do it with your eyeballs, with a camera, with mirrors, with video cameras, and you can't do it if you're transgender, not-transgender, gay, ex-gay, or anything else. You can't do that. If the line in the ladies room goes out into the hall, a lady can use the men's room, if she doesn't peep. There is no law against it now, and prohibiting discrimination against transgender people won't change that.

The Citizens for a Responsible Government have given the Rio Sport and Health Club a bad name and brought them a lot of bad publicity with this hoax. They have made Channel 7 and The Examiner look like idiots, though of course it's their job as journalists to verify some things before they run a story. They frightened innocent citizens unnecessarily. How is this justified? They say they have "deep religious beliefs" that make it necessary for them to be able to discriminate against people who are subjectively a different gender from the one assigned to them at birth.

The fact is, they had to make up this incident because it wouldn't happen on its own. No transitioning transgender person is going to call attention to themselves in this way -- the Rio gym even has a third bathroom that a customer could use, just for that purpose -- and any voyeur who puts on a dress to go look at the women in the ladies locker room will be arrested. The CRW is campaigning on a lie, and they are desperate to make it seem real.