Shower Nuts Know They're Wrong

Our friend Alvin McEwen cross-posted something he noticed yesterday at Pam's House Blend and his own site, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters.

I don't know if our suburban county was the first place where the Nutty Ones tried to make the case that outlawing discrimination would result in male pedophiles and predators lurking in ladies rooms, leering at the women and girls and waving their festering penises at them. Because of overly permissive laws passed by liberals, there is nothing you can do to stop them! Maybe Montgomery County was the first place they tried that stupid line, but it certainly was not the last. We've seen it repeated all over the country.

Missoula, Montana -- a place I have always wanted to go, by the way -- just passed a nice nondiscrimination law, and the Concerned Women for America, naturally, opposed it, citing, among other things, the "men in the ladies room" argument.

Alvin noticed something in a Missoulian article:

Even one of the most staunch opponents of those laws can't point to increases in frivolous lawsuits or sexual predation. Still, Concerned Women for America president Wendy Wright said such ordinances lead the country down the wrong track.

"We have a constitutional protection for religious freedom in our First Amendment," Wright said. "There is not a constitutional protection for sexual orientation, and yet judges and city councils and others are acting as if sexual orientation trumps religious freedom."

The Concerned Women aim to bring biblical principles to public policy, and the Montana office opposes the Missoula ordinance. It's one member of Notmybathroom.com, a group that formed to defeat the local ordinance in large part because of fear sexual offenders will prey on women and children in bathrooms and locker rooms.

Wright couldn't point to places that have counted increases in sexual offenses because of such laws, but she said such data is beside the point.

"It doesn't go back to numbers," Wright said. "It goes back to the issue that people will have legal rights that will trump other people's rights. The right of a woman or a girl to feel safe in a fitting room, a locker, a restroom, their rights will be trumped by a person who is claiming their sexual orientation right has legal protection." Other towns see protection, little trouble with anti-discrimination ordinances

Alvin drilled down to the core of meaning in this little snatch of interview. He wrote;

While there should be some appreciation of Wright's admittance that the "men in womens bathrooms" argument is without proof, she shouldn't be able to get away with claiming that the lack of proof is beside the point, mainly because the lack of proof is the point.

In the next sentence after she admits the inaccuracy of the "men in women's bathrooms" claim, she says that that the right of women or girls to feel safe would be trumped by pro-lgbt laws.

But Wright's concern leaves me scratching my head. Didn't she just admit that she doesn't know of any example in which the safety of women and girls would be threatened?

And yes, he's right. The Concerned Women for America -- and here we have the rare case where their spokesperson is a woman -- have used the "men in the ladies room" thing more than anyone. They believe that the safety of women and children requires the right to discriminate against gay and transgender Americans. But in all the regions of the country where such discrimination has been banned -- and there are lots of places, including, now, our county -- there has been no increase in sex crimes and no reports of anyone using the nondiscrimination laws as cover to lurk in women's shower-rooms and bathrooms.

And they know it.

They just keep saying the same thing over and over again because it scares people who live in restricted little worlds. If you are paying attention to the issues, you will have recognized this argument from all the previous times it has been used, and you would understand that it is just a formula that the self-righteousness carnival brings to town to excite the locals. You would know there's nothing to it, it's just a talking point. Predators and pedophiles are not going to pretend to be women, even "women on the inside," so they can lurk and leer and molest women and children. That's not how it works. But if you only know what you hear on talk radio and see on Fox, you can be led to believe that there is a real danger of that happening.

Alvin concludes:

Wright further admits why CWA opposes pro-lgbt non-discrimination ordinances and of course it has nothing to do with "safety issues."

Wright said one big reason Concerned Women opposes such laws is because the group does not want local ordinances to be used as stepping stones toward making gay marriage legal and teaching it in the public schools.

In other words, lgbts having the right to be free from discrimination is just another way to "force gay marriage."

By the way, as a born-and-raised Westerner, I want to point out that this is Montana we're talking about. We think of that as a pretty conservative region, but it may turn out to be conservative in a good way. People there value their freedom and realize they have to work together to protect their own and their neighbors' liberty. I recently came across this video from another town in Montana. As far as I'm concerned, this is what it's all about -- people taking care of each other: