Giving a news conference in London this past Friday, President Obama told Londoners he opposes North Carolina's law forbidding men who dress up as women from using women's bathrooms. President Obama said laws protecting women from being harassed by men in our nation's restrooms "are wrong and should be overturned."
President Carter scheduled the White House tennis courts. President Obama supervises our nation’s bathrooms. You can sort of excuse President Carter because he loved to play tennis, but what is President Obama’s excuse for spending his time on bathrooms?
The whole world’s watching. Listen to the soldiers of ISIS talking about it. They can’t figure out why Americans send their women over to fight men in Afghanistan while here at home men fight to use the women’s bathroom...
God has called husbands and fathers to defend our wives and daughters. Back in the Garden of Eden, God held Adam responsible for the Fall, and He will hold us responsible for the indignities and abuse our wives and daughters suffer in the ladies’ room.
Manhood that doesn’t protect the modesty and virtue of women and children has no purpose. Down in North Carolina, husbands and fathers passed a law to protect their wives and daughters from sexual voyeurism and abuse. This is as it should be. Will the rest of us remain silent as President Obama and Tim Cook begin to do to North Carolina what they already did to Indiana?
If we defend the men and women of North Carolina against Washington’s attack, we will be accused of trying to legislate morality. But isn’t that what President Obama himself is doing? Is he not making the moral claim that transexuals’ right to crash the ladies’ room trumps feminine modesty and the safety of our children? Maybe rather than saying President Obama is legislating morality, we should say President Obama is legislating immorality.
Throughout history, women have gone to the ladies room, together, and men have gone to the men’s room, alone. When he’s standing at the urinal, every man knows to keep his eyes straight ahead and his mouth shut. Dress up like a man, go into a men’s bathroom, stand at the urinal, and try striking up a conversation and looking over at the man next to you as he pees.
Back in the late seventies, a gay man propositioned me while I was using the men’s room in Chicago’s Art Institute. Many other men have been similarly harassed, sexually, while they were using the mens' room. Women will understand why men are not big on being in men’s rooms with other men. In fact, for many men, the ideal men’s room is one he shares with no one. Men are on intimate terms with male lust and understand this lust is always hovering only slightly below the surface of life. This is why we tell our teenage daughters to go back up to their room and change into something more modest. It's also why we pass laws barring men from using the washroom used by our sisters and daughters.
Women go to the safety of the ladies’ room for intimacy and friendship. There’s no sexual dynamic there precisely because there’s no man there. This is the place they’re free to talk and laugh and cry; to take care of all those parts of life they want to do without men watching or listening to them. Is this something we have to destroy because a few transexuals are having hissy-fits?
Keeping the ladies room safe for our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters is not morality. It is merely common decency. Whatever became of femininity and masculinity? Of ladies and gentlemen? Or modesty and manners?
Here's an old saying: “Those the gods would destroy they first make mad.” Our president forcing men dressed like women on our wives and daughters when they’re using the ladies room is utter madness.
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
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