Weeks after an extremely tight gubernatorial election in which North Carolina’s “bathroom wars” loomed large, the city of Charlotte has repealed the bathroom ordinance that got the whole thing rolling. In turn, the state legislature is repealing HB2, which had been its response to that ordinance, and which had precipitated a massive national debate as well as corporate boycotts. HB2 had taken such matters out of Charlotte’s hands and further required people to use public facilities in accordance with the sex listed on their birth certificate.
The modern fight over forcing recognition of subjective gender self-identification was quite silly enough at that point, but it got sillier still when the Obama administration responded to HB2 with yet another provocation — a presidential decree on transgender bathroom use. I am almost certain that the framers had a reason when they failed to include this topic in Congress’s enumerated powers.
The fact is, this is not what government is meant for at any level, and it’s refreshing to see everyone back down here. As Vice President-elect Mike Pence has put it, a bit of common sense at the local level should be enough to fix this.
Let’s look at the reality: Ordinary people will continue to believe, as biology and common sense dictate, that men are men and women are women. The two are different enough that no amount of political correctness should be allowed to force private institutions to put them in compromising situations around one another, or to require that government at all levels ignore the science of chromosomes for a sort of religious dogma that says everyone is the arbiter of whether he is a man or woman.
At the same time, there’s no reason to be intransigent, let alone cruel, toward self-identifying transgendered people. There are many ways to accommodate them in public facilities that don’t require state-imposed mass self-delusion about the question of whether men and women are different.
One simple answer is discretion — to turn a blind eye where appropriate. The cops should not be standing at the bathroom door demanding your birth certificate. No one gets in trouble for using the wrong bathroom unless there’s an actual incident. Who among us hasn’t kept watch at the men’s room door at least once so that a lady who would otherwise have to wait in a long line for the women’s room can get in and out of an empty men’s room quickly to do her business without being hassled? It’s impossible to legislate kindness and understanding.
Private institutions are finding ways to handle this as well. In Washington, D.C., restaurants and other establishments have increasingly moved away from large bathrooms toward having multiple small, single-toilet bathrooms that can be locked are available for anyone’s use. These are convenient for everyone (I certainly think so where there are five men and no women in line for three bathrooms) and obviate such debates over transgenderism. And they are not difficult to provide at least as options in schools, airports, stadiums and other large facilities that require large bathrooms to meet demand.
In a society where we can behave charitably toward one another, we can certainly use our heads to accommodate people instead of putting one-size-fits-all rules in stone for everything.
