A new training session at the Anne Arundel County Public School District instructing public school teachers in the fine art of maneuvering their new transgender policies is raising the ire of many parents. The Washington Times highlights one portion of the session that took place in June as a particularly disconcerting new policy:

A Maryland school district is instructing teachers and administrators not to tell parents if their daughters are bunking with male students who identify as girls on overnight field trips.

A video of the session was uploaded in mid-July and appears “unlisted” on the school district’s YouTube page. The entire session can be seen here but I’ve cued it up to the exact spot (27 minutes in) so that you can hear Bob Mosier, chief communications officer for Anne Arundel County Public Schools, instructing teachers to allow a young man who identifies as a young woman to sleep in the same quarters as the biological young women and to not reveal this activity to parents:

“So, many of you might be asking yourselves, ‘So I’m at an overnight field trip, and I have student who’s biologically a male, identifies as a female, and we’ve worked with that student and her family, and that student wants to sleep in the dorms, or whatever sleeping arrangements are, with the females.  They don’t want to sleep in a room by themselves; they want to sleep with the rest of the females. So what do we do?

“And the answer is, they sleep with the females. That’s not the easy answer; it’s the right answer. And in some cases, it’s going to cause issues, because … the private information piece doesn’t allow you to share that with parents of all of the other campers. Right? So that’s difficult.”

The title of the instruction program at Anne Arundel Public Schools is “Supporting transgender students in school” and after a cursory review of the video it appears there isn’t much in the session about supporting the non-transgender students or their parents who may have some need for support due to these policies.

Public schools across the country have been scrambling to accommodate the Obama Administration’s dictate that transgender students be allowed access to the facilities of their choice regardless of their biological gender. Individual school districts can implement policies like this despite a federal judge’s temporary block of the Administration’s mandate this week.

The school district claims privacy laws prohibit them from disclosing a student’s gender identity.

“A student’s gender identity is a confidential matter, so if you have a student who identifies as transgender, the staff that are going to know are the staff that are in the immediate need-to-know circle, and we work with the student and the student’s family to determine that,” Mr. Mosier told Fox 5 DC.

The Great Bathroom Wars of the 21st century are back on hold as of this week. Ever since Barack Obama issued executive mandates earlier this year dictating that schools and federal facilities must allow men in women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and showers if they “identify” as females, more than a dozen states have been in open revolt against the orders. A Texas court had previously issued an injunction barring the rules from going into effect and on Tuesday that order was affirmed yet again by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Austin, Texas. As expected, the White House is moving to appeal the decision. (Star-Telegram)

The Obama administration on Thursday filed notice that it will appeal a Texas federal judge’s ruling that temporarily blocked new federal guidelines directing public schools to accommodate transgender students, including allowing them to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

Federal officials say they will ask the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a preliminary injunction issued by Fort Worth-based U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor. On Tuesday, O’Connor reaffirmed that his ruling blocking the guidelines applied nationwide, not just in the 13 states that filed suit against the federal government.

O’Connor issued the original ruling in August on the same day millions of Texas children headed back to school, preventing the federal government from enforcing the guidelines as the case went through the courts.

Advocates of traditional privacy considerations might find this to be a victory, but it’s important to note that this ruling does nothing to address the underlying questions regarding “gender identity” or the legality of the White House mandates. This was strictly a procedural ruling on Judge O’Connor’s part. He specified that there were issues with the fact that the White House “had not followed proper rule-making procedure” when issuing the order and that the courts would need to weigh in on the underlying questions of propriety.

On the plus side, it was also reaffirmed that this decision applied to the entire country, not just the 13 states currently challenging the President in court. That means that not only can’t the rules be enforced in federal buildings, but that schools can not have their federal funding held hostage for failing to comply with this new, highly distorted “evolution” of Title IX. That’s an important issue because this sort of federal blackmail process could have forced many schools into an untenable position.

What we really need from the courts – and most likely the Supreme Court sooner rather than later – is a two part ruling. First there is the legal jargon question as to whether or not the definition of “sex” when applied to allegations of discrimination can be unilaterally expanded to include “gender identity” at the whim of the White House. But before the courts can speak to that it seems that they will have to get off the fence and declare whether or not “gender” is something which can be separated from person’s biological sex in defiance of science. If they agree to that premise than all hope is essentially lost because the silliness of these Social Justice Warrior fights over political correctness run amok will have infected the system at the highest levels.

For now we continue to wait. And until the final seat on the Supreme Court is filled we may not even see the question taken up.

There was an interesting ripple in the Obamacare story over the weekend, coming as most of the country was more tuned in to the closing out of the old year than any political stories. A federal judge in Texas issued an injunction which prevents certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act from taking effect. Buzzfeed brought the story to light on New Years Eve, describing how US District Court Judge Reed O’Connor halted enforcement of Section 1557 of the act, which “forbids discriminating on the basis of ‘gender identity’ and ‘termination of pregnancy.’”

Explaining the lawsuit, O’Connor wrote, “Plaintiffs claim the Rule’s interpretation of sex discrimination pressures doctors to deliver healthcare in a manner that violates their religious freedom and thwarts their independent medical judgment and will require burdensome changes to their health insurance plans on January 1, 2017.”

The states and nonprofits in the healthcare lawsuit allege that the regulation violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) — which sets the rules for federal government rule-making — and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

At the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler breaks this down.

The regulation in question implements Section 1557 of the ACA, which prohibits health-care entities that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of sex. According to the regulation, this prohibition extends to discrimination based upon “gender identity,” “sex stereotyping” and “termination of pregnancy.” Among other things, it requires that covered entities treat individuals in accordance with their self-proclaimed gender identity, which is defined as a person’s “internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female.”

The originators of the suit are referencing religious freedom as part of the initial complaint, and while there’s certainly an element of that in play, the appeal of this decision should probably focus more on the science underlying it all. This is yet another example of the Obama administration seeking to bend the definition of “sex” (when it comes to questions of discrimination) to encompass a Social Justice Warrior concept of “gender” as something unique and wholly separate from biology. The mandate would punish health care providers who refused to administer transgender procedures – even to children – in cases where it might conflict not only with their religious beliefs, but run afoul of their professional opinions as to the beneficial nature of such treatments.

These are procedures which the government doesn’t even force their own military doctors to perform, nor must such procedures be covered under Medicare or Medicaid (even for adults) under current rules. Forcing doctors to perform them on children heightens the level of alarm over this mandate. And that’s what the courts really need to answer as far as I’m concerned. There is absolutely zero compelling evidence being offered that anyone has a physical malady which requires correction based on the fact that they “feel like” a different gender than the one defined by basic science.

This goes back to a question I raised a couple of years ago. If the government is willing to not only recognize but mandate the acceptance of a person’s desired gender rather than their actual sex, why should there be any barriers at all. What about people suffering from Cotard’s Syndrome? They fervently believe that they are undead… literally zombies walking the Earth. Can Uncle Sam declare them dead just to honor that belief and force the medical community to treat them as corpses? While that may sound like an extreme comparison, it’s actually the same thing. There is precisely as much scientific evidence that a man identifying as a “transgender woman” is actually female as there is that a Cotard’s sufferer is actually a zombie.

This injunction is only a temporary measure and the appeals process will drag out for a while. But like so many other of these “transgender” questions, it’s one which the courts need to address once and for all. This should be done on a scientific basis, providing guidance for legislatures at all levels going forward. And liberals who like to declare themselves the “party of science” on other subjects should be made to answer these questions once and for all.

Back in October I wrote about the announcement that the Supreme Court would be hearing the case of G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board. This is the long awaited “transgender bathroom law” challenge to the Obama administration’s reinterpretation of Title IX law which sought to morph the definition of “sex” to include the SJW concept of gender identity. At the time I expressed concern over both how a split court might rule on the science behind the question as well as the possibility that they would dodge the fundamental questions entirely and choose to narrowly rule on the legal mechanics.

As SCOTUSblog reported in December, the court’s schedule for this case has been pushed back a bit. They extended the deadline for the final briefs from the student’s legal team until February 23rd. This means that oral arguments should begin during either the sitting which begins on March 20 or even the following session which kicks off on April 17th. Whether or not we might have nine justices by then is still unknown.

Outside groups are submitting opinions for the court to consider already, however. There are two of them I’d like to address this morning which cover both of the concerns I expressed above. The first comes from Liberty Council, who filed an amicus brief (read the entire thing here) with the court and they’re taking the scientific approach. In their press release they lay out the case against federal policy based entirely on unsupported “science” when attempting to redefine sex in human beings. (Emphasis added)

Liberty Counsel states in the brief: “Advancements in biotechnology have demonstrated what society has intuitively understood for millennia, i.e., that human beings are conceived as either male or female and there is no scientific basis for a claim that individuals have a separate “gender identity” that can differ from their biological sex. The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights ignored this inconvenient truth when they announced that the term “sex” in Title IX now includes “gender identity” so that sex-separate private facilities must be turned into unisex social laboratories. This Court should reject the Departments’ attempt to infuse Title IX with a sociopolitical agenda wholly lacking in evidentiary foundation.”…

The Supreme Court previously blocked the decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that the federal law known as Title IX should be interpreted to include “gender identity” and that a girl who “identifies” as a boy can use the boy’s restroom. The federal court of appeals ruling lacks legal authority and clearly goes against the clear meaning of “sex” when that law was adopted decades ago.

The second comes from the Family Research Council (FRC) and they’re taking the more limited approach of challenging the standing of the White House to implement this sort of change without input from the legislature, as well as bringing up the states’ rights issue.

This case is more broadly about whether a local school board is free to determine that students must use the shower, locker room or bathroom of their biological sex, and whether sex can be reinterpreted to include gender identity. The Obama administration has been hinting at the revocation of federal funds if localities such as Gloucester County take this course of action. While President-elect Trump could direct that such action must cease in his administration, attempts by legal activists to shoehorn “gender identity” into definitions of “sex” will persist, and FRC and NCVC hope the Court sees the sense in ruling in a way that leaves localities free from federal government mandates on this issue.

Here are the three primary points that the FRC is driving home, specifically addressing mandates coming from the Department of Education (DOE).

(1) Education policy should be decided at the local level
(2) The DOE letter and appellate court ruling threaten the liberty of all students by invading their privacy
(3) The DOE letter makes law when that should be left to the legislature

Personally, I would find a court ruling based on the FRC analysis to be disappointing, but it would at least serve to cut off the idea of the White House being able to issue such sweeping mandates without the consent of Congress. Far better would be a bold choice for the justices to answer the question of whether or not activists can simply ignore fundamental biology and science in general and influence public policy based on such assertions.

Before closing, there’s one other subject which always generates feedback whenever we discuss this topic and I’d like to address it here. There are a small percentage of babies born every day who have aberrations in their chromosomal structure and are commonly referred to as “intersex.” This is a very real condition and obviously society has a duty to accommodate these individuals. That does not, however, mean that the vast majority of people who are born with clearly defined XX or XY chromosomal pairs can suddenly invent a reinterpretation of sex as understood in biology. There is no new third, fourth or fifth gender on the landscape because of how someone feels. This is a question of science, not social justice, and the court should demonstrate the bravery required to say as much.

The liberal media is in an uproar (as one would expect) over the most recent memo coming from the White House regarding “transgender student” access to bathrooms in public schools. The most common phrases I’m seeing and hearing are variations of removing federal protections or the denying of rights. The reality behind what happened this week is, of course, something entirely different. This Associated Press article manages to at least cut through to the facts while invoking some of the same language.

Transgender students on Wednesday lost federal protections that allowed them to use school bathrooms and locker rooms matching their gender identities, as the Trump administration stepped into a long-simmering national debate.

The administration came down on the side of states’ rights, lifting Obama-era federal guidelines that had been characterized by Republicans as an example of overreach.

Without the Obama directive, it will be up to states and school districts to interpret federal anti-discrimination law and determine whether students should have access to restrooms in accordance with their expressed gender identity and not just their biological sex.

That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. There is no “new policy” in effect which is denying anything to anyone. This move simply reverses an Obama era mandate which held the hammer of federal funding over the heads of schools which did not toe the line of the last administration’s social justice warrior agenda. This was all accomplished yet again under the auspices of Title IX.

What’s actually happened here is a return of power to the states and municipalities for making such decisions rather than a national mandate coming down from Washington DC. In some ways this probably looks like a good thing since it provides relief to the many school districts which had opposed Obama’s policies but were facing crippling sanctions in the form of losing their federal funding. It’s also worth noting that this week’s memo didn’t actually “change” anything because the federal order is not currently in effect. It’s been on hold ever since a judge in Texas issued an injunction freezing the action until the courts could settle the matter.

That’s where the problem comes in. What may look at first like a positive sign of common sense could actually block the path to a final resolution. All of the current cases awaiting a decision, including the one in Virginia scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court, are based on the previous order issued by Barack Obama. With that order now null and void, the court is provided with the perfect excuse to duck this question and dismiss the case because the original objection is no longer valid.

Is that really what we want? Is this the sort of decision we want left to the individual states and districts, creating a patchwork of conflicting rules which could change every time a family relocates to a new school district? Whether we won or lost I have maintained from the beginning that some sort of final determination should be provided by the courts. Liberal activists have continued to push this idea (absent a single shred of scientific evidence) that gender and sex are somehow unrelated. The media has happily gone along with this narrative at virtually every turn.

Just this morning I was watching a report on CNN which included an interview with the mother of a four-year-old “transgender boy” who was complaining loudly about the new White House policy. In case you missed that, allow me to repeat. A four year old child. Who in their right mind thinks that a four-year-old is in a position to make that sort of decision? This is a liberal activist mother who is setting up her daughter for a lifetime of confusion and very likely an extended and expensive stint on a psychiatrist’s couch.

Assuming the courts bail out on this question, we are returned to a point I have been making for the past year. Winning majorities in both chambers of Congress and retaking the White House is a positive sign for conservatives. But when it comes to question such as this we are reminded why people have to get involved at the grassroots level and put sensible people on school boards around the nation. It doesn’t matter who you sent to Congress if you pay no attention to the people who are setting policy which directly affects the welfare of your kids.

Texas teen Mack Beggs is officially the winner of the University Interscholastic League Class 6A women’s 110-pound weight class. The problem is the win is going to be considered “tainted” for a variety of reasons. For one, Beggs is a girl transitioning to be a boy, and UIL rules prevent him from wrestling as a boy. AP wrote about this earlier today, and the piece raises some good questions, including why did Beggs choose to wrestle at all if he thinks it’s unfair. I can’t answer that question, and it’s something only Beggs can answer. One would guess it was because he was the best wrestler on the female team, despite the fact he’s a girl becoming a boy. Beggs credited his teammates for making him a better wrestler.

“I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my teammates. That’s honestly what the spotlight should’ve been on, my teammates. The hard work that I put in the practice room with them beside me, we trained hard every single day. Every single day. That’s what the spotlight should’ve been on.”

A lot of people are blaming UIL rules for not letting Beggs compete as a boy, and there is some validity to the criticism. After all, they did approve the new guidelines last year, obviously hoping to keep a guy from wrestling girls because he identified as a girl. They’re now probably going to have to go back and amend the rules following Beggs’ win.

One thing which is interesting, and I don’t know if Beggs’ family has answered this question, is the fact Texas families can petition a court to have a birth certificate changed. But the Texas Family Code’s rules on name changes doesn’t include gender.

Sec. 45.002. REQUIREMENTS OF PETITION. (a) A petition to change the name of a child must be verified and include:
(1) the present name and place of residence of the child;
(2) the reason a change of name is requested;
(3) the full name requested for the child;
(4) whether the child is subject to the continuing exclusive jurisdiction of a court under Chapter 155; and
(5) whether the child is subject to the registration requirements of Chapter 62, Code of Criminal Procedure.
(b) If the child is 10 years of age or older, the child’s written consent to the change of name must be attached to the petition.

The rules are also appear to be unclear on how judges should proceed on gender name changes.

Sec. 45.004. ORDER. (a) The court may order the name of a child changed if:
(1) the change is in the best interest of the child; and
(2) for a child subject to the registration requirements of Chapter 62, Code of Criminal Procedure:
(A) the change is in the interest of the public; and
(B) the person petitioning on behalf of the child provides the court with proof that the child has notified the appropriate local law enforcement authority of the proposed name change.
(b) If the child is subject to the continuing jurisdiction of a court under Chapter 155, the court shall send a copy of the order to the central record file as provided in Chapter 108.
(c) In this section, “local law enforcement authority” has the meaning assigned by Article 62.001, Code of Criminal Procedure.

It’s possible the “best interest of the child” is clear enough for a judge to decide on name changes. But it still doesn’t mention gender, which is the issue. The UIL is going to have to figure out something this year to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

One way they could solve the issue is by amending the birth certificate rule. It’s possible they could allow transgender wrestlers to compete in the gender they identify with, but only after a careful review. AP mentioned Tucker Carlson’s idea about a boy looking to score an “easy victory,” by wrestling girls. UIL could ask for doctoral records on when a guy started taking estrogen. If it’s only been a year (or less than one), then perhaps UIL can say, “Nope…wrestle boys.” The Dallas Morning News reports Beggs has been taking testosterone for over a year.

Nancy Beggs said the wrestler’s medical records were sent to the UIL before the 2015-16 season and again before this season, and Mack was approved to compete.

This is why it’s probably best for the UIL to consider changing its rules when it comes to tournaments. It’s also why there aren’t any winners in this past weekend’s tournament. Here’s hoping Mack Beggs will get to wrestle boys next year. Because that changes the story completely.

This news may be disappointing but it’s certainly not unexpected. In a single sentence notification which was issued this morning, the Supreme Court has rejected the case of “transgender teen” Gavin Grimm and sent it back to a lower court for a preliminary decision. (Associated Press)

The Supreme Court is returning a transgender teen’s case to a lower court without reaching a decision, leaving in limbo the issue of transgender rights in school settings.

Monday’s action comes after the Trump administration pulled back federal guidance advising schools to let students use the bathroom of their chosen gender, not biological birth.

The justices said in a brief order that they have opted not to decide whether federal anti-discrimination law gives high school senior Gavin Grimm the right to use the boys’ bathroom in his Virginia school.

When the court initially agreed to hear this case in January I wrote at length about my low expectations in terms of a possible result. It seemed to me at the time that the justices would likely be reluctant to issue any sort of sweeping ruling on the fundamental issues at the heart of the challenge. Given that the school policy in question was based on an objection to an Obama era Department of Education letter dealing with title IX, the possibility existed that they might rule very narrowly on that interpretation. The more difficult path would have been to answer the overarching questions of whether or not both government policy and medical practices should be structured around a belief in “gender identity” as something separate from basic biology and common sense.

The situation obviously became more complicated when the Trump administration promptly rescinded the letter, effectively removing the original barrier from the equation. This handed a convenient parachute to the Supremes which would allow them to bail out on making such a ruling. In one regard, this really isn’t out of keeping with their normal practices. The court generally likes to have some lower court decisions to evaluate before tackling something this complicated and thus far there haven’t actually been any.

But what is the lower court to make of this now? The school board was objecting to an interpretation of federal policy which is no longer in effect. With that in mind it would seem that their policy is being challenged by the student’s family but there is no set of federal guidelines to back them up. If the lower court is going to make this decision they will now be essentially setting sail on completely uncharted waters.

It looks like this one is just going to go back on the drawing board. The way these things typically play out we could be looking at one to two years before the case makes it back in front of the Supreme Court, assuming it does it all. In the meantime, other, more important issues may be left unchallenged. One of the key examples comes in the form of the recent case we talked about here involving the “transgender boy” who was competing against other girls ina high school wrestling tournament. Less important to me is the question of who that teenager should be competing against when compared to the fact that a family has convinced a doctor to begin injecting hormones into their daughter’s body which are completely unnatural to her.

Sadly, we probably won’t find anyone with standing to challenge that situation. And so, yet again, we wait.

If you’re a regular follower of the site you may already be familiar with Allahpundit’s coverage of Mack Biggs, the transgender wrestler who was “forced” to compete in the girls’ competition while she was taking male hormones during her “transitional” phase. She wound up wiping up the field and scoring a huge victory, much to the dismay of the parents of other girls who had no such chemical advantages. But this spring Mack will finally get her wish in a different category of competition thanks to some recently enacted rule changes and compete against the boys. (Washington Post)

Transgender high school wrestler Mack Beggs is used to winning on the mat, but now, off the mat, the undefeated athlete who recently won the Texas state girls title, may have scored his biggest victory yet.

Beggs, who was born female but his transition from girl to boy began two years ago and now includes testosterone injections, has been fighting to compete against boys. This spring, he will get his chance thanks to USA Wrestling’s new transgender policy, which unlike Texas’s University Interscholastic League that sets the rules for high school competition, doesn’t require athletes to compete in the division according to the gender they were assigned at birth. In fact, quite the opposite, USA Wrestling’s new policy requires those transitioning from female to male to compete in the boys’ division.

Once again following these Social Justice Warrior trends, the USA Wrestling rules include the following caveat. “Those who transition from female to male shall only be eligible to compete in the male category without restriction.”

This story is really the whole enchilada when it comes to the social, medical and societal impact of this entire transgender debate. First of all, Mack began her “transition” a few years ago and at either the age of 16 or 17 was in a home where her parents were allowing her to begin taking hormones and found a doctor to support this. Granted, that’s not quite as bad as some of the truly criminal cases of prepubescent children whose parents have allowed doctors to give them injections to prevent the onset of puberty, but the human body is still in full developmental mode at 16. In a more sane world somebody would be going to jail for this.

Even if we set the physical, medical and long term psychological issues aside, the questions surrounding “transgender” athletes are brought up in this tale as well. This one is the reverse of the more common worry over men who begin competing in grueling physical sports against women. The new rules for USA Wrestling avoids that sticky trap by only allowing girls “transitioning” to being boys to compete in the opposite gender events. But in a truly “gender neutral” world, wouldn’t that be offensive? I mean, shouldn’t the opposite be allowed? Sounds rather insulting to the sensibilities of your average Social Justice Warrior if you ask me.

But now we’ll see Mack facing the opposite side of that question. In physical, strength oriented competitions (even down to the level of golf and tennis) women tend to fare terribly against the highest caliber of men in the same events. That’s not a sexist insult, but rather the plain reality of medical science. (Go see how well Annika Sorenstam fared in the PGA.) What happens when Mack has to go compete against the best boys in wrestling at the state level? Trust me… I was a wrestler in high school and made it to the regionals once. There are no girls, even with testosterone shots, who are going to stand for long there against opponents who are within a few pounds of them in body weight.

We can brush all of these broader issues aside, however. What should really be in question is the family that is allowing this to happen to their daughter. It’s going to almost certainly turn out to be a humiliating experience, exacerbated by the fact that she’s been turned into a national totem for the SJW movement. And there appears to be nothing that can be done to protect her under the current system.

The battle over transgender bathroom policy essentially died in North Carolina after the Trump administration dialed back previous Title IX language imposed under Barack Obama, but now the fight is back on in the Lone Star State. (I’ll get to the reason why this is a good thing and how that distinction matters below.) The Texas House of Representatives pushed through an amendment this past week which is far less sweeping than their earlier effort to cover all public bathrooms, instead restricting this set of instructions to public schools. (Los Angeles Times)

A transgender “bathroom bill” reminiscent of one in North Carolina that caused a national uproar now appears to be on a fast-track to becoming law in Texas — though it may only apply to public schools.

A broader proposal mandating that virtually all transgender people in the country’s second-largest state use public restrooms according to the gender on their birth certificates sailed through the Texas Senate months ago. A similar measure had stalled in the House, but supporters late Sunday night used an amendment to tack bathroom limits onto a separate and otherwise unrelated bill covering school emergency operation plans for things like natural disasters.

Republican Rep. Chris Paddie wrote the hotly-debated language, saying it had “absolutely no intent” to discriminate. Under it, transgender students at public and charter schools would not be permitted to use the bathroom of their choice but could be directed to separate, single-occupancy restrooms.

The usual list of suspects were up in arms over this immediately, with the Washington Post describing it as part of “Discrimination Sunday.” Texas Democrats put on quite a show, with some of the female legislators briefly invading the men’s room and deceptively attempting to describe the measure as somehow being similar to racially segregated bathrooms during the Jim Crow era. That’s an obvious red herring since it isn’t in any way a parallel to this situation, but I suppose it makes for some good headlines.

As we’ve discussed here for a couple of years now, the Texas bill falls back on a pattern which seems to be the most fair solution to something which never should have been an issue in the first place. Any “transgender children” attending the schools will be given the option of using a separate, single person facility available to either gender. This offers privacy while not forcing the schools into a situation where boys are showing up in the girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms and showers.

The reason this case may prove useful in the larger debate over this subject is that it’s not dependent on anything to do with Title IX. In the previous cases, schools were pushing back against rules forcing such mixing of the genders imposed by the Obama administration on pain of losing their federal funding. Thus, when that rule was withdrawn the cases collapsed and the Supreme Court was able to duck out of making a decision. The Texas law (which will no doubt be immediately challenged) was undertaken by the state independent of any Title IX considerations. Since we’re eventually going to need the Supreme Court to rule as to whether or not science has any place in questions of gender as well as whether or not the law in this country still protects privacy, perhaps the Texas case can be the one that finally makes it all the way to the halls of SCOTUS and forces some answers out of them.

A new (well, actually old but renewed) piece of legislation introduced by Congressman Pete Olson (R) of Texas this week seeks to reestablish the power of Congress, and in some cases the states, when it comes to deciding definitions of gender and sex for legal and policy purposes. The Civil Rights Uniformity Act of 2017 lists its raison d’etre as, “To repeal executive overreach, to clarify that the proper constitutional authority for social transformation belongs to the legislative branch.”

The phrase “social transformation” is a scary one to see showing up in any sort of legislation and the more libertarian among us are probably put off by it for good reason. But what other choice is there? The crux of the bill is to roll back executive mandates from the Obama era where the well understood and scientifically sound concept of “sex” was morphed into suddenly bowing to concepts of “gender identity” as put forward by transgender advocates in the social justice community. Normally, “social transformation” belongs in the public square, but when the government dips a toe in those waters it has real world impacts on the privacy rights of citizens.

Here’s a short statement from the bill’s author.

Rep. Pete Olson said, “The Obama Administration strongly overreached by unilaterally redefining the definition of “sex” with respect to the Civil Rights Act outside of the lawmaking process. We must reject the notion of false power stolen from Congress by a White House seeking to impose social policy on America. The Founding Fathers never intended unelected bureaucrats in federal agencies to make sweeping changes to the definition of gender. While we have a new president in office, we must restore the voice of the people given to them by our Constitution and put an end to this dangerous precedent of removing Congress’ power to make laws.”

This isn’t the first time Olson has attempted this. When President Obama first issued his directives on the subject in 2016 Olson rolled out a similar proposal but it obviously wasn’t going to make it into law with the old administration in charge. Now, however, conditions have changed. Who knows how the dice will roll this time?

Heritage Action not only endorsed the bill, but said that while President Trump had taken positive steps on this matter, he needs to do more.

The Obama administration’s unilateral decision to redefine federal law for political purposes imposed a one-size-fits-all policy on every school in the country. It blatantly undermined the rule of law, separation of powers, and federalism while threatening the safety and privacy of young women.

The Trump administration took positive steps forward in addressing the problem by rescinding the Obama guidance on February 22, 2017, but unfortunately this decision was limited to Title IX and the education community. The Trump administration should extend this decision to every area where federal agencies have imposed new “gender identity” rules under the Obama administration, including employment, housing and shelters, business regulation, and health care.

The need to pass this bill serves (or very likely will serve) two different purposes. Getting the law on the books would be a good start, but it could also just as easily be modified or repealed by a later Congress. What would be far more valuable would be to finally get an expansive decision from the Supreme Court on the question of gender and the government’s role in these definitions. If this bill passes it will, without any doubt whatsoever, be immediately challenged in court. If we could get such a challenge pushed all the way up to the Supreme Court we might finally get some guidance and clarity as to whether or not science actually matters in questions like this where the personal privacy of citizens intersects with it or if we’ve basically just thrown in the towel and will allow the Social Justice Warriors to make up whatever rules they feel like.

Expect the media and Hollywood to have a field day with this one. As far as I’m concerned… bring it on.

Breaking news: Tweets are not EOs, especially to those accustomed to giving and taking orders. In the absence of a directive that explicitly ends the military’s mainstreaming of transgender enlisted and officers, the Joint Chiefs are sticking with the status quo:

There will be “no modifications” to the military’s transgender policy as a result of President Donald Trump’s tweets, the chairman of the joint chiefs said in a message to top military officers on Thursday. …

“I know there are questions about yesterday’s announcement on the transgender policy by the President,” Dunford wrote in the message, a copy of which was provided to POLITICO. “There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President’s direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance.”

“In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect. As importantly, given the current fight and the challenges we face, we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions,” he continued.

Did anyone at the Pentagon know about the policy change before Trump’s tweets? Apparently not. Vice Admiral Robert Burke told his subordinates in an e-mail that Trump’s policy announcement surprised commanders, and that  the Navy would not take any steps to change the status of currently serving transgender sailors and officers:

The Navy will not immediately discharge transgender sailors and will continue to provide them with medical treatment despite the tweets fired off by President Trump on Wednesday, according to an email obtained by USA TODAY.

The email from Vice Adm. Robert Burke also acknowledges that Trump’s announcement is “causing concern for some of our sailors and that they likely have questions.”

What’s more, it indicates that the Trump’s tweets – that the U.S. military will not accept transgender troops into its ranks or allow them to serve in any capacity – caught military brass unawares.

Some on social media painted this as a mutiny of sorts, a constitutional crisis in which the military was insubordinately refusing to comply with a commander-in-chief’s orders. A valid order has to be issued before a refusal to comply can take place, however, and social-media postings don’t qualify. The Joint Chiefs are no more required to accept a Twitter update as an order than they would a comment made between a president and a civilian at a cocktail party.

Therefore, the military is acting appropriately in this case. Yes, the president has announced a policy change, but they have to wait to get that directly from either the president himself or his designate, Secretary of Defense James Mattis. He’s on vacation, and apparently “appalled” with Trump’s medium of transmission in this case. Until Mattis gets back, promulgates the policy with effective orders, the military has no choice but to stand pat.

Of course, this is why major military policy changes should be worked out ahead of time with all of the principals, and not emitted via stream-of-consciousness social media posts. Even when the policy is supportable, as in this case, the effort loses all credibility and undermines the chain of command. That’s not the fault of the Joint Chiefs.

There’s been plenty of reaction across the political spectrum on President Donald Trump’s tweets about banning transgender troops. Vox put together a roundup of people and politicians who were angry about the decision, while The Daily Wire wrote only 12% of active duty military supported transgender troops and also claimed gender transitioning was self-mutilation. From a personal standpoint, I don’t care if someone is gay, straight, trans, sheep-lover, into BDSM, whatever, if they want to serve in the military and pass the appropriate tests, I think they should be able to serve their country.

The problem is people aren’t willing to look at why this is even an issue to begin with. It may be easy to sit there and say, “Oh, it’s about trans-freedom,” or, “oh, it costs too much to help with the transitioning,” but the fact is this debate wouldn’t be going on if the government didn’t hand out so many “freebies” to military members. This includes the VA system and the GI Bill.

Let’s face it, the government has never gotten the military health care system right. The first Veterans’ Bureau director spent time in prison for fraud after it was discovered he didn’t give disability insurance to wounded vets. The VA scandal from the last few years showed hundreds of thousand of vets may have died while waiting for care, and the so-called reforms haven’t worked. There was the report of the North Carolina veteran lying on the floor of a VA hospital in February in hopes of getting attention. The VA system is more shattered than a dropped Faberge egg, yet the government won’t stop throwing money at it. The 2018 budget request is $72.3B, and the 2019 request is expected to be $74B. That’s insane, and tossing more cash at the problem won’t solve it.

The more controversial opinion is ending the GI Bill. It’s a key tool in recruitment of teens wanting to join the military, but also something which has broad support from Republicans, Democrats, and probably most Americans. But there are still plenty of concerns about the cost of the measure, and it’s possible it contributes to the rising cost of tuition for everyone. I’ve already written about how Pell Grants increase college tuition, and it’s possible the same could be said about the GI Bill.

The Department of Veterans Affairs requested over $13B in education benefits in 2018, down from $16B in 2017. The cuts appear to mostly be towards education benefits, but there is an increase in vocational loans for job training. One thing which should be pointed out is how media outlets started raising cane about “for-profit” colleges. Los Angeles Times wrote about some of the issues in 2012.

Since the Post-9/11 GI Bill took effect in 2009, eight of the 10 colleges collecting the most money from the program have been for-profit schools.

The companies earned 86% of their revenue from taxpayer dollars in 2009, mostly GI Bill payments, according to Congress, with the top 20 for-profit education companies receiving $521 million in veterans’ education funds in 2010.

Yet taxpayers spend more than twice as much to educate a veteran at a for-profit school than at a public university. Congressional investigators say for-profit schools have far higher drop-out rates and loan interest and default rates than public universities, and credits earned at many for-profit schools don’t always transfer to public schools.

It prompted the Obama Administration to start a crackdown on the schools, something the Trump Administration has defended. But there are also questions about whether or not there’s enough oversight on the GI Bill program. Via The Center For Public Integrity from 2013:

The VA has not released a 2011 breakdown of payments to individual schools, because of inaccurate entries into its system, VA spokesman Randal Noller said in an email. The VA did release the number of veterans trained at each school through January 2013, but that list includes duplication among students who transfer schools. The department also released a report of funding to each county under the Post-9/11 GI Bill, but not total benefits paid to each school.

VA officials replied to auditors in a May 2013 Government Accountability Office report that the primary VA job is to provide benefits, “not to be responsible for veterans’ individual academic performance or goals.”

The GAO report, however, called it “critical” for the VA “to not only collect outcome data, but also plan how it will use such data to improve management of its education benefits performance.”

Without that, auditors concluded, it’s difficult for the VA to help students and “inform policymakers about the value veterans are receiving for the government’s substantial investment.”

This is what happens when the government starts throwing money at a “problem,” in hopes of “solving” it. There are people who are willing to abuse the government to make sure the cash teat doesn’t turn off. This isn’t saying “for profit” colleges shouldn’t exist, or that the government should enact massive regulations on them. If a student goes to a “for profit” college, it should be with their own money, not cash from the government aka taxpayers. It doesn’t matter if the student is a former, or current, military member or just your Average Joe or Jane. They shouldn’t get cash from the government to further their education. The solution is gradually cutting down these benefits over a ten to 20 year period, so adjustments can be made by colleges and students.

Now, this doesn’t mean Americans should just ignore vet issues. There are so many groups out there which look to help veterans, and it’s a great thing to see the free market take the lead. The Texas Medical Association published a list of doctors who would see vets in 2014, and passed the information out at community centers and to VA health system officials. Military.com has a list of discounts for active duty and veterans. Gary Sinese is involved with military charities, as is the band Five Fingered Death Punch. There are schools which offer a military discount. The free market works, and the government doesn’t.

I don’t really care about a soldier’s sexuality, and have no problem with transgendered soldiers in the military. But I do care about how much of yours and my tax dollars is spent by the government, especially when I don’t have a say in where the cash goes. Cutting these programs is a tough solution, but one which needs to be done. The same could be say about cutting back other programs and departments, which have outlived their usefulness.

I’m pretty sure that President Trump knew that his proposed ban on transgender individuals serving in the military was going to set the media’s hair on fire from the moment he first tweeted about it. (Heck, that might have been one of the deciding factors in doing it for all we know.) But while at least some of the detailed plans for how such a ban would be enacted have been submitted by the White House, the task of implementing it falls on the shoulders of Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis. And at least for the time being, these plans are on hold while he studies the matter further. (USA Today)

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis late Tuesday announced that transgender troops will be allowed to continue serving in the military pending the results of a study by experts.

The announcement follows an order from President Trump — first announced in a tweet — declaring that transgender service members can no longer serve in the military, effectively reversing an Obama administration policy. The order also affects the Department of Homeland Security, which houses the Coast Guard.

“Once the panel reports its recommendations and following my consultation with the secretary of Homeland Security, I will provide my advice to the president concerning implementation of his policy direction,” Mattis said in the statement. “In the interim, current policy with respect to currently serving members will remain in place.”

While some seem to be taking this as an indication of wavering on the policy, the final decision has already been made. Mattis appears to be approaching this from a very sensible position, but in the end it’s not up to him to override the decision of the Commander-in-Chief. From the beginning of this debate, Mattis has remained focused on one question alone… how would any change in policy impact the readiness of the United States military and their ability to effectively win wars. Social justice concerns and identity politics don’t appear to play a very large role in Mad Dog’s world. (Which is precisely as it should be.)

Regular readers will recall that I recently took at fresh look at the idea of a transgender troop ban and concluded that we could actually do without it if certain considerations were taken into account. With that in mind, I have to wonder precisely what questions are being asked and answered in the current study being undertaken by a panel of military experts.

Obviously the question of impact on force readiness must still be on the table, but more as an exercise in building background information since the decision has already been made. But are they going any further? Whether such individuals are allowed to serve or not, having the military develop a policy centered specifically on this classification could be seen as one more step in normalizing something which thus far appears to be hogwash from any rational scientific perspective. After all, sincerely believing that you are a penguin does not somehow allow you to go live without shelter in Antarctica.

Perhaps Mattis could come back with a recommendation for a compromise path when the study is concluded. The military could dismiss this entire flap by clarifying that they don’t recognize “transgender” as a demographic and will not do so until someone can provide some concrete medical data defining what it actually means. (As in, when a doctor can provide some sort of test which could determine the “gender” of an unconscious, John or Jane Doe patient and show that it’s somehow different from the results of a DNA test.) With that approach, a ban isn’t really needed and a divisive policy battle could be avoided.

In October, my wife and I went to Portland, Maine for a few days of vacation. There’s plenty to do there, but one of our target destinations was the International Cryptozoology Museum. It features everything from Bigfoot to the Loch Ness Monster and even ghostly spectral moose roaming the forests of Maine. For the record, we had a great time there and I highly recommend it if you happen to be in town. But it’s also kind of weird, right?

Maybe. But it’s far from the weirdest thing going on in Portland, which seems to be competing with its namesake in Oregon for the title of Epicenter of Weirdness. The culture there is just a bit… different, and now their local school board is instituting a new policy which should cement that legacy even further. Our Townhall colleague Timothy Meads had a report on Saturday on new rules established by the school board which will not only allow school-aged children to pick which gender they’d like to be, but forbids teachers from arguing with them or even taking the side of the parents if they disapprove.

This week, the Portland, Maine School District adopted a comprehensive transgender policy for their students. But in an attempt to welcome and create a safe haven for all, the left-leaning city has ended up crafting an overreaching debacle that tramples upon parental rights.

On Tuesday, November 28, 2017, the Portland Board of Education unanimously approved a motion that requires all Portland, ME schools implement annual staff training on gender issues, “use a student’s preferred name and personal pronoun, and take the student’s side at school if there is disagreement with a parent’s wishes.”

The intent is to create a space welcoming for transgender individuals and pupils questioning their identity. The main purpose is so teachers and students now respect whatever their peers choose to identify as. The policy is consistent with state law, which since 2014 has allowed boys and and girls to use whatever bathroom they please based on their identity.

Keep in mind that this applies to all the schools and all the students, not just the high school classes. Meads brings up one of the obvious questions which follows such a decision. What about the parents? Portland can now have second-grade boys showing up and declaring that they’re girls, and the teachers will have to refer to them as such even if the parents specifically object. So let’s get this straight… your school system won’t allow the nurse to dispense an aspirin to a student without specific directions from the parent. They can’t go on a class trip without mom or dad signing off on it. But they can decide that they’re a different gender and make the adult teachers treat them as such while overruling the parents on the matter?

This is yet more insanity. But Tim Meads brings up an equally important question regarding what, if anything, anyone should do about it. Do we want the federal government interceding in this madness? Sticking to conservative principles of the best government being that which is closest to the people it serves, the answer should still be no. The relationship between the parents, the children and the schools they attend is about as much of a local matter as one could imagine.

The residents of Portland have the ability to speak up if they find this insanity intolerable through interaction with the school board and local elections. And if the people have spoken in sufficient numbers on the subject, more sane parents who don’t want their children endangered in this fashion may have to take a tip from The Walking Dead and consider the more drastic measure of packing up and moving to a place with fewer zombies roaming the streets.

The exception to that practice comes if it can be conclusively shown that policies being enacted by the school board are genuinely harmful to the welfare of the children. Sadly, that will have to wait until we can receive some sort of clarification from the courts on where and when these unscientific and reckless practices cross the line into actual child abuse.

Until then, perhaps we should just discontinue the practice of naming towns and cities “Portland” for a while. It just never seems to work out well.

The Associated Press is reporting that the military will begin allowing transgender applicants to enlist beginning on January 1st despite an order from the Commander in Chief forbidding it. This comes at a time when the ban is being challenged in court and has already been shot down twice, contrary to all common sense. The real question now is whether the President himself signed off on this change or if the military is simply going rogue.

The Pentagon is allowing transgender people to enlist in the military beginning Jan. 1, despite President Donald Trump’s opposition.

The new policy reflects growing legal pressure on the issue, and the difficult hurdles the federal government would have to cross to enforce Trump’s demand to ban transgender individuals from the military. Two federal courts already have ruled against the ban. Potential transgender recruits will have to overcome a lengthy and strict set of physical, medical and mental conditions that make it possible, though difficult, for them to join the armed services.

Maj. David Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman, says the enlistment of transgender recruits will start Jan. 1 and go on amid the legal battles. The Defense Department also is studying the issue.

Eastburn told The Associated Press on Monday that the new guidelines mean the Pentagon can disqualify potential recruits with gender dysphoria, a history of medical treatments associated with gender transition and those who underwent reconstruction. But such recruits are allowed in if a medical provider certifies they’ve been clinically stable in the preferred sex for 18 months and are free of significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas.

These guidelines, seemingly tailored to satisfy judges who have bought into the social justice warrior movement, are curious indeed. They begin by stating that anyone with gender dysphoria can be disqualified, but then turn around and offer possible exemptions for those who “have been stable in their preferred gender” for at least eighteen months. How anyone is supposed to determine what “stable” means in this context remains a mystery.

The World Health Organization still classifies gender dysphoria as a mental disorder, as do many prominent physicians such as some on staff at Johns Hopkins. In 2013, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, unfortunately, muddied the waters by reclassifying the condition and altering the treatment approach while not eliminating it from the list entirely. This has led to even more confusion.

But under any commonly held sense of understanding, we’re talking about people who have a mental disorder. Perhaps not a dangerous one in most cases (except to themselves, as suicide rates among sufferers are far above those for the general population) but it’s still one of any number of conditions which have been used as a disqualifier for entering the stressful environment of military life. The American College of Pediatricians continues to warn the public about the dangers associated with this disorder. It is simply amazing that the courts would choose to interfere with the military when making such recruiting decisions.

The final question is the one I asked at the top. Did the President think that this was a losing battle in court and just allow the military to head off in this direction? Or are they disobeying a direct order? If the latter, I suspect we’ll be hearing about it very soon. If it’s the former, the President may not be in a mood to talk about it for a while.

It’s been almost a year since President Trump rescinded the Obama era Title IX interpretation of rules regarding “transgender kids” in schools and how privacy issues would relate to policies covering the use of bathrooms, locker rooms and showers. That threw a number of pending court challenges into the ditch and supposedly put the issue to rest. Or so I thought.

It seems that somebody at the ACLU didn’t get the message, however, and they are still pushing forward with complaints in Illinois which would force school girls to share their locker rooms with boys who “identify” as female. The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is now representing a group of concerned parents and students in the case of Township High School District 211, which we’ve written about here before. They had reached a settlement in a previous case where boys “identifying” as girls could change in the girls’ locker room provided they did so behind a privacy barrier. Now, ignoring the fact that the federal guidelines have gone back to a more sanity-based position, they want to go further and remove the privacy barriers entirely. (ADF.org)

[O]n January 11, attorneys from the Thomas More Society and ADF filed a motion to intervene in another, state-court case that seeks to force the same school district to expand its policies to give members of the opposite sex completely unrestricted access to these once-private locker rooms.

There are sound, sensible reasons to keep privacy facilities separated by biological sex.

It should be no surprise that Illinois has already acknowledged the importance of privacy in its nondiscrimination law. The Illinois Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on sex and sexual orientation, among other characteristics. However, that law specifically prevents the Act from covering “‘any facility…which is distinctly private in nature such as restrooms, shower rooms, bath houses, health clubs and other similar facilities’” and allows those types of facilities to remain separate based on biological sex.

The ACLU is attempting an end run around the rules by invoking the Illinois Human Rights Act, which prevents discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation. Of course, this claim falls short on two counts. As the ADF points out, that law is very specific in stating that the rule does not apply to, ‘any facility…which is distinctly private in nature such as restrooms, shower rooms, bath houses, health clubs and other similar facilities.’

Obviously, a locker room would fall under the same category, and school locker rooms are almost universally attached to shower facilities and bathrooms anyway. But even if that exclusion wasn’t included in the law, the ACLU would still have to prove that rules establishing separate, private changing facilities for boys and girls is actually discriminating when applied to members of one gender who simply believe that they are actually the other gender. To do so would be to open up a court challenge where someone would have to prove this was medically possible, and that’s a fight that transgender advocates absolutely don’t want to have because the science doesn’t exist to support such a claim.

We’re also talking about the proper relationship between the school system, the children and the parents. In any conflict over morals and the raising of children, cutting the parents out of the equation is basically the definition of an all-encompassing nanny state and the stuff of dystopian future movie scripts.

While antique concepts like common sense have largely fallen out of fashion in our courts today, shouldn’t this be one case where it could make a return even if we left all of the legalese out of the discussion? We’re talking about young school girls. Do their parents really want a boy getting undressed with them in their locker room or watching them undress? Do they want them sharing the shower? If we’re really so far gone that such a fundamental concept can’t be entertained in the courts then we’ve truly circled quite close to the drain as a society.

There’s a really great interview over at the Weekly Standard this week which I wanted to point out for you. Jonathan Last spoke to Ryan T. Anderson, author and Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He’s also the author of a new book, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. Last describes this as, “the most important book yet written on the subject.” The interview covers public perceptions of the transgender debate, separating fantasy from reality, both in terms of medical science and social justice advocacy in the LGBT community.

They cover a number of important aspects of this topic, particularly the need for everyone from both the left and the right to have some compassion for people suffering from gender dysphoria, particularly considering the frighteningly high rates of suicide among people dealing with this affliction. Anderson also reveals some startling findings, particularly the reality that a majority of people with gender dysphoria aren’t actually public advocates, but people looking for help. The problem is that the extremely vocal advocates from the LGBT community have coopted the “movement” (for lack of a better word) and are probably generating a backlash against the people they claim to be trying to help.

Late in the interview, Last asks if, from a purely political perspective, total victory is inevitable for the forces of transgenderism. Anderson’s answer is eye-opening and he also relates a recent incident where one of the aforementioned advocates goes several bridges too far in defining what constitutes “transphobia” in her community. (Emphasis added)

Two friends of mine on the political left have given me cause to believe that transgender activists may have overplayed their hand and provoked a pushback. One of these friends is a twenty-something man who, with some bemusement, pointed me to the viral video du jour in which someone who describes herself as an “intersectional feminist,” a “queer girl,” etc., declared that having “genital preferences” is transphobic, and that “preferences for women with vaginas over women with penises might be partially informed by the influence of a cissexist society.” And no, this was not satire.

The video lecture went on: “If you’re a woman who only likes women, go ahead, identify as a lesbian! But some women have penises. And if the fact that some lesbians might be attracted to those women offends you, it’s because you don’t think trans women are real women.” My friend objected to being judged transphobic and cissexist merely on the grounds that he dates biological women only. And when lesbians are accused of bigotry because they prefer women who don’t have male equipment, you have to wonder how long the “L” and the “T” can be held together in LGBT advocacy.

So this is actually going on out in the LGBT activist community. I was only just beginning to get used to the use of the word “transphobic” and now I’m supposed to learn how to spell “cissexist?”

But the real trip down the rabbit hole in that story is the fact that people are apparently, with a completely straight face, insisting that straight men and lesbians are supposed to be dating some of these “women with penises.” And if you refuse to do so, you’re transsomethingorother and just generally a bad person. This is part of the new marching orders on the left, apparently, and if they honestly believe that it’s going to sell well across most of America then they are crazier than they already sound.

That idea about generating a backlash (or “pushback” as Anderson describes it) is cropping up in a few places already. In case you didn’t notice the headlines about this, actress Rose McGowan has gotten herself into some trouble with the LGBT community. She recently got into a shouting match with a man identifying as a woman at a book signing event, after which she cancelled the rest of her scheduled public appearances. Apparently McGowan was insufficiently senstiive to the situation of “trans women” in terms of the recent sexual assault conversation so she was badgered in public in an attempt to shame her.

Do you suppose anyone converted McGowan to their cause in that fashion? Probably not. And as Anderson seems to suggest in this interview, that may wind up splitting the “T” out of the “LGBT” grouping eventually.

There’s a problem with the commonly seen acronym LGBT. Actually, sometimes it’s LGBTQ, depending who you ask. That problem comes with the “T” in the string of letters. While it may seem like a natural alliance in social justice circles, the fact is that one of these things is not like the others, to borrow a line from Sesame Street. The first three letters stand for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual. If you tack on the fifth one it stands for Queer. (Though I was assured many years ago that this was an offensive term. But hey… what do I know?)

All of those things relate to sexual orientation of one flavor or another, with none of them equating to heterosexuality. But “transgender” does not. Gender dysphoria describes a condition where an otherwise normally born human being mistakenly believes that they are actually the opposite gender. A male who “believes” he’s a female could be attracted to men or women or both. There’s no connection between suffering from gender dysphoria and sexual orientation.

Why is this important? Because we keep seeing these lines of attack in left-leaning media where the two are used almost interchangeably at times. One example popped up at the L.A. Times this week, in an article by Jaclyn Cosgrove seeking to claim that conservatives are now “at war” with transgender individuals because they “lost the war” over gay marriage.

In post-marriage-equality America, where same-sex couples live openly and increasingly are embraced in their communities, those on the conservative right who once pushed back against gay rights now appear to have shifted their focus to the transgender community.

So far this year, 10 states have introduced a flurry of bills that would make life tougher for transgender people, especially students who try to use campus restrooms that match their gender identity. And earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education confirmed that it will no longer investigate civil rights complaints from transgender students who say they were barred from using restrooms that align with their gender identity.

The article goes on to include all of the usual hand-wringing and hyperbole, going so far as to equate questions of transgender policy to the civil rights movement and public access for the disabled. But that initial salvo about gay marriage really sets the tone for the argument. While I was never one of the conservatives who objected to gay marriage (preferring that government get out of the marriage business entirely), I’m aware that there were significant numbers of social conservatives who did object to legalizing gay marriage on religious grounds. But that issue has nothing to do with the subject at hand here.

Claiming that conservatives somehow lost the fight on gay marriage (actually roughly half of Republicans have no problem with it) so they are “changing targets” to focus on transgender individuals is absurd. That’s like saying Democrats failed to stop the tax cuts in Congress so they’re now trying to raise taxes by pushing for new gun control measures. These policy areas are unrelated. The differences are made even more clear when you remember that gay men aren’t asking to use the women’s restrooms and showers, nor are lesbians seeking to take up locker room space with the guys.

There is no “war on transgender people” going on. What you’re seeing is an effort to prevent a further erosion of societal norms, privacy concerns and a respect for scientific facts in the name of normalizing a mental illness. At the same time, more focus should be given to finding ways to actually help people suffering from gender dysphoria rather than enabling them in their delusions and trying to force the rest of society to go along with the trickery.

Voters in Alaska’s largest city* have settled — for the moment anyway — who can use which public bathroom.

The answer: Anyone can use whichever one they feel most comfortable in.

Anchorage voters (Pop: 300,000) have just defeated a measure to require people to use the restroom according to their biological birth gender. According to the Associated Press, this is the first American city to settle the issue this way.

Anchorage thought it had addressed the modern toilet issue with a city ordinance allowing members of any gender to use any locker or restroom that they identified with.

Transgender folks were delighted with the defeat of the repeal proposal, 53-47. Lillian Lennon, who campaigned against the repeal effort, said:

Not only is this a victory for Anchorage, but a victory nationally. Transgender discrimination is popping up everywhere, and this victory means that as a nation we can stand together against discrimination.

Similar votes do seem to be appearing elsewhere, including one in Massachusetts come November. That vote will be to determine if the state repeals a 2016 law that allows people to use whatever restroom is associated with their gender identity, not their biological makeup.

Alaska Family Action filed the Anchorage repeal measure. Jim Minnery, an organizer, said, “We’re encouraged that 47 percent of the people in Anchorage didn’t buy into the $1 million infusion that the outside LGBT activist groups poured into the city.”

Minnery’s campaign reported raising $140,00 to push its side. Opponents reported raising $826,000.

Apparently fearing an economic backlash if the measure passed, opponents of the repeal included Wells Fargo Bank, Visit Anchorage, the city’s tourism promotion body, and BP oil. In 2016, North Carolina state legislators passed a biological bathroom measure that ignited calls for a business boycott. That campaign included the NBA and NCAA pulling games from the state.

Lawmakers soon changed their mind.

*An earlier version misidentified the capital of Alaska.

Vermont’s Governor Phil Scott (R) has signed yet another “bathroom bill” into law which is currently being hailed as a victory for LGBT interests in the United States. The short description of the law might tend to make you think the same thing. The legislation mandates that publicly available restrooms will be marked as “gender free.” But when you look into the details, there is one important caveat as to which facilities are covered by the law which actually makes it a very positive step in the ongoing bathroom wars which have become a focus of the transgender debate. (The Hill)

Vermont’s Republican governor has signed into law a gender-neutral bathroom measure that lawmakers are touting as a major victory for LGBTQ rights.

The bill, which was passed by a large majority in the state House last year and unanimously in the state Senate, requires that all single-user restrooms in public spaces be marked as “gender-free.”

Gov. Phil Scott signed the bill into law on Friday, and said that he hopes the bill will “send a powerful message,” particularly for kids “who face anxiety and bullying over something as simple as using the restroom” in schools, according to CNN.

“Vermont has a well-earned reputation for embracing equality and being inclusive,” he said, according to the Associated Press.

If you read through the description too quickly you might miss it, but this law only applies to single-user restroom facilities. Bathrooms with multiple stalls may still be properly assigned by gender.

Why is that such a key distinction? Because whether you’re talking about schools, government offices or public places of accommodation, this has always been the easiest and best “out” for those facing challenges from social justice warriors over transgender inclusivity. This has never been a question of privacy for transgender activists. It’s a demand in the spirit of You Will Be Made To Care which insists that the public allow men claiming to be women into the lady’s room and vice versa. Any time you have single-user restrooms and you simply take the sign off the door and let anyone use them, the issue is defused.

Plenty of places – particularly doctors offices and hospitals – already employ this lack of gender labels and they avoid problems that way. Unfortunately, buildings that already have multiple user restrooms can’t always make such a switch. It’s expensive and you require more floor space to accommodate the same number of toilets when each one has to have their own walls and door. But for new construction projects, promoting the use of single-user facilities will go a long way toward taking the teeth out of this argument. The same should be done for locker rooms and shower facilities where possible.

I don’t know if this was the original intent of Governor Scott when he signed the bill into law, but he’s managed to pull off a bit of a coup here in the transgender wars. He’s being hailed as a supporter of transgender rights while actually delivering absolutely nothing to them which they didn’t already have.