Perhaps you have heard that California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed AB1266 into law, giving the state’s K through 12 students the right “to participate in sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities”–yes, facilities–based on their ‘sexual self-perception’ and regardless of their birth gender.  Not wanting to be left out of the future litigation storm, Massachusetts issued a similar directive.

Gov. Brown sees this as a landmark decision for transgender Americans and all lawyers in general, as it will help reduce bullying since an eighth-grade boy who chooses to use an elementary-school’s female restroom will be treated as completely normal.  You remember Mr. Brown.  Besides being the star of a Dr. Seuss story who able to moo and quack like a duck, he is best known for quotes like

“The conventional viewpoint says we need a jobs program and we need to cut welfare. Just the opposite! We need more welfare and fewer jobs.”

and calling his most recent election opponent a “whore” in a recorded telephone conversation.  (To be fair, he later apologized, saying that recording the conversation—not the conversation itself—was “a mistake,” which put the issue to rest for his political supporters.)

The laws come at a time when families of all twelve transgender students in California and Massachusetts have been doing battle with ignorant local school boards who say that sports teams and restrooms and locker rooms should be gender-based.  What these local school boards fail to realize is that they can save a ton of taxpayer dollars by having only one locker room in each school—or better yet, not have any and just let students shower outdoors in the campus commons.

But what about the abnormal, draconian students who in fact desire privacy when they are dressed in the nude?

Psshht.   First of all, join the 21^st century, you bigoted exhibitio-phobes.  The Greeks and Romans always ran around naked and their empires are doing just fine.  Secondly, I have done my own unscientifically biased research on this matter and I have found that if I were 15 again and given access to the girls’ locker room, I would be transgendering all over the place.  Not only that, roughly 107% of all males aged 13-18 agree that they should absolutely have unlimited access to the girl’s locker room.  They are so brave.

The attitudes of teenage girls were a bit more difficult to decipher, however.  When I asked them about how they would like to share a locker room, a majority either did not respond because they had their earbuds in or offered a response that was unintelligible because of repeated use of the word ‘like.’   And while I am no longer allowed to come within 100 yards of the remaining respondents, I’m pretty sure they are all on board with the idea too.

Sure there are a few prudish people out there who would be uncomfortable being in the shower with a stranger with differing biological plumbing, but as San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has astutely pointed out, “Discomfort is not an excuse for discrimination.”   Sounds like San Francisco will be allowing prayer back in schools any day now.

Go ahead and call me logical if you want to, but it seems to me that this issue is just a matter of determining whose rights the state is willing to preferentially enforce.  Is it the right of Mr(s) Transgenderperson exposing itself to persons of the opposite(?) sex that is more important to the success of society, or the right of the exposee to not be subject to said unwanted exhibitions?

Or, let’s conTIMplate another example:  is my right to flatulate near your olfactory orifice greater than your right to not be subject to my noxious emanations?  I mean, I can’t help it, can I?  It’s just the way I am; the way God created me.  I am just being true to who I am; true to myself.  What right do you have to tell me who I am or what I can’t do?  You don’t know me.  You don’t know my life.  You don’t know what I’ve been through…or how much sauerkraut I’ve had for lunch.

So what’s all this so-called controversy really about?

The real controversy is that this law subjects these two states to likely litigation on behalf of the TSA because “Inconveniencing the masses for the sake of the few” is their motto and with this law, the states are honing in on their patented specialty.

In a related story, according to a group of concerned parents, a Washington college whose name I will not mention but is also a color and rhymes with ‘Nevergreen,’ said their non-discrimination policy prevents them from stopping a 45-year old transgender man from exposing himself to the girls inside their women’s locker room–a locker room that is shared with the local high school and a swimming club with girls as young as six.  The college is powerless to stop him because the man(?) said he felt discriminated against after he was told to leave.

Huh.  Didn’t see that coming.