Stop Using the Civil Rights Era to Legitimize Trans Issues

FILE - In this Jan. 27, 2016 file photo, a sticker that reads, "Keep Locker Rooms Safe," is worn by a person supporting a bill that would eliminate Washington's new rule allowing transgender people use gender-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms in public buildings consistent with their gender identity, at the Capitol in Olympia, Wash. In clashes over transgender students and which restrooms and locker rooms they should use, the U.S. Department of Education has warned public schools that a sex discrimination law makes it illegal to deny them access to the facilities of their choice. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

A common tactic of the left is to use past events that are well remembered by the public at large to make their cause célèbre seem like it’s the proverbial “good fight” that folk must keep on fighting. Recently they’ve been using an example they were on record opposing back in the 60’s in order to legitimize the trans bathroom issue today, namely Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who likes to compare it to Jim Crow era segregation.

Advertisement

Tuesday, my friend and colleague Lawrence B. Jones released an article that killed the claim that the Civil Rights movement is akin to the struggle to let men into women’s private areas. As a black man himself, Jones was insulted that his own community’s struggle with the ignorance of the past is being used to promote the ignorance of the present.

“As a black man, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Back then, they discriminated against an entire race of people based on their skin color, barring them from anything from colleges to water fountains. This was something the black community couldn’t help. They were black, and regardless of what they’ve done, or the decisions they made, they were looked down on simply for having a certain level of melanin.”

Jones states what should be the obvious. The color of your skin does not dictate the content of your character, nor does it decide your standing in society despite what race baiters and social justice advocates would have you believe. Being black is as much a choice as being white, or brown, or male or female. You are always as biology made you, but in this country you can become what you make of yourself.

Advertisement

The difference here is night and day. You can choose to be transgender, even if you suffer from the mental illness known as gender dysphoria. You know your biology, and despite popular culture telling you otherwise, turning your back on a fact doesn’t make it less of a fact. Even the mere fact of calling yourself transgender is an acknowledgement that you’re not who you say you are.

This is not what the black community went through at all. Denying a black individual from using a restroom due to his skin color is denying someone freedom to live like everyone else. Denying a transgender the use of a restroom they don’t belong in is denying them the right to force everyone else to live as they do.

Jones finishes…

“This is so disrespectful to the black community whose struggle was a real issue of rights, not just for a bathroom, but for a life of freedom for an entire race. The transgender issue is nothing like that.

Using the black community’s struggle to paint the transgender community’s bathroom issue as a legitimate societal concern is insulting, not just to me and my brothers and sisters, but to those who fought with us during the civil rights era.”

Advertisement

I find it funny that the left, which claims it champions the poor, oppressed, black community would hold them up as an example of being on the “right side of history” – which the left clearly wasn’t during the 60’s – in order to pass a bill that doesn’t hold a candle’s flicker to the plight of the black community during that time.

But here they are, beating people over the head using the black community as a cudgel like they have a right to wield it.

Let me elaborate on Jones’s great piece, which you should absolutely read. The transgender bathroom issue is nothing like Jim Crow. This isn’t arbitrary segregation based off of hatred and ignorance in regards to an identity. As we’ve repeatedly stated – including Lawrence in his piece – this isn’t even about the transgendered. No one is lining up to put anyone in the back of the bus, or keep you out of college, or even deny you bathroom rights because of your biology.

They’re denying the right to go into that bathroom because that’s not who you are, and there are people waiting in line behind you who want to use that bathroom for less reputable reasons. I get real tired of hearing that this is not a good reason to ban people from a bathroom when this is the best reason. I’m not sure how you could look a girl or woman in the face, who had just had the worst day of her life, and say “Hey, at least Fred doesn’t feel discriminated against!”

Advertisement

People in the black community should be rightfully offended that people are using their past as a way to push agendas that could bring harm to people. People who do make these comparisons should be ashamed of themselves.

Don’t confuse a fight for equal rights and freedom with something that shouldn’t even register on the outrage scale.

Recommended

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on RedState Videos