It's 2:00 am and I'm only about 3/4 awake, but my brain has developed a new mantra in the last six hours or so and I need to get it on paper.
"Public schools must permit transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity, according to an Obama administration directive issued amid a court fight between the federal government and North Carolina," reports the Wall Street Journal on May 13, 2016.
A wide cry of foul rose in the country after 9/11 when the Patriot Act imposed rules some found oppressive to the American citizen's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The debate still rages on to what extent the federal government can and should control the minutiae of our daily freedoms. The act was seen as stifling and a lock step into something right out of the Third Reich.
But I think back over the last 40 years or so of my life: remember Marlo Thomas (Danny's daughter and Phil Donahue's wife) with her "Free to be, you and me," campaign of the 70's? I don't recollect the entire thrust of the movement, but what I do recall encouraged children to feel free to play with non-gender specific toys, not to be restricted by conventional thinking.
Last time I looked, I was a girl. When I was a kid in the big brick house I still think of as home, I had Barbies, books, a Fighting Lady battleship toy, and every cool Tonka truck that came down the pike. I remember some sideways glances from aunties when I'd open my earth mover under the Christmas tree, but I dug holes and climbed trees and rode bikes with the boys as much as my mother would allow.
So I guess you can say I was grateful for Ms Thomas' opening of that window; although by then no longer applicable to me as a child, I felt I had been a trend-setter in striking a blow for gender equality.
I have seen gender rights come a long way in the workplace and in what is considered acceptable for our children to use as toys, but I have to admit I draw the line at public schools being required to provide transgender toileting facilities. USA Today reports,
"The guidance doesn't have the force of law, but tells schools how the Department of Education intends to enforce Title IX in the future. And because Title IX is directly tied to federal education funding, the guidance carries an implied threat: Follow the federal guidelines or risk losing those funds."
Last time I looked, I was a girl. When I was a kid in the big brick house I still think of as home, I had Barbies, books, a Fighting Lady battleship toy, and every cool Tonka truck that came down the pike. I remember some sideways glances from aunties when I'd open my earth mover under the Christmas tree, but I dug holes and climbed trees and rode bikes with the boys as much as my mother would allow.
So I guess you can say I was grateful for Ms Thomas' opening of that window; although by then no longer applicable to me as a child, I felt I had been a trend-setter in striking a blow for gender equality.
I have seen gender rights come a long way in the workplace and in what is considered acceptable for our children to use as toys, but I have to admit I draw the line at public schools being required to provide transgender toileting facilities. USA Today reports,
"The guidance doesn't have the force of law, but tells schools how the Department of Education intends to enforce Title IX in the future. And because Title IX is directly tied to federal education funding, the guidance carries an implied threat: Follow the federal guidelines or risk losing those funds."
So there's the rub: comply or lose the money. For those people in this country, me among them, who value my rights to make my own decisions, this smacks of coercion.
I'm not even going to attempt to explain my feelings on transgenderism, that's for another discussion at another time. let's just look at the implications here for my personal freedoms.
We are endowed by our Creator with these inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1776. As long as I don't bother you, you have no right to bother me.
The Ten Commandments are, like it or not, the foundation of many of the laws of man: Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not take any gods before me, honour thy father and thy mother, thou shalt remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. And to me, here's the kicker in the quagmire our government has created for itself:
Thou shalt not steal.
Yet the rights and freedoms of American citizenry are being gobbled up by Big Brother daily. Please show me, and perhaps the reader finds this a stretch, where God says with whom I may and not relieve my bodily functions based on their gender? And don't forget the ransom note to the public schools: or we can mess with your funding you need to keep your head above water.
I don't recall that tactic being used in the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education regarding racial integration. I need to study up on it, for sure, but I'd bet you the farm the Eisenhower Administration did not decree that if you don't racially balance the population of your student body you won't get federal education funds.
So let's take a fanciful turn of phrase and say that it's like the gangsters holding the control over the people who just want to do what they're intended to do, to get along and provide a service. But no, there are those kickbacks of whatever shape and form that railroad any potentially unwilling participant.
I despair for our nation. I weep for our freedoms lost, never to be regained; the changes demanded by Big Brother are smoothly packaged and easy to swallow if one doesn't think critically. Baa-baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, and Uncle Sam will give me whatever I want if I stand in line like the sheep to the slaughterhouse. I get pablum and he steals what generations of brave Americans have fought to protect: our rights and freedoms.
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