It’s all over Facebook and the news: transgenders in our bathrooms. I’ve seen countless rants from Christians and parents threatening to boycott businesses like Target, stating that their kids are no longer safe using public restrooms.
I have a newsflash for everyone: your kids were never safe using public restrooms.
Please take note, that I am not associating transgender individuals with pedophiles. I may not understand or relate to their personal struggle, but I fully accept that it is one that is real to them. My personal feelings, opinions, and morals aside: that is their reality. The issue with businesses declaring access for transgenders to use the gender bathroom that they identify with isn’t the issue. The flood gate that has been opened with this whole policy proposal is that individuals with ulterior motives are now given a free pass to victimize under the guise of transgender freedom. Yes, it is true that sexual predators don’t always necessary just victimize those of the opposite gender or just children. But now instead of the threat being limited to men who victimize little boys or women who victimize little girls (because yes, this is also a thing), now men can enter women’s bathrooms and find rape victims and no one bats an eye because they might simply identity as a woman so they’re within their rights to enter the women’s bathroom.
But again I bring to your attention: public restrooms have not suddenly become unsafe; they always have been. This hasn’t suddenly made public restrooms unsafe; it’s simply opened the door to more victimization. So, what should we do? As women, parents, husbands, Christians? Should we boycott businesses? Should we segregate transgenders from our gender specific restrooms? Should we stop using public restrooms altogether?
Perhaps this is an opportunity to open up a conversation that most of us as Christians and parents are afraid to have. Perhaps we should take advantage of this to talk with our children and women in our lives and others who may be targeted as victims about how to keep themselves safe. Let’s be realistic, a good majority of those who are victimized by sexual predators it isn’t in a public restroom; it’s more often in our own neighborhoods and too often in our own homes. I would assume that this policy is not going to stop with Target. I assume that this will likely become commonplace anywhere public restrooms are available to customers, so it’s unrealistic to think we can avoid the potential problem by boycotting a few stores. Perhaps this is also an opportunity to talk to our children, our churches, our families about respecting the “other”. Would Jesus avoid the transgender individual? I feel as though these would be the individuals He would seek out, much like the tax collectors and adulterers He sought out in the New Testament. They were the social outcasts, the moral outcasts, the hated, the misunderstood. But to Jesus, they were exactly who He came to seek and save. The lost. The broken. The hurting. The searching.
I have to wonder as well; would Jesus boycott? Perhaps I’ve missed it, but I can’t find any place in Scripture where Jesus- perfect, sinless Jesus- boycotted anyone or anything.
So where does that leave us? Where does that leave you? I can’t answer that for you. But I hope I got the wheels turning.
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