Michelle Duggar is very concerned about transgender citizens, but she’s not worried about discrimination or the other struggles that they face – she just really, really wants to keep them out of the bathrooms that match their sex.
According to The Washington Post , Michelle Duggar lent her voice to a robocall opposing a Fayetteville, Arkansas anti-discrimination ordinance that will voted on today. The ordinance would create a new city staff position dedicated to sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination claims pertaining to employment, housing, and other public accommodations. However, the 19 Kids & Counting matriarch fears that the anti-discrimination ordinance could harm children.
Michelle Duggar has various arguments against the law. She either thinks that there are a lot of trans women child predators out there or that the Fayetteville ordinance would encourage male child predators to pose as trans women. Here’s part of her robocall:
“I don’t believe the citizens of Fayetteville would want males with past child predator convictions that claim they are female to have a legal right to enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls.”
Why isn’t Duggar worried about the male child predators who prey on little boys or the female child predators that prey on little girls? They can waltz right into restrooms without raising an eyebrow. And what’s stopping a man from following a little girl into a bathroom when she’s all alone? If Michelle truly cares about her kids’ safety, she’ll accompany them to the restroom to protect them from any potential danger they encounter. However, this obviously isn’t her real issue – she’s just trying to make excuses for her fight to make life harder for a small group of people who already face enough difficulties as it is.
Here’s what The Daily Beast wrote about Michelle Duggar’s fear-mongering:
“Duggar is playing on the old and false conservative conflation of non-heteronormativity with criminal deviancy. It’s pure fear-mongering to say that letting a transgendered person use the same bathroom as women and children would be a public safety threat.”
Michelle Duggar also thinks that encounters with trans women will traumatize girls:
“I doubt that Fayetteville parents would stand for a law that would endanger their daughters or allow them to be traumatized by a man joining them in their private space. We should never place the preference of an adult over the safety and innocence of a child.”
Most trans women just want to viewed as women — they don’t waltz into restrooms and announce to everyone there that they were born with male genitalia. It’s even possible that Michelle Duggar or her daughters have been in a public bathroom with a trans woman without even knowing it. It’s unclear how the 19 Kids & Counting star plans to keep trans women out of the same “private space” that she uses when she’s out in public.
And here’s another scenario Michelle Duggar obviously didn’t think about: what would happen if a trans man walked into a women’s restroom? Wouldn’t her daughters be more traumatized to see a man in their “private space?”
Fayetteville city attorney Kit Williams agrees that it would worse to force transgender people to use the restrooms that don’t match up with their sexes. Here’s what he wrote in an August 5 memo:
“Transgender people — who are far more likely to be the victims of harassment and violence if forced to use a bathroom that is inconsistent with their gender identity or expression — deserve to have the ability to use the bathroom in peace and safety.”
According to Yahoo! TV , the Fayetteville ordinance is also upsetting “churches and religious business people.” If the law is passed, businesses could be prosecuted for firing someone because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. However, Danielle Weatherby, assistant professor of law at the University of Arkansas, pointed out that similar laws passed in other cities have not caused any problems. Here’s what she told Arkansas Matters :
“At least 200 cities like Fayetteville have passed similar ordinances. It hasn’t increased litigation and it hasn’t caused uproar in the religious communities of those cities.”
Transgender people feel that they were born in the wrong body, so they try to correct nature’s mistake by molding themselves into who they were truly meant to be. They’re not trying to harm anyone – they just want to be comfortable in their own skin and to be accepted by society.
Unfortunately, people like Michelle Duggar will probably never accept them or acknowledge them as human beings deserving of love and compassion. However, she should feel a certain kinship with transgender men and women – many people also don’t agree with what she’s done with her body by having 19 children. As The Inquisitr previously reported, she’s willing to put her own life and that of her unborn baby in danger by trying to have a 20th child . She and her husband even consulted a fertility expert.
Michelle Duggar claims to be a loving Christian, but where’s the love for the people who have it hardest?
[Image via TODAY ]