Recently, big-box-store chain Target announced that they would have a pro-trans bathroom policy. This made some on the religious right lose their minds. Pastor Rick Wiles suggested that anti-LGBT activists urinate on the floors of Targets. The AFA, not shy when it comes to being all-in on discriminating against any group of people they don’t see in a mirror, is trying to get a foothold in this big-money anti-LGBT bathroom crisis. As with most proponents, their sticking point is a mythology surrounding sexual predators “taking advantage” of these laws and this somehow leads to children being sexually assaulted. Sandra Rios, the director of governmental affairs for the American Family Association was on some right-wing radio show and when asked about the Target policy, had this to say:
I think there’s no question that when you say that there are no barriers in the bathroom and that if men or women feel like they are men or women, the opposition of however they are equipped, and you have no restrictions, the net effect will be that people will not be stopped. We’ve already had people testing this, going into Targets and men trying to go into bathrooms. There is absolutely no barrier.
And so the chief concern, even more than just trauma, certainly for little girls of having men dressed like women coming in their bathrooms, the chief concern of the American Family Association is the predators who will take advantage.
Yup. You don’t want to traumatize little girls by having men just showing up randomly in their bathrooms. A good way to do that is by having random men go and walk into bathrooms where there are little girls.
There have been sexual assaults in bathrooms in the history of bathrooms but men or women pretending to be men or women to gain access into bathroom to victimize people has never actually been a thing. It turns out that men trying to gain access to women’s bathrooms to accomplish something that is not bathroom related is a thing. It’s a thing for homophobes and transphobes.
Like most bigotry and phobic trains of thought—the American Family Association (AFA) is beginning to eat its own tail. Listen to a mad hatter just below.
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