Much ado about the loo: Moore County public education edition

It’s sad to see educators in our county doing their part to inflame and expand the chaos and confusion surrounding HB2. At Pinecrest High School, a faculty-supervised LGBTQXYZ1234 group has announced a day of silence to protest HB2 (I’m sure the faculty there would be thrilled with ANY reason for the kids to participate in a day of silence):

[…] In light of the recently passed House Bill 2 and support for those in the LGBT community, students at Pinecrest High School are taking a stand. Members of Pinecrest club, Spectrum, plan on participating in a national Day of Silence this Friday.

“Mr. Faw had brought up us participating in the day of silence since we’re a new club at school,” Pinecrest senior and Spectrum President Jacora Watkins said.

According to dayofsilence.org, the Day of Silence is a student-led national event that brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools.

According to the site, “students take a vow of silence in an effort to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior by illustrating the silencing effect of bullying and harassment on LGBT students and those perceived to be LGBT.” […] 

Stopping kids from picking on each other. Hmmm.  *Good luck with that.*   It’s wrong to physically assault ANYONE for ANY reason. (It’s already against the law.) There is no need to carve out special attention or conditions for certain groups. 

Disappointingly, Sandhills Community College president John Dempsey is even getting in on this game: 

[…] Sandhills Community College students and staff are pledging to continue previously applied safeguards for students on campus who are “different” despite a recent state law that has eliminated those options.

When the North Carolina Legislature passed House Bill 2 in a special session last month, which among other things prevented the barring of discrimination of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individuals, the result was a tsunami of protest from local, national and international sources. On Tuesday, the global financial company Deutsche Bank announced it would not add 250 jobs to an operation in Cary as a result of the law.

For Sandhills Community College, the law meant that policies in place to make the campus more comfortable for its more than 200 LGBT students, such as allowing transgender students to use the restroom with which they identify, were now illegal.

News Flash:  It has ALWAYS been illegal for people with male anatomy to be IN the ladies restroom.  The law clarifies that a man pretending to be a woman, or vice-versa, doesn’t change that.

And, um, how do we KNOW there are “more than 200” lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender students on campus?  Are we surveying bedroom habits?  MORE: 

Student Kathleen Tanner, a transgender student at Sandhills, praised the college for its policies regarding LGBT and other student minorities who sometimes feel they “need someone to talk with” regarding issues unique to them.

“Sandhills has been reaching out to promote diversity around campus, instituting things for people like me who are ‘different,’” she said.

“For instance, there is a ‘safe zone’ policy in place for LGBT students and others who, when they need help or who just need to talk to someone, can go to specially designated areas where the student is guaranteed they can meet with a faculty member who is supportive and will talk with them.

“When HB2 passed, it said that Sandhills and every other college in the state cannot have these kinds of policies. It was never an issue at all until now.”

Sandhills President John Dempsey called the law “a heavy-handed way to correct a problem that doesn’t exist.”[…]

“We have a system in place that has worked for 27 years, and we have no intention of changing it,” he said. “We have never had a complaint about who is using the restrooms, and I have no intention of crafting a policy I can’t enforce. It’s ludicrous. I’m certainly not going to hire 300 bathroom managers to make sure this law is being followed.”

Asked what he will do if the state increases pressure on schools to enforce the law, Dempsey said, “I can always quit.”

“This law is a slap in the face to the LGBT community,” he said. “I suspect that if the state comes to its senses, there will be no further disruption.[…] 

Again, it has ALWAYS been a violation of the law for a male to be in the ladies room. Dr. Dempsey hasn’t ever had bathroom monitors.  Why would he think he needs them now?  (Well, the college is already apparently monitoring bedrooms, given that they know “more than 200” of their students are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.) 

The law does not say you can’t have “safe zones.” (In fact, Dempsey’s job should be to make the whole campus a safe zone for EVERYBODY.)  It DOES say things like — for instance — neither Dempsey nor Moore County can make their own rules stating that — say — x percent of contractors working for them need to be gay or have x percent of their workforce be gay.  You don’t have any more or any less freedoms or protections NOW than you did a month ago.  The bill reasserts the supremacy of the state statutes and protects residents from being subjected to the tyranny of ideologues in certain localities.

And, YES, you CAN quit.   That’s what honorable people do when they vehemently oppose, and don’t feel like they can tolerate, the rules of the game where they work.  

It’s a shame that people responsible for educating the populace are participating in this demagoguery and misinformation.  Education is supposed to be about putting all of the facts on the table and encouraging students to learn MORE. Not about pounding some Orwellian agenda — up is down, left is right, boy is girl is boy — into young skulls. 

A law professor at Campbell has published a great piece telling the truth about HB2:

North Carolina’s state legislature recently passed HB2, requiring governmental bathrooms and locker rooms to be separate based on biological sex. Despite LGBT activists’ insistence that hateful animus against transgender people motivates this law, in reality the law does not discriminate against LGBT people any more than it does against other special classes, and instead offers a reasonable balancing of conflicting privacy interests.

By now you have probably heard about North Carolina’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad law which requires people to use bathrooms based on their physical anatomy rather than on the gender with which they self-identify. Opponents have challenged the law in court and are certain that it will be struck down as unconstitutional. Their confidence is misplaced and I want to explain why. […]