The Thing About Bathrooms

     If you had told me a few months ago that the hottest political debate would soon be about who uses what toilet, I would have laughed at you.   Yet here we are, in June, still arguing about bathrooms.   This has to be a joke, right?   I mean, who cares about where you go to the bathroom?   Apparently, a lot of people do.
     If you don't know what this is all about, North Carolina made a rule saying that people born male should use the male bathroom and people born female should use the female bathroom.   Many people took this as an act of oppression against the transgender population.   In retaliation, Target announced that transgender people could use whatever bathroom or dressing room they liked in their store, causing many Christians to boycott the company.
     You may think that as a Christian that I support North Carolina and do not agree with Target.   This is not the case, nor is the other extreme.   I think both parties did wrong in this instance, and here's why:
     Transgender people often look like the gender they identify with and not the gender they were born with.   If a child born male who appears female is in the men's bathroom, the child could be in danger.   Likewise, an adult born female who appears male could be bullied in the women's bathroom.   Recently, I read a story about a woman who someone thought was transgender being bullied in the women's room at a Wal-Mart.  Things like this could become more prevalent because of this law.
     What most people don't realize is that they've been using the restroom with transgender people their entire lives.   Nothing has stopped transgenders from using the bathroom assigned to the gender they identify with before.   We can't use the excuse that it makes us feel "weird" knowing that trans people could be in the bathroom with us, because it's already happened many times and we didn't even notice.   If North Carolina had just not said anything, we would have never thought about it.
     Target was silly, too.   They should have known better than to get wrapped up in such an issue.   Again, if they hadn't said anything, no one would bother about them.   Target's sales possibly have gone down because of the boycott (though they deny that to be the case).
     Many people have argued that Target's statement could make it easier for men to assault women in the bathroom.   The thing is that men already did this without Target's help.   Nothing will stop someone as sick as that.   Another thing to remember is that Target's dressing rooms were already gender neutral.   People from every gender, male and female, could use the dressing rooms at the same time.   Nothing has changed in that area.
     I think that the whole issue shouldn't have been elevated to this level.   So many people are so fearful because of it.   It's time to stop being afraid and realize that bathrooms are really silly things to argue about.