Perhaps as stunning as the Obama administration’s iron-fistedness
on the issue of transgender bathrooms are the arguments it’s employing
in an attempt to justify it. Many of us, of all colors, were taken aback
— to say the least — when Attorney General Loretta Lynch compared the
trans bathroom issue to Jim Crow laws — drawing a comparison between the
struggles of transgender individuals and blacks.
Understandably, many blacks are just plain outraged at the Obama
administration’s appropriation of civil rights to further its own
ideological agenda — including our own Col. Allen West, who shared his
thoughts here earlier today.
A group of black pastors is declaring the Obama administration’s equivalency of transgender and black struggles a “gross insult to all of those who marched with Dr. King and faced fire hoses and hatred in the name of equality.”
The group is calling on “all black Americans to stand up and fight
for the sanctity of Martin Luther King’s accomplishments for our race.”
Via Breitbart: The president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP)
says that the Obama administration’s assertion that single-sex
bathrooms are discriminating against gender-confused individuals in much
the same way that blacks experienced discrimination in the United
States is a “gross insult” to all who fought for equality for
African-Americans.
U.S. Directs Public Schools to Allow Transgender Access to Restrooms
Signs outside a restroom at Santee High School in Los Angeles.Credit
Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WASHINGTON
— The Obama administration is planning to issue a sweeping directive
telling every public school district in the country to allow transgender
students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.
A
letter to school districts will go out Friday, adding to a highly
charged debate over transgender rights in the middle of the
administration’s legal fight with North Carolina over the issue. The
declaration — signed by Justice and Education department officials —
will describe what schools should do to ensure that none of their
students are discriminated against.
It
does not have the force of law, but it contains an implicit threat:
Schools that do not abide by the Obama administration’s interpretation
of the law could face lawsuits or a loss of federal aid.
The
move is certain to draw fresh criticism, particularly from Republicans,
that the federal government is wading into local matters and imposing
its own values on communities across the country that may not agree. It
represents the latest example of the Obama administration using a
combination of policies, lawsuits and public statements to change the
civil rights landscape for gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender
people.
After
supporting the rights of gay people to marry, allowing them to serve
openly in the military and prohibiting federal contractors from
discriminating against them, the administration is wading into the
battle over bathrooms and siding with transgender people.
“No
student should ever have to go through the experience of feeling
unwelcome at school or on a college campus,” John B. King Jr., the
secretary of the Department of Education,
said in a statement. “We must ensure that our young people know that
whoever they are or wherever they come from, they have the opportunity
to get a great education in an environment free from discrimination,
harassment and violence.”
Courts
have not settled the question of whether the nation’s sex
discrimination laws apply in matters of gender identity. But
administration officials, emboldened by a federal appeals court ruling in Virginia last month, think they have the upper hand. This week, the Justice Department and North Carolina sued each other
over a state law that restricts access to bathrooms, locker rooms and
changing rooms. The letter to school districts had been in the works for
months, Justice Department officials said.
Texas Teacher Rejects Obama’s Transgender Bathroom Letter, Says He’ll Send it to the Paper Shredder
President Obama decided to yet again defy
the constitutional limits placed on his powers and released a directive
stating public schools must allow transgenders to use the bathroom of
their choice.
Well, the great state of Texas is saying no thanks and accusing the president of blackmail.
From IJR:
Rodney Cavness, the Superintendent of Port Neches-Groves in Texas, told 12News that he cannot tolerate the mixing of males and females in his schools’ restrooms out of what he believes are safety concerns:
“He ain’t my President and he can’t tell me what to do. That letter
is going straight to the paper shredder. I have 5 daughters myself and I
have 2,500 girls in my protection. Their moms and dads expect me to
protect them. And that is what I am going to do.”
“Now I don’t want them bullied,” Cavness said. “But there are
accommodations that can be made short of this. He is destroying the very
fiber of this country. He is not a leader. He is a failure.”
A top Texas official said the state will not yield to
“blackmail” from President Barack Obama, after the administration on
Friday released a directive notifying
public school officials that transgender students must be allowed to
use the restroom and locker room facilities corresponding with their
gender identity.
“I believe it is the biggest issue facing families and schools in
America since prayer was taken out of public schools,” Texas Lt. Gov.
Dan Patrick told reporters.
Obama’s policy “will divide the country not along political lines but along family values and school districts,” Patrick said.
“He says he’s going to withhold funding if schools do not follow the policy,” Patrick
said, referring to the risk of schools losing federal funding if they
do not adhere to the recommendations. “Well, in Texas, he can keep his
30 pieces of silver. We will not yield to blackmail from the president
of the United States.”
Noting that Texas public schools get $10 billion of federal funds
over a two-year budget, Patrick said the majority of that is for free
breakfast and lunch programs.
“So Barack Obama, if schools don’t knuckle down to force girls
showering with boys and force 8-year-old girls to have to endure boys
coming into their bathroom, he’s taking money from the poorest of the
poor,” Patrick said. “The president of the United States will be ending
the free breakfast and free lunch program. That’s what he’s saying.”
Apparently Obama doesn’t understand that transgender restrooms are a
10th Amendment issue, meaning it’s left up to the states to decide how
to handle it and the federal government has no jurisdiction in the
matter at all.
The only legitimate powers of the federal government are outlined
clearly in the Constitution, and all the rest are reserved for the
states.
It’s a simple concept, yet the president seems to relish any
opportunity possible to violate this law of the land with sheer glee.
It’s encouraging to see the state of Texas calling on its 10th
Amendment rights to stand against the encroachment of the federal
government. Hopefully other states will start doing the same and help
take back some of the power stolen by those in Washington.
A former
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and currently a Distinguished Fellow at the
Heritage Foundation, Kim R. Holmes surveys the state of liberalism in America
today and finds that it is becoming its opposite—illiberalism—abandoning the precepts of
open-mindedness and respect for individual rights, liberties, and the rule of
law upon which the country was founded, and becoming instead an intolerant,
rigidly dogmatic ideology that abhors dissent and stifles free speech. Tracing
the new illiberalism historically to the radical Enlightenment, a movement that
rejected the classic liberal ideas of the moderate Enlightenment that were
prominent in the American Founding, Holmes argues that today’s liberalism has
forsaken its American roots, incorporating instead the authoritarian,
anti-clerical, and anti-capitalist prejudices of the radical and largely
European Left. The result is a closing of the American liberal mind. Where once
freedom of speech and expression were sacrosanct, today liberalism employs
speech codes, trigger warnings, boycotts, and shaming rituals to stifle freedom
of thought, expression, and action. It is no longer appropriate to call it
liberalism at all, but illiberalism—a set of ideas in politics, government, and
popular culture that increasingly reflects authoritarian and even
anti-democratic values, and which is devising new strategies of exclusiveness
to eliminate certain ideas and people from the political process. Although
illiberalism has always been a temptation for American liberals, lurking in the
radical fringes of the Left, it is today the dominant ideology of progressive
liberal circles. This makes it a new danger not only to the once venerable
tradition of liberalism, but to the American nation itself, which needs a
viable liberal tradition that pursues social and economic equality while
respecting individual liberties.
