Republicans often call themselves advocates of small government. What that means is that the government needs to be small enough to fit into our bedrooms and bathrooms. In the tradition of the Roman propensity of naming wars after the locations where they were fought I’ve dubbed the Republican Party’s attempt to regulate bathroom usage the Bathroom Wars. Two years ago the front line of this war was in Arizona, where Republicans tried to pass a law that would make it a jailable offense to use a bathroom in a manner that wasn’t specifically approved by the men in suits in Arizona’s capitol building. Now the front line has moved to Florida where Republican scumbag Frank Artiles has introduced legislation that manages exceed Arizona’s attempt in stupidity and offensiveness:
According to the bill’s text, any trans person who enters a “single-sex public facility” that doesn’t match their “biological sex” is guilty of a first-degree misdemeanor. A “single-sex public facility” includes bathrooms “maintained by an owner of public accommodations, a school, or a place of employment”—basically, any public bathroom in the entire state. Any trans person who violates the act could be sentenced to one year in prison.
Regardless of your views on transgender individuals I think we can mostly agree that tossing somebody in a cage for one year because they failed to use a bathroom in a manner unapproved by the men in suits in Florida’s capitol is asinine. The state’s cages are already overflowing with nonviolent individuals so I fail to see how adding more to the mix will make matters worse.
But jailing transgender individuals for using a bathroom in a manner unapproved by the state is par for the course thanks to Arizona. Frank Artiles decided he wanted to kick things up a notch and prove that he is, without a doubt, more transphobic than the Republicans in Arizona:
It gets much, much worse. Any non-trans person who discovers a trans person using a bathroom that doesn’t align with their “biological sex” would be permitted to sue that trans person under the act. (If sued successfully, the trans person would have to pay their accuser’s attorney fees.)
I’m not sure how a cisgender person is supposed to identify whether or not another person using a bathroom is transgender unless they start resorting to age old tactics of detecting thoughtcrime:
On the upside this bill is mostly toothless because the Republican Party cherishes property rights above all else and therefore would never require a private business to abide by this law. Just kidding!
And, in a final turn of the screw, an “owner of public accommodations, a school, or a place of employment” who allows a trans person to use the bathroom of their true gender is liable for a civil suit.
Republicans never were big on the whole private property thing. This is especially true when property rights interfere with the subjugation of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals.
As an individual with transgender friends I find these bills personally offensive. As a libertarian who believe the government has no right to regulate bedrooms or bathrooms I find these bills tyrannical. As an anarchist who believe all interactions should be voluntary I find these bills sickening. Basically these types of bills offend me on every level and I really think tarring and feathering individuals who introduce them and vote for them is too kind. I hope this bill doesn’t pass and I hope Frank Artiles gets exiled to a deserted island so far out in the middle of the ocean that there’s no chance he’ll make it back to the United States.