Really? Really?
Ladra’s jaw is still hurting from how hard it hit the floor when it dropped during Wednesday’s county committee consideration of an 
amendment to our human rights ordinance so that it includes transgendered people. You know, guys who like to look like girls and girls who like to look like guys.
Not because I’m against the amendment. I’m an open-minded, inclusive and mostly sane person. So I am for anything that helps diminish any kind of discrimination. No, my jaw hurts because I have never seen so much ignorance and fear and hate all at once in the commission chambers.
And that is saying a lot.
The house was so packed that people poured out of the commission chambers into the hallway and there were some gathered downstairs to watch the discourse live on a TV. Somewhere around 250 people signed up to speak at the committee meeting. There were lots of folks from the LGBT community. Members of SAVE Dade and Equality Florida and other human rights LGBT groups spoke about how transgenders can often be subjected to hostile working environments or housing discrimination, which this amendment would aim to make illegal.
State Rep. David Richardson, Florida’s first openly-gay 
state legislator, spoke about feeling discrimination earlier in his life.
“It has not been an issue at all in Tallahassee, not at all. When I campaigned, it was not an issue with any voters,” said Richardson, who was re-elected sans opposition this year and who said he wants transgendered citizens to feel the same embrace from the community.
And then there was the ultra conservative (read: backward) religious right who made references to Sodom and Gomorrah, quoted the devil and used the word deviant too many times to count.
“A man is a man. A woman is a woman. Everything in between is the devil,” one man said.
Another said it was “an attack against God’s principles.”
“This is a law against women,” another man said. “A woman has the right to go to the public bathroom and not have a man sit next to her because he thinks he’s a woman.”
Outraged pastors who say they speak the word of God bussed dozens of worried Spanish-speaking moms with furrowed brows to County Hall to wring their hands and beg the four commissioners on the public safety committee to keep their little girls safe from certain harm.
It’s not their fault, though. They’ve been brainwashed by the religious right who makes them think that men dressed as women will start using the public restrooms marked for ladies. They don’t realize that, drum roll please, men dressed as women already use the ladies’ room. You wouldn’t know it if one had, but any man dressed as a woman or with a very feminine persona would likely use the ladies room anyway, already. They certainly don’t use the men’s room, which is, by the way, the public restroom where someone is more likely to be assaulted.
And, wait a minute, wouldn’t these same bible-quoting pastors and God-fearing women have an issue with men dressed as women using the little boys’ room as well? Of course they would.
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P.P.P.S.
I apologize to All Concerned that I have received input from wonderful women concerning the issue of transgender “she-males” using women’s public bathrooms.
One woman looked like she was going to cry at this prospect, a total violation of her being.
However, two women told me:
1. WOMEN’S BATHROOMS HAVE PRIVATE STALLS. THIS MEANS, UNLIKE MEN’S ROOMS WITH URINALS IN VIEW OF EACH OTHER, NO WOMAN SEES ANOTHER WOMAN RELIEVING HERSELF.
2. One of the two ‘pro-Ordinance’ women said she had experienced this issue first-hand, when a Camp Counselor transgender used the women’s room while she, my acquaintance, was in the bathroom, and although it was shocking, she supports such transgender right in 2014.
Men, certainly myself, can protect themselves, so it is women, I believe, who should determine the outcome on this issue.
2 out of 3 women I’ve talked to support the Ordinance as passed.
I will be looking to see what the majority of women in the public forum have to say.
Sincerely,
Jackson Rip Holmes
WHEN ARE WE GOING TO GET REAL ANSWERS?
Shouldn’t county ordinances be based on real problems and community needs, not on anecdotal stories, subjective allegations or personal fantasies? Shouldn’t county ordinances be based on clear, factual, objective legal concepts and scientific standards, not on sexual ideology, arbitrary claims, or capriciously alleged “sexual identities or expressions”? Moreover, should our County Code be misused as a political billboard to impose on everyone an extremist, hateful ideological agenda?
Doesn’t Miami-Dade County need more jobs, affordable housing, better health care and more transparent, efficient government? So why aren’t these real issues being addressed by Commissioners Edmonson, Barreiro and Heyman, instead of slamming residents with the polarization this unwarranted and unjust discriminatory and ideology-based ordinance promotes?
These are the REAL questions that remain unanswered by Patricia Mazzei’s piece. Why haven’t they been answered? Why?
The Herald’s coverage of this issue is extremely slanted and highly unprofessional. It gives Commissioners Edmonson, Barreiro and Heyman a pass for ignoring the massive problems Miami-Dade faces in order to waste our time on a literal ideology-based, not reality-based, non-issue.
But since they outlawed lynching for interracial dating in Dade it gives you self anointed bible thumping hypocrites something to turn out for.
Excellent comment.
Ladra you should be just as critical of those that wish to impose themselves on others. Both sides in this argument are guilty as sin.
Men’s bathrooms are for those who posess natural or surgically implanted male sexual organs. Women may enter only at their own risk.
Women’s bathrooms are for those with female sexual organs natural or surgically created (snip snip)
Yes there are people in states of transition but should all of us be burdened with extra cost for creating another bathroom . Enough! yes I might feel a bit uncomfortable seeing someone in a dress standing at a urinal but I will find comfort in the thought “better him than me.”
Has anyone noticed that regardless of sexual orientation or genitalia you are being screwed royally by mdx on the highways.
The them Christians to stay out of Midtown. Lots of progressive restaurants with unisex bathrroms.
A tranny using a wheelchair will need bathroom #4.
Wow!
If one ever needed proof it is good to be alive in 2014, this incredible scenario provides it.
I personally favor the Ordinance, but I definitely oppose giving transgender people the right to use a public bathroom for a sex different from their physical anatomy.
Sincerely,
J. Rip Holmes
They still have not addressed the fact that they lock the bathrooms at the Government Center Metrorail Station at 3pm daily so nobody gets a place to pee or poop, regardless of their orientation.
The homeless use the public library restrooms and are pretty good about keeping it clean, but they need a lot.more public restrooms downtown and someone needs to take up the cause. They are always complaining about people relieving themselves in public, yet refuse to provide facilities.
Best comment came from Elizabeth Schwartz when she said – and I paraphrase – that this ordinance is about protecting all people including the not very masculine man who opposes the ordinance. I wonder if she was referring to the guy from Christian Family Coalition with the lazy s?