TO THE EDITOR:
I am sick and tired of all the lies on this Repeal Ordinance M-130 issue. There are yard signs saying "Keep Men Out of Our Daughter's Bathrooms!" This has nothing to do with Bathrooms!
Ordinance M-130 is an addition to the city's anti-discrimination ordinance: it adds "Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Genetic Information" to the list of people the city and its contractors will not discriminate against. The old ordinance did not make it possible for black men to molest our daughters. It did not make it legal for Baptists or Buddhists to molest our daughters. It did not make it legal for Albanians to molest our daughters in bathrooms either. The issue has nothing to do with bathrooms.
So why is this Texas-side effort making this their campaign? Because they can't say "We want to keep firing homosexuals and lesbians and bisexuals, and transgendered folk if we find out about them." Because real Americans would never stand for that.
So instead they scream about bathrooms. Because to most people, Transgendered people are a little hard to understand. And what people don't understand, they fear. And fear gets us out to the polls.
So what kinds of people are saying this is about keeping men out of the ladies room? There are three groups. The innocent. The willfully ignorant. And the liars. The innocent are just not informed. Minnesota has had this law since 1993. They have never had a transgendered person attack anyone in a bathroom. In fact there has never been a sexual assault by a transgendered person in a public bathroom. Ever. Anywhere.
The willfully ignorant are those who read the paragraph above and still say "Well, I just don't want to take a chance that some pervert might get the idea," and then vote against the measure, knowing it deprives LGBT people of the same protections they enjoy.
And the liars are the evil, yes, evil men who know what they are doing, realize that they can't just say, "We want to continue discrimination against LGBT people, and this lie will get them to vote our way."
So I ask you, which are you? Innocent? Willfully ignorant? Or just an evil liar?
Jimmy Pope
Texarkana, Texas