First, the good news:
A federal appeals court in Richmond has sided with a transgender high school student, saying that he can proceed with his lawsuit arguing that his school board’s decision to ban him from the boy’s bathroom is discriminatory.
In backing high school junior Gavin Grimm, the 4th Circuit deferred to the U.S. Education Department’s interpretation of policies that give transgender students access to the bathrooms that match their gender identities rather than their biological sex. The department has said that denying transgender students access to the school bathrooms of their choice is a violation of Title IX, which prohibits discrimination at schools that receive federal funding.
“The Department’s interpretation resolves ambiguity by providing that in the case of a transgender individual using a sex-segregated facility, the individual’s sex as male or female is to be generally determined by reference to the student’s gender identity,” Judge Henry Floyd wrote.
So that’s the good news. And now for the bigoted idiocy.
First, there’s the judge (Robert G. Doumar of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia) in the case that was just (thankfully) “reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded.” Keep in mind that Judge Doumar was appointed by President Reagan, back in the days when Reagan’s senior spokesperson thought that AIDS and the whole concept of a “gay plague” was a big joke. So that gives you a hint as to the mentality we might be dealing with when it comes to Judge Doumar. And indeed, he didn’t disappoint, doing his best Dick Black/Eugene Delgaudio imitation with his musings on human nature:
There are only two instincts—two. Everything else is acquired—everything. That is, the brain only has two instincts. One is called self-preservation, and the other is procreation. And procreation is the highest instinct in individuals who are in the latter part of their teen-age years. All of that is accepted by all medical science, as far as I can determine in reading information.
Uhhhh….what? I mean, that paragraph certainly is revealing as the (warped) mindset of Judge Doumar, but other than that, I can’t find anything where it’s “accepted by all medical science” that there are “only two instincts,” let alone that those two instincts are “self-preservation” and “procreation.” But no, I guess it’s unsurprising that somebody who “thinks” like this would come up with the absurd ruling he issued in 2015. For more on that, see Federal Judge Scared Of Change, Dismisses Transgender Student’s Claim. The bottom line is that people like Doumar should not be judges. Period. This guy should have retired (or been nudged out the door) many years ago.
Second, check out what our old pal (and major donor to Virginia Republicans), raving bigot Pat Robertson has to say about anti-LGBT laws and about transgender people.
Yesterday on “The 700 Club,” Pat Robertson said he was “simply appalled” by the negative reaction to North Carolina’s new anti-LGBT law, claiming that the law is “perfectly reasonable” and that it was passed because “we don’t want men going into women’s bathrooms, we don’t want predators going out where little girls are, we don’t want voyeurs having free access to the women’s locker rooms during games when they’re changing clothes.”
The televangelist contended – without any basis in fact or reality – that while there are some people who truly are transgender, many people identifying as transgender are frauds.
“People like that are relatively rare,” Robertson said. “So much of this other stuff is put up, it’s put on and it’s just a fraud. And it’s one more opportunity for the left to demonstrate against some aggrievement they claim to have that doesn’t exist. This is a phony, phony, phony cause to get involved in. ‘Well, I’ve got to look after the transgenders.’ This is nonsense.”
By the way, Doumar and Robertson are the exact type of people who support Ted Cruz and others from the “American Taliban” wing of the Republican Party. Which is why we’d better make sure we don’t allow any of those people to win the White House this November, or the Virginia governor’s mansion next year, or any other position of power in this country.
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