While Otter rips the White House on transgender guidance for students in public school facilities, we wonder what he will actually do about the ruling by the Justice Department.
Once again our Governor speaks out about dictates from the federal government, but does little or nothing to stem the tide. When you have a State Budget that is 25% supported by federal funds there is little our governor will do to back up his distaste for federal dictums. We found that out with the implementation of the State Healthcare exchange and bill 1067 which dealt with child support payment coordination with the federal government for the acceptance of having the potential of rule of law being enforced by foreign governments in our state.
We always hear lots of talk, but little if any action. There are three pieces of federal law that have been brought into the current arguments involving North Carolina. Title seven from the 1964 civil rights law, Title nine from 1972 and the Violence against Women Act. Title seven involves discrimination for protected classes like Sex, Religion and Race in the hiring process and includes aspects of hostile work environments. Title nine involves equal funding for men and women in schools. This usually causes problems in college sports, but title nine was later extended to include aspects involving sexual harassment and sexual assault. The Dept. of Education tried to get wording into education legislation after their April 4, 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter to support their position and were unsuccessful. This wording was also unsuccessful in similar wording into the 2011-12 reauthorization of the Violence against Women Act.
It is unacceptable to impose this social moral view on the private sector. Those decisions are personal decisions best left to the business community to sort out for themselves as forcing a business to now have a transgender bathroom is an unwelcome expense. Businesses should make policies that best benefit themselves. Target is currently suffering in the price of its stock because of its choice to allow men into women’s restrooms if they self-identify as a woman. If they are willing to suffer those losses in stock price and volume of business, that is their individual choice and part of the free market at work.
Unfortunately the Government doesn’t have that luxury. Our experience here in Idaho with Add the Words and the peoples’ right to assemble and the right to instruct their representatives and to petition the legislature for redress of grievances was important and both sides got to air their views. Where I have a problem with “Add the Words” is religious discrimination, which is part of Title seven as many LGBT community matters run into direct conflict with religion. Government is supposed to be neutral in regards to religion, not too friendly or too adverse.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s hollow argument of mean spirited while using Title seven and Title nine as the new ruling is a large stretch even for the Obama Administration in enacting these new transgender rules. Remember this is not law, these are administrative rules and will be tested in a court of law however many are going to adhere since they don’t want or can afford to have their federal funds cut off. Cutting off federal funds is no more than an abuse of executive power and needs to be dealt with in the courts. In the meantime the Obama administration continues to provide the means to continue their intrepid march to divide the people of our country with a great big smile on their faces.
