The Dallas Morning News is rightfully mocking Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick today for displaying the astounding level of hypocrisy we all knew was coming.
Patrick, who ardently supports a sexual predator for president, has called on the state legislature to pass a so-called "bathroom bill," like the one passed in North Carolina, that would ban transgender individuals from using a restroom that corresponds with the gender they identify as and prohibit cities from passing their own non-discrimination ordinances.
“It’s not about the transgender issue, it’s not about discrimination, it’s about protecting women,” Patrick said.
If a local law allows men to go into a women’s bathroom “because of the way they feel,” criminals will have a new opening, he said.
“We will not be able to stop sexual predators from taking advantage of that law like sexual predators take advantage of the internet,” Patrick said. “Forget the privacy and the comfort, we will have women abused, attacked and assaulted -- not by transgender people, by sexual predators.
Donald Trump has confessed to sexually assaulting women.
Donald Trump has confessed to walking into dressing rooms full of naked women and teenagers.
Dan Patrick supports Trump for president.
Patrick says this isn't about discrimination, but we already have laws on the books to protect people from sexual predators. It's already against the law to assault someone. Passing a new law that says, without evidence, that transgender people represent a unique threat is discrimination. It's transphobia. It's unconstitutional.
Patrick, like most of his colleagues in the discrimination business, have seemingly overlooked or discounted the existence of transgender men. They paternalisticly single out transgender women and label them as potential predators who may assault cisgender women, but transgender men rarely if ever factor into their paranoia.
There's a very high chance Patrick and most other transphobes have actually entered a public restroom alongside a transgender man at some point in their lives, but they were none the wiser because transgender men are not women and some do not even remotely resemble women. In many cases the idea of identifying someone's gender by looks alone is inappropriate and inapplicable, but Patrick's bathroom bill invites the kind of visual scrutiny that no one is an authority on.
While transgender men and women currently use restrooms that are appropriate for them, if Patrick has his way they could be forced into inappropriate restrooms and that will make them targets for violence and further discrimination.
Patrick and his colleagues won't be happy until transgender people are legislated out of public life.