If you worry about perverts who threaten sexual abuse against children, as you should, and if you want to discriminate against groups of people on the basis of these perverse actions of some, as you shouldn't, then the record suggests you ought to discriminate against Catholic priests, pastors, church youth ministers, coaches, judges in eastern Arkansas and speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives.
I'd recommend you take to the public square to advocate that all priests, pastors, youth ministers, coaches, judges and speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives be denied the constitutional rights otherwise extended to the American people.
The fair-minded and legal sticklers among us would be obliged to oppose your discrimination. We would rise to defend innocent priests and pastors and youth ministers and coaches and judges and House speakers against your stereotype and bias. But at least we would be able to grasp where you were coming from.
As to the rare school child in Arkansas who declares his or her gender to be different from that which he or she seems to convey, or from what others perceive, which is a real thing, affecting maybe 3 percent of the population ... there's not any evidence in the record to justify a fear of, much less discrimination against, that poor alienated child.
The record suggests the child in question should fear us, our bullies and our mobs and our ignorant and arrogant bigots, not the other way around.
Nor is there evidence to suggest that the aforementioned known perverts of record--the occasional priests or pastors or youth ministers or coaches or judges or House speakers--facilitate their perversion by claiming to be of the opposite gender so they can get a look at your child's personal parts in the public bathroom.
Instead they use their positions of authority.
Anyway, the record clearly indicates these menaces tend to be more interested sexually in those of their own gender than the opposite.
Typically, the bathroom has been utilitarian, not a sex venue, except, I'm told, on airplanes.
Statistically, a young child is more in danger of sexual abuse in gym class than inside a public female bathroom into which a male-presenting person of self-identification as a female has just entered.
There are two prevailing failings among discriminators. One is that they discriminate at all--that they fail to honor or even grasp the noble concepts of fairness and freedom. The other is that they waste energy discriminating against the wrong people--oppressed and alienated children rather than real creeps.
If the Obama administration on Friday had put forth a statement presuming to give "guidance" to the states and their schools on how to treat without discrimination their athletic coaching staff members in light of child-predatory behavior by some in that profession, then, no doubt, Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the state's Republican establishment would have embraced the guidance as wise and fair and assured us that they had been committed all along to the nobility of the aim and would continue to adhere with unwavering vigor to compliance.
But what the Obama administration instead proffered was guidance to states and their schools on how not to treat with illegal discrimination that rare school kid whose own gender identity is different from what the general public perception might be.
And on that proposed kindness and fairness and forbearance toward an alienated school child, Hutchinson and the state Republican establishment rose up, drew a line, and said Arkansas would ignore this federal government "over-reach."
They said the guidance lacked common sense and offended our values.
I'll tell you about the over-reach that lacks common sense and offends values. I refer to the reach by a school official, maybe a coach, at a bathroom door into the private regions of a child to make sure the child has the appropriate personal parts for the designated bathroom that he or she is seeking to enter.
That's the only way to know for sure, now, isn't it?
In post-puberty cases, we could draw blood at the bathroom door and send the sample to the lab for testosterone and estrogen levels, advising attempted public school restroom users to hold their urges to relieve themselves for a couple of days until the lab reports come back.
Let's get serious: What the governor and Republican establishment in the state are saying is that Arkansas will not comply with federal guidance on a matter of justice, a stance that earned our state great international attention in 1957, because our state reserves the right to discriminate against the rare school child identifying as a gender different from that which might be presented or assumed.
If nothing else about that bothers you, then be advised that the modern economy seems to have put a premium on diversity and acceptance thereof.
Some of these contemporary businesses don't want to go into states that insist on being discriminatory to alienated children.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 05/17/2016