Democrats Want All-Gender Restrooms in Illinois?
 
Democrats Want All-Gender Restrooms in Illinois?
Written By David E. Smith   |   02.23.23
Reading Time: 4 minutes
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During the Illinois House Human Services Committee hearing on Wednesday morning, State Representative Katie Stuart (D-Collinsville) brought forth her bill to amend the so-called “Equitable Restroom Act” to push the nonsensical transgender agenda on our families with co-ed bathrooms. Her bill (HB 1286) allows publicly or privately owned venues to create or convert their “multiple-occupancy restrooms” into “all-gender multiple-occupancy restroom[s]” so that multiple males and females will be using the same restroom at the same time.

Why, you ask?  The bill states that its purpose is to promote the privacy, safety, and gender inclusivity of all Illinois residents and visitors.  How could combining sexes into one big restroom “promote privacy?” It doesn’t. How could it promote safety? It absolutely doesn’t because rapes and horrible crimes will occur. But these are small prices to pay for the left’s determination to keep telling the lie until everyone accepts it — that one’s gender is chosen by the person, not God, and it can change at any time. Thus, all genders (yes, they think there are dozens of genders) need to be respected and not segregated.

The bill passed along a party line vote, with 6 Democrats voting in favor of the bill and the three Republicans voting no. We are not surprised to learn that Equality Illinois, the state’s largest LGBTQIA+ special interest group, is pushing this legislation. The bill now moves on to the Illinois House floor for debate and possibly a vote.

So HB 1286 states that “any multiple-occupancy restroom may be…designated for use by any person of any gender” as long as it will contain urinals, stalls, partitions, and signage. Woke corporations like McDonald’s and Target and colleges and universities will no doubt start this insane intrusion into private lives immediately if this bill is passed and signed into law. That’s the point. But we have no doubt lawmakers will amend the bill in the future, changing the word may to shall.

What purpose could all-gender multiple-occupancy bathrooms even serve, except to appease the transgender cheering section they represent? How could men doing their business in the next stall possibly protect the privacy and safety of women and girls? There’s already ample evidence of insanity taking place in the Capitol. This is more of it.

The definition in the bill of “multiple-occupancy restroom” is “a room or suite of rooms containing at least one sink and at least 2 sanitary fixtures, such as toilets or urinals, intended for simultaneous use by 2 or more occupants.”  That would cover restrooms in most sports or entertainment arenas, stadiums, community or convention halls, special event centers, amusement facilities or other similar places of public accommodation.

So yes, this bill is designed to lower standards of manners, etiquette, and social norms while lowering inhibitions of modesty and propriety by allowing males to use urinals at the same time and immediately adjacent to females utilizing the facility. It would subject a pre-teen girl to the presence of older males — even dirty old men. And such restrooms would be a magnet for Peeping Toms and possibly rapists wishing to do harm to women and children. All of this was not promoted in the hearing, oddly enough.

In fact, the “hearing” only took a little more than 6 minutes from start to finish. As for witness slips, there are 327 proponents but over 2000 opponents to this proposal. Rep. Stuart and the left doesn’t seem to care about the privacy rights and safety concerns of women and children — or that so many Illinois citizens took time to file witness slips in disapproval of this legislation.

While this bill doesn’t mandate the installation of all-gender, multiple-occupancy restrooms, HB 1286 would “legalize” all-gender, multiple-occupancy restrooms. During the committee hearing, Rep. Stuart admitted that it is currently illegal.

Here is a transcript of their dialogue in committee

State Representative Suzanne Ness (D-Carpentersville):

Thank you. My question, this is not any kind of a mandate. This is just guidelines for facilities or establishments that want to create an all-gender restroom.

Sponsor, State Representative Katie Stuart:

Right. So if they would want to create it, they cannot. So this is completely permissive and just explains how to go about putting it in place, making sure that we have the law about balancing facilities, so making sure that we’re not impeding on that equality that we worked for a while back and things like that.

State Representative Ness:

So for places that already do have that, they’re doing it illegally?

Sponsor, State Representative Stuart:

They’re doing it illegally, yes.

You can watch the entire 6 minutes on our YouTube channel:

Parents and grandparents — especially fathers, husbands, and brothers — we must stand up against this absurd agenda. We cannot remain silent. We must speak out and protect the women and girls in our lives from this and other radical attempts to blur the lines of decency.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your local state representative to ask him/her to vote against this legislation when it comes up for a vote on the House floor sometime this session. Urge them to reject this foolish woke agenda that fails to recognize biological facts. Ask them to protect the privacy, dignity and safety of all Illinois citizens.

Please, speak out against this destructive bill.


David  E. Smith
Dave Smith is the executive director of Illinois Family Institute (501c3) and Illinois Family Action (501c4). David has 30 years of experience in public policy and grass-roots activism that includes countless interviews for numerous radio, television, cable programs and newspaper articles on topics such as the sanctity of life, natural marriage, broadcast decency, sex education, marijuana, gambling, abortion, homosexuality, tax policy, drug decriminalization and pornography. He and his wife of 28 years are blessed to be the parents of eight children. They strongly believe that their first duty before God is to disciple their children in the Christian faith, and...
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