The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has garnered less attention than usual lately with COVID-19 monopolizing headlines. However, with the Court’s term ending in June, some of the most controversial decisions are expected to be released any day now. Among the most notable are three cases involving Title VII of the landmark Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sex. The question is whether Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination also includes decisions based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The cases are Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda, Bostock v. Clayton County, and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Zarda and Bostock involve gay men suing their employers, alleging that they were fired because of their sexual orientation. Harris Funeral Homes involves a transgender employee who formerly worked in a Christian-owned funeral home in Michigan and claims to have been illegally fired after coming out as a transgender woman and starting to wear women’s clothing.

It should be noted that twenty-two states, Illinois included, already prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Thus, the Court’s decision will not change employment decisions for nearly half the country. However, the cases are yet another instance of the Federal courts delving into a contentious cultural issue.

Title VII prohibits employment decisions based on certain protected attributes like race, religion, and sex. Yet there has been a push in recent years to interpret Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination as including sexual orientation and gender identity. The cases have significant cultural, theological, and moral underpinnings; however, the main question for the U.S. Supreme Court is one of statutory interpretation. Here is how the pertinent part of Title VII reads:

“It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

No mention of “gender identity” or “sexual orientation.” Case closed—right? Not necessarily. The Federal courts of appeal have reached different conclusions based on their method of statutory interpretation. The methods have largely centered on “textualism” and “originalism.”

Textualism holds that the plain meaning of the legal text is the only thing you look at in interpreting, with no consideration given to any non-textual sources. Instead of considering the overall purpose of the law, legislative history, or policy arguments, a textualist approach only looks to the four corners of the paper on which the law is written, considering nothing besides the apparent meaning of the text. Textualism has long been heralded by justices like the late Justice Antonin Scalia and Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch.

One would think that since Title VII’s text does not mention “sexual orientation” or “gender identity,” a textualist approach would be an automatically mean excluding these statuses. However, several courts have used a textualist approach to come to the opposite conclusion. No one disputes that Title VII bans sex discrimination—it says so in the text. But LGBT proponents have developed a clever textualist approach to argue that sex discrimination also includes discrimination based on a LGBT status.

The argument goes that by discriminating based on one’s sexual orientation, you are inevitably discriminating based on his or her sex. For example, imagine that there are two employees: one heterosexual man dating a woman and the other a homosexual woman dating a woman. If the homosexual woman is fired for dating another woman and the man is not, the only reason the woman is fired is because of her sex. Both employees are participating in the same activity (dating a woman); the only difference is that one employee is a woman and the other is man—thus, sex discriminati0n. The argument goes that since Title VII bans sex discrimination, the law also necessarily bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. In the same way, a biological man who is wearing woman’s clothing and using the women’s restroom would not be fired if it were a biological woman doing those same things. LGBT advocates claim that this also is sex discrimination.

There are several weaknesses with this argument. In the first example, the primary reason the employee is fired is her sexual orientation, not her biological sex. Title VII’s inclusion of the term “sex” means just that and nothing more. In this case, sex may be a factor, but it is not the primary reason for the firing. Sex and sexual orientation are different concepts. Sex has to do with one’s genetic makeup and reproductive abilities while sexual orientation is based on one’s sexual attraction to others, and gender identity has to do with whether one’s expression or behavior corresponds with his or her biological sex.

A more compelling reason to reject this argument is that by reading sexual orientation or gender identity into Title VII, courts would essentially be acting as policy-makers. For over fifty years, Title VII has never been understood to include sexual orientation or gender identity. In voting for Title VII in 1964, no member of Congress could have imagined that the word sex would also include gender identity and sexual orientation, which have only recently entered the modern vernacular. The courts would simply be reading modern notions of sexuality into a law that was never intended to be used that way.

For years, LGBT lobbying efforts have tried to pass the Equality Act, which, among other things, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to Title VII’s list of protected classes. The bill has been introduced in Congress for years yet has never been enacted. The U.S. Supreme Court would essentially be adopting a policy that Congress has deliberately decided not to pursue.

There is another form of statutory interpretation called originalism, which some courts have used to come to the conclusion that “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” are excluded from Title VII’s protection. Originalism still focuses on the text of the statute, but a word’s meaning is frozen in time. Instead of incorporating changing meanings of words, as may be allowed under a broader view of textualism, originalism says that a word’s meaning is to be taken from the original public understanding of the text from the time the text was enacted. In other words, if a text was passed in 1950, a court ought to look at what the word meant in 1950–not what it means today.

The wisdom of originalism acknowledges that words change meaning over time, but to ensure a fixed meaning in law, the only meaning that a court will consider is what the public understood the words to mean when it was enacted. This approach is taken in order to avoid changing the law from its intended purpose. In this case, no one seriously argues that Congress or the general public would have understood the term “sex” to include “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for these cases in October, and the decisions are expected to come down any day over the coming weeks. Some observers believe Justice Neil Gorsuch to be the swing vote. Justice Gorsuch admitted that the issue was very close in his mind during oral arguments. Congress, the people’s representative, has so far refused to add gender identity or sexual orientation to Title VII by refusing to enact the Equality Act. Yet the Court may choose to bypass the democratic process and adopt this new reading of Title VII.

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The above title was used as a subheading in this article by Elizabeth Kantor at The Federalist: “Donald Trump Isn’t Fighting a Culture War but A Cultural Revolution.”

Underneath that subheading, Kantor writes:

[T]he genius and the miracle of America was that our identity as Americans was once inextricably tied to abstract principles about the rights of all human beings. To identify as an American was to believe in the Bill of Rights. To be an American patriot was to defend the God-given equality of all men as articulated in the Declaration of Independence.

The rights the American revolutionaries fought for were an inherent part of themselves, always referred to as “the rights of Englishmen.” It was identity politics, but fought for an identity bound up in natural rights, one that could eventually be adopted by every American of every national origin, ethnicity, and race.

That American identity is what the cultural revolutionaries are determined to replace with their very different identity politics.

Kantor asks two questions without answering them:

“Is there a way out of the newly gelling mutually hostile tribal identities that are replacing it? Can we ever climb back into an e pluribus unum identification with all Americans as members of one tribe?”

She closes with this: “[R]eforging that American identity seems to be what Trump is trying for: “We are all Americans first.”

Let’s look at two other articles where the writers partially answer Kantor’s question, expressing doubt that the Leftists’ use of identity politics can succeed. First, is Dr. Michael Brown, focusing on the identity of the hour, “transgenderism.”

In his article, “Why Transgender Activism Will Not Succeed in Changing America,” Brown writes:

Transgender activism will never succeed in reshaping our society for one simple reason: It is not natural. Biological differences are too deeply instilled in the human race. Male-female distinctives are too obvious and real. It is futile to declare war on gender.

It is one thing to be asked to empathize with those who struggle with gender identity confusion. It is another thing to declare that biological categories do not determine reality.

It is one thing to recognize that some people do not fall within the normal, male-female spectrum due to genetic abnormalities. It is another thing to claim that gender is whatever you perceive it to be.

After listing examples where people and organizations are sticking to common sense over this new identity of the day fad, Brown writes, “Will the whole world be turned upside down because of the confusion and sensitivities of less than 1 percent of the population?” “Watch and see,” he says, “The pushback against transgender activism will continue.”

Our last article is from Linda Harvey. In her post, “Is Gender Confusion Insanity Finally Beginning to Wane?,” she asks, “Do we dare hope that a new era of sanity is dawning?” Regarding the growing trend towards the reversal of sex “reassignment” surgery, Linda Harvey writes:

Such an option still offends many on the left, who dig in their heels and continue to push unisex bathroom laws and bans on therapy to overcome “transgender” delusions and same-sex attraction.

An increase in people seeking a return to their birth gender is reported in Europe. A renowned “sex change” surgeon in Serbia noted more requests for complicated and expensive reversal surgery.

A young boy in Australia recently received international publicity for wanting to be a boy. After several years of estrogen, he no longer wants to pretend to be a girl.

Why is this controversial? The default response of every human should be a longing to be that woman or man as nature intended.

Harvey asks another question: “Aren’t liberals supposed to be flexible?” “But a rigid adherence to identity politics,” Harvey notes, “ties the typical leftist in notes”:

Secretly, a social liberal is often a mess, exhausted from the convoluted mental and spiritual energy needed to reconcile the nonsense of pretense.

Ouch. Linda Harvey gives examples where Leftists are unwilling to give up on their goal of doing away with the reality of biological sex, but then writes:

And yet promising glimmers of truth keep emerging. In Miami-Dade County, a measure to prohibit counseling of minors to overcome same-sex attractions was just defeated after hard work by the Christian Family Coalition and other pro-family advocates.

. . .

This victory comes as good news after a long series of defeats for common sense on this issue. Numerous cities and states have passed laws limiting counseling for minors who want to embrace the natural design of their heterosexual bodies as male or female.

Since “Attorney General Sessions ended the Eric Holder/Obama imaginary application of Title VII sex discrimination law to those with gender confusion, Harvey writes, “Activist groups are expressing fury that their fascist fantasy is ending.” Ouch again.

Read more:  Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias

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“Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful
Of direst cruelty!”
—Lady Macbeth

By the fall of 2017, kindergartners in Washington State will be taught to “understand the range of gender roles, identity, and expression across cultures.”1 For those unclear about what precisely will be taught, the kindergarten curriculum developers provide a helpful glossary that includes a definition of “gender”:

Gender: A social construct based on emotional, behavioral, and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex. A person’s social and/or legal status as male or female.

• Gender expression. The way someone outwardly expresses their gender, whether consciously or unconsciously.

• Gender identity. Someone’s inner sense of their gender (see Transgender).

• Gender roles. Social expectations about how people should act, think, or feel based on their assigned biological sex.

Kindergarten now marks the starting point for government indoctrination of children into the brave, new, sexless, science-denying orthodoxy of the “transgender” movement, the end result of which is not a more compassionate society, but a society in which there is no public recognition of, or respect for, sexual differentiation.

In early May 2016, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) joined the ranks of the foolish by issuing guidelines pertaining to gender-dysphoric students in K–12 schools. Students who wish they were the opposite sex may now use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, and on school-sponsored overnight trips, they may room with opposite-sex students.

These guidelines also apply to “gender non-binary” students who don’t “identify” as either male or female and to “questioning” students who aren’t yet sure which sex they would like to be. In other words, these students may make their restroom, locker room, and hotel room selections in accordance with their unstable sexual confusion.

In an effort to facilitate student confusion, the CPS “guidelines” mandate the use of Newspeak by faculty and staff, requiring them to lie by using opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric students.

Exploitation of Title IX

One week later, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Education (ED) issued an almost identical edict, except theirs came with a threat of the loss of federal funds for non-compliance with what they euphemistically describe as “significant guidance.”

Elementary, middle, and high schools all around the country have been accommodating requests (or demands) from parents to have their gender-dysphoric children granted access to restrooms, locker rooms, and athletic teams that correspond to the sex these children wish they were rather than the sex they actually are. In a case in Illinois, a male student sued his district for the right to unrestricted access even to the girls’ locker room, which includes showers. Often school administrations are accommodating these requests without informing the parents of students whose privacy is being invaded.

The DOJ and the ED, through the intrusive Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is an unelected collective of bureaucrats, have proclaimed that henceforth, in the section of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibits discrimination based on “sex,” the word “sex” includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” Further, sex-segregated restrooms constitute discrimination based on “sex,” meaning that schools have no legal right to maintain separate restrooms for boys and girls.

There are multiple problems with this creative argument, the first of which is that the word “sex” in Title IX means sex.

Second, progressives themselves relentlessly assert that sex and “gender identity” are wholly distinct.

Third, Title IX specifically states the following: “A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex, but such facilities provided for students of one sex shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.“2

Fourth, neither the DOJ nor the ED has lawmaking authority, so neither can change the definition of the word “sex” in Title IX.

Exploitation of Title VII

But the Barack Obama administration had still more government power to wield illicitly in its quest to eradicate sex-segregation. Like the ED, the DOJ under Attorney General Loretta Lynch has declared that the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” The abuse of Title VII is far more dangerous than that of Title IX because it has broader applicability.

Whereas Title IX applies only to schools, Title VII applies to every business in the private sector with over 14 employees, to every government entity, and to every religious organization, including religious schools of every grade level from elementary through college.It even applies to churches, which are exempt only from the prohibition of religious discrimination. Churches and other religious institutions are not exempt from the ban on “sex” discrimination.

So if the Obama administration’s redefinition of the word “sex” to include “gender identity” prevails, even churches couldn’t prohibit gender-dysphoric persons from using opposite-sex restrooms. The decree—it can’t veraciously be called a law—would mandate that gender-dysphoric guests at church weddings or attendees of concerts and athletic events at Christian colleges be allowed in opposite-sex restrooms.

Since men are permitted to go shirtless on beaches, at pools, in public parks, in high-school swim classes, and on swim teams, there would be no legal warrant for prohibiting women who “identify” as men but forgo bilateral mastectomies from going shirtless as well.

Sex Segregation versus Racial Segregation

Progressives, who never tire of exploiting race as an analogue for sexual deviance, compare racially segregated restrooms to sex-segregated restrooms, again misconstruing the issues. Racially segregated restrooms were unjustifiable because they were based on the false belief that people of different races are ontologically different. Sex-segregated restrooms are justifiable because they are based on the true belief that men and women are different—a true belief that even homosexuals implicitly acknowledge when they say they are attracted only to persons of their own sex.

When announcing the DOJ’s lawsuit against North Carolina following that state’s passage of a law prohibiting de-sexed, co-ed restrooms, Attorney General Lynch said, “It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based upon a distinction without a difference.”

If there is no more difference between men and women than there is between blacks and whites—as Lynch clearly implies—then how is it justifiable to maintain single-sex restrooms or showers anywhere? Why not allow men and women and boys and girls to share the same restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters, and hospital rooms just as blacks and whites do?

Lynch also suggested that the unwillingness of women to share restrooms with gender-dysphoric men is evidence of fear, disrespect, misunderstanding, closed-mindedness, unfairness, lack of compassion, unjust regressive discrimination, and the denial of equality. If that’s the case, then how would she characterize the unwillingness of gender-dysphoric men to share restrooms with non-gender-dysphoric men? If separate restrooms for men and women are analogous to separate restrooms for blacks and whites, then aren’t separate restrooms for gender-dysphoric men and normal men also analogous to separate restrooms for blacks and whites?

Justifying Deception

The left uses the little-known history of some cross-dressing men successfully deceiving women in restrooms as a perverse ethical justification for allowing men in women’s restrooms. The argument goes something like this: Since gender-dysphoric men in especially convincing disguises have successfully deceived and violated the privacy of women who don’t want to share restrooms with men, let’s just openly allow gender-dysphoric men to continue to invade women’s privacy.

That’s analogous to arguing that since some peeping Toms successfully spy on women through windows without being found out, there’s no harm done, so no foul. Or, since some husbands commit adultery without their wives ever finding out—again, no harm, no foul.

Others believe, however, that the deception per se is harmful. The use of ever-more-elaborate disguises—including chemically and surgically facilitated ones—by gender-dysphoric men to conceal their sex from women who don’t want to use restrooms with objectively male persons is comparable to peepers using ever-more-sophisticated technology to peep.

Questions for Progressives

There are still more critical questions that should be posed to anyone who supports de facto co-ed everything, questions that will expose the incoherence of the subversive un-sexing of America:

1. Why should gender-dysphoric men and women be allowed to dictate that restrooms, showers, locker rooms, shelters, and hospital rooms no longer correspond to objective, immutable sex?

2. Why should gender-dysphoric men be able to dictate that they get to use restrooms with only women, but actual women are prohibited from saying they should get to use restrooms with only women?

3. If stalls provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from women in restrooms, and curtains provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from women in changing areas, why don’t stalls and curtains provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from other men in men’s restrooms and changing areas?

4. If there is a mismatch between a person’s sex and his feelings about his sex, how can progressives be certain that the error resides in the body rather than the mind? If a person has XY chromosomes that have commanded his brain to produce and release male hormones to which his body is able to respond, thereby developing normal, unambiguous, healthy, fully functioning male anatomy, he is clearly male. If he nevertheless desires to be—or insists that he is—female, might this not be an error of his mind?

5. If a man “identifies” as “bi-gender” and has appended faux-breasts to his torso while retaining his penis, should he be permitted to decide at will which locker room he uses in the altogether?

6. Those who suffer from gender dysphoria claim that their DNA and the genitalia it shapes are wholly unrelated and irrelevant to “gender” and “gender identity,” and that genitalia shouldn’t matter when it comes to restrooms, changing areas, and showers. They further claim they want to use restrooms with only those whose “gender identity” they share. So, why do gender-dysphoric men demand to use women’s restrooms? How do they know that the males using the men’s restrooms do not “identify” as women, and how can they be sure that the females using the women’s restrooms do “identify” as women? Is it possible that gender-dysphoric men are basing their restroom choices on genitalia? If so, why are they permitted to do so, but actual women are not?

7. Leftists claim that people who don’t want to share restrooms, changing areas, showers, shelters, and hospital rooms with persons of the opposite sex are hateful. If it’s hateful for women to say they want to share these facilities only with other women, why isn’t it hateful for gender-dysphoric men to say they want to share them only with women?

8. Progressives routinely mock opponents of co-ed restrooms, asking whether historical restroom practices that require restroom-usage to correspond to sex will also require “genitalia police” to determine whether restroom-users are in reality the sex that corresponds to the restrooms they seek to use. Well, in the mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up progressive world, will there be “gender-identity” police demanding proof that all restroom-users are either the sex that corresponds to the restrooms they seek to use or have proof that they have been diagnosed as gender-dysphoric? If not, how will women know if their fellow restroom-users are actual women, or gender-dysphoric men masquerading as women, or male predators masquerading as gender-dysphoric men?

9. If the views of Obama and Lynch prevail and gender-dysphoric men are permitted in women’s restrooms, on what basis could all other men be prohibited from using women’s restrooms? Normal men couldn’t be prohibited from using women’s restrooms based on their male sex because men would already have been allowed in. And normal men couldn’t be prohibited from using women’s restrooms based on their “identification” as males because that would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity,” which Obama and Lynch argue violates Title IX and Title VII.

The Final Chapter

The editorial board of the Charlotte Observer opined that “the thought of male genitalia in girls’ locker rooms—and vice versa—might be distressing to some. But the battle for equality has always been in part about overcoming discomfort.”3 This comment reveals what many Americans don’t realize: identifying as the opposite sex does not require or necessarily include any surgery, cross-sex hormone-doping, or even cross-dressing; the mere assertion of one’s “gender identity” is sufficient.

Of course, none of those actions can efface the truth of sex; all they can do is mask it. But Americans should disabuse themselves of the rationalization that sharing a shower with Caitlyn Jenner might not be so bad as long as his testicles have been given the heave-ho and his pesky penis has been tucked inside.

And this brings us to the final chapter in the dystopian cultural narrative the left is writing: the end of sex-segregation everywhere. The elimination of the binary. No more public recognition of or respect for objective maleness and femaleness. “LGBTQQAP” activists and their ideological allies seek to create a solipsistic, make-believe world in which nothing outside the self is recognized as real or meaningful. Objective, immutable, biological sex, which is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy, will become a hoary relic of the past. Even language will be co-opted to serve an ontological and epistemic lie.

A compassionate society helps those who suffer from disordered thoughts and emotions. It does not affirm confusion or facilitate fiction. This most profound distortion of reality and morality must be resisted. •

1. Washington State Health and Physical Education Standards (March 2016), 32
2. 34 C.F.R. Part 106, Subpart D, §106.33: www2.ed.gov/policy/rights/reg/ocr/edlite-34cfr106.html.
3. “Taking the fear out of bathrooms,” The Charlotte Observer (May 13, 2016): charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article77475147.html.

There was good news from North Carolina Monday morning, when Governor Pat McCory announced North Carolina would be suing the Department of Justice (DOJ). That news was followed by bad news from the Department of Justice, announced in a stunning statement from Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who compares those who believe that restrooms should correspond to sex to racists who supported separate restrooms, restaurants, drinking fountains, schools, libraries, and parks for blacks and whites.

Here is an excerpt from the ignorant, bigoted, and demagogic statement from Lynch:

Today, we are filing a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state of North Carolina, Governor Pat McCrory, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina….

This action is about….the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we… have enacted to protect them–indeed, to protect all of us. And it’s about the founding ideals that have led this country–haltingly but inexorably–in the direction of fairness, inclusion and equality for all Americans.

This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation. We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation. We saw it in fierce and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education…. Some of these responses reflect a recognizably human fear of the unknown, and a discomfort with the uncertainty of change….This is a time to summon our national virtues of inclusivity, diversity, compassion and open-mindedness. What we must not do–what we must never do–is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans, for something they cannot control, and deny what makes them human. This is why none of us can stand by when a state enters the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something they are not, or invents a problem that doesn’t exist as a pretext for discrimination and harassment.

…This law provides no benefit to society–all it does is harm innocent Americans.

Instead of turning away from our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, let us instead learn from our history….[S]tate-sanctioned discrimination never looks good in hindsight. It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based upon a distinction without a difference….Let us not act out of fear and misunderstanding….

Let me also speak directly to the transgender community itself. Some of you have lived freely for decades. Others of you are still wondering how you can possibly live the lives you were born to lead….[T]he Department of Justice and the entire Obama Administration wants you to know that ….history is on your side.

Just a few thoughts about her remarkable piece of sloppy and insulting thinking:

• Lynch’s pernicious comparison of Americans who believe that objective, immutable sex matters and is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy to hateful, ignorant bigots is both morally indefensible and intellectually vacuous.

• Neither inclusivity, fairness, equality, diversity, compassion, open-mindedness, dignity, nor respect requires humans to ignore the objective, immutable sex of others. None of these qualities requires humans to treat objective, immutable sex as if it has no meaning. None of these requires women to share restrooms, changing areas, or showers with persons of the opposite sex. None of these requires Americans to make restrooms, changing areas, and locker rooms co-ed. None of these requires Americans to accept the view that restrooms should correspond to the feelings of people about their sex rather than their sex.

• Equality demands that we treat like things alike. It does not require us to treat unlike things as if they are alike. Men and women are substantively different as even gender-dysphoric persons and homosexuals acknowledge.

• Lynch urges Americans not to “turn” on friends, neighbors, and colleagues for “something they cannot control.” In her view, requiring restrooms to correspond to objective sex constitutes “turning” on gender-dysphoric persons. Does Lynch apply that odd principle consistently? Does she believe that a compassionate society must accommodate all behaviors impelled by powerful, persistent, unchosen, and seemingly intractable feelings, including those feelings that deny objective reality? Being loving and welcoming does not require women to share restrooms with objectively male neighbors, friends, and colleagues or vice versa. In fact, a case can be made that it is profoundly unloving to facilitate a desire to be the opposite sex.

• Lynch asserts that not allowing men in women’s restrooms is tantamount to denying “what makes them human.” Her claim is based on an arguable assumption about what makes a person human, which seems to stand far outside her professional bailiwick. Many would argue that physical embodiment as male or female is central to humanness—indeed, more central than feelings about physical embodiment.

• Lynch rightly states that separate facilities for blacks and whites were based on a “distinction without a difference,” implying that the difference between men and women is similarly insubstantial. This statement reveals a profound ignorance. Blacks and whites are distinct by virtue of their skin color, which is, indeed, a distinction without a difference. But men and women are substantively and significantly different. They’re so different, in fact, that gender-dysphoric men insist that they must use restrooms, changing areas, and showers with women only. If the difference between men and women constitutes a “distinction without a difference”—like the difference between blacks and whites—then why must gender-dysphoric men share private facilities with women only? Surely the differences between objectively male persons and objectively female persons are more significant than the differences between objectively male persons and objectively male persons who experience gender dysphoria.

  If there is no more difference between men and women than there is between blacks and whites—as Lynch seems to think—then why not eliminate all single-sex restrooms, locker rooms, and dressing rooms everywhere? Why not allow all men and all women to use the same restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, showers, and shelters? After all, blacks and whites do.

• Since Lynch suggests that the unwillingness of women to share restrooms with gender-dysphoric men is evidence of fear, disrespect, misunderstanding, closemindedness, unfairness, lack of compassion, unjust regressive discrimination, and the denial of equality, how would she characterize the unwillingness of gender-dysphoric men to share restrooms with non-gender-dysphoric men?

• How can Lynch possibly know that those who experience gender dysphoria were “born” to lead lives pretending to be the opposite sex? How can she possibly know with certainty that when there’s mismatch between one’s objective sex and one’s feelings about his sex that the error rests with his healthy, normally functioning body?

• America’s founding ideals did not include a commitment to deny objective ontological distinctions that have profound meaning.

North Carolinians and Americans everywhere better not treat this issue like they have treated every other incremental advance of a sexual ideology corrosive to truth and thus to human flourishing. They better be prepared to fight this with every fiber of their objectively male and female beings.

The federal government through its highly partisan Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to make law—again—by attacking North Carolina’s so-called “bathroom bill.” Last Wednesday, the DOJ sent a letter to NC governor Pat McCrory demanding that he rescind the law within three working days or face legal action and loss of federal funds.

The DOJ letter erroneously states that the NC law violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits discrimination based on sex. In its infinite ignorance and hubris, the DOJ, has proclaimed that the word “sex” includes “gender identity.”

By attacking North Carolina’s law that requires restrooms in government buildings, state colleges and universities, and highway rest stops to correspond to sex and which does not apply to any private sector entity, the DOJ seeks to make law for the entire country.

This is the same stratagem the Department of Education (ED) is using to blackmail public schools into allowing gender-dysphoric students into opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. While the DOJ is using the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the ED is using Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Both departments—neither of which have law-making authority—have unilaterally redefined the word “sex” in such a way as to make law.

If successful, the DOJ’s effort will be even more profound and destructive because of the scope of the applicability of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Whereas Title IX applies only to schools, Title VII applies to every business in the private sector with over 14 employees; every government entity; and every religious organization, including private elementary, middle, and high schools, private colleges, and churches.

Religious organizations and churches are exempt from Title VII only with regard to the prohibition of religious discrimination and only in hiring practices. Churches, synagogues, and mosques and religious organizations may discriminate based on religion in hiring. In other words, churches, synagogues, and mosques may not be forced to hire persons of other faiths. But how would this redefinition of “sex” in Title VII affect restroom or locker room usage in religious organizations or businesses owned by Christians like Hobby Lobby?

Would the redefinition of the word “sex” to include “gender identity” and “gender expression” require religious organizations, colleges, and churches to allow gender-dysphoric persons to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms? Would this fanciful reinterpretation of Title VII require that a gender-dysphoric father visiting his daughter at a Christian college or a gender-dysphoric woman attending a wedding in a church be allowed in opposite-sex restrooms?

Don’t let deceivers distract you with mocking arguments about how few gender-dysphoric people will be using opposite-sex restrooms; or how few incidents there are of gender-dysphoric men assaulting women or are likely to assault women; or how few predators are pretending to be gender-dysphoric in order to access women’s restrooms, locker rooms, showers, dressing rooms, or shelters.

And certainly don’t be distracted by the stupid comparison of separate restrooms for blacks and whites to separate restrooms for men and women. While there are no substantive differences between blacks and whites, there are substantive differences between males and females,  which even gender-dysphoric persons and homosexuals acknowledge.

The central issue is with the meaning of physical embodiment as male and female.

• Policies and laws mandating that gender-dysphoric persons be allowed to use opposite-sex restrooms embody and teach the lie that objective maleness and femaleness do not have objective meaning or value.

• These policies and laws teach that it is not one’s objective, immutable sex that matters but one’s feelings about one’s sex (“gender identity) that matter.

• These policies and laws teach that modesty and privacy have no intrinsic link to objective maleness and femaleness.

Leftists dismissively claim that anatomical parts are irrelevant when it comes to “gender identity,” modesty, and privacy. They’re demanding that everyone in society treat gender-dysphoric persons in all contexts and ways (including grammatical ways) as if they are in reality the sex they wish they were. So, what are the logical out-workings of this pernicious ideology?

Ultimately, if this view prevails, society will be unable to maintain any separation between men and women—including between normal men and women—in any context. If sexual anatomy has no intrinsic meaning, if privacy and modesty have no connection to objective sex, if objective males must be allowed in women’s showers and restrooms, then there remains no rational justification for separate facilities for men and women or girls and boys.

Since, in the mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world of lunatic leftists, all that matters are feelings about one’s sex, there is no need for surgery, cross-sex hormones, or cross-dressing. So, that “transwoman” (i.e., an actual man) walking naked past your 14-year-old daughter in the health club locker room just might have a chest full of hair, a wooly beard, and a penis. Remember “gender identity” has no fixed meaning, and sexual anatomy is only important if people feel it’s important, so that “transwoman” in the locker room may even have a penis and furry breasts.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. representative, urging him or her to rein in the unelected, leftist federal bureaucrats in the Departments of Justice and Education. Demand that the federal government remove itself from issues of local control and stop misusing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972.