Is it possible that our legislators are trying their best to make Illinois the California of the Midwest, without the mountains or beautiful weather? Our Governors, most certainly, are competing. Both have wildly inflated egos, both ignored their own directives during the height of the pandemic, and both have designs on the White House.
We already have many other similarities as well. Our largest cities are infested with crime and plagued with Soros backed prosecutors. English language and math proficiency for all students also is bleak for both states, although Illinois is worse. California is 50% and 34%, while in Illinois it is 29.9% and 25.8% for English and Math. And both states are losing population in record numbers. The 2020 figures show California losing 182,000 of its population of 39.5 million and Illinois has dropped 104,000 of its 12.5 million total population.
Instead of addressing these and other serious issues, our august lawmakers are trying to stay neck and neck with the Golden State on woke bathroom policies. Our General Assembly just passed an amendment (HB 1286) to the “Equitable Restroom Act,” that allows that “[a]ny multiple-occupancy restroom may be converted into an all-gender multiple-occupancy restroom.” It goes on to describe a variety of requirements for partitioned stalls and urinals. It was passed by a vote of 60 to 40, all Republicans voting against it.
Why?
California passed a similar bill that was signed into law by Newsom last year. The reasoning for the legislation was thin. One explanation was that parents could take their opposite sex minor child into the restroom with them . . . But, wait. Hasn’t that already been going on everywhere, forever?
Then there was the explanation that it allowed for more equitable gender inclusion. Isn’t that a separate argument? Haven’t we already been fighting that issue as it relates to gender identity, allowing people to use the restroom of the sex they identify with rather than their biological sex? I guess it answers the problem of the non-binary. If you don’t identify with either sex, where do you go? Literally, where do you go? Voila, an all-gender restroom.
Some pundits claim that the sex separated restroom prudery didn’t begin until the Victorian era, although many also mention that Paris began using separate public restrooms in the 1700’s. What nobody mentioned is that throughout most of the world there were no public facilities other than outhouses, alleys and the great outdoors. Ancient Rome had public toilets, but I could not find any definitive source that could say one way or the other if facilities were separate for men and women. Logic indicates they were, since Roman baths were used by men and women, but there were separate designated times for men and for women to use them. Even in Rome, modesty prevailed.
Harvard Law Professor and columnist for the New Yorker, Jeannie Suk Gersen, has a more practical reason for combined restrooms. Saving time. In an article she wrote in 2016, Gersen recounted the occasion when she took the bar exam at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. She had to go to the restroom, but the ladies room had an “enormous line.” Instead of waiting, she walked into the men’s room, where there was no line, used one of the many empty stalls and expeditiously returned to successfully complete her exam. It wasn’t fair, according to Gerson, that the women had a long line while the men had none. So, she corrected the injustice. Professor Gerson observes:
Today, men and women, not assumed to be only heterosexual, are expected to function at work alongside one another, eat at adjacent seats in restaurants, sit cheek by jowl in buses and airplanes, take classes, study in libraries, and, with some exceptions, even pray together. Why is the multi-stall bathroom the last public vestige of gendered social separation? When men, gay or straight, can stand shoulder to shoulder at urinals without a second thought, is there much to back up the view that men and women must not pee or poop next to one another, especially if closed stalls would shield them from view?
Does modesty have no value, privacy and safety no utility, professor?
Why are our legislators devoting time on such issues as this? Is this really something that a majority of Illinoisans want? An identical bill was passed 63-43 in the Illinois House in 2021, but was not voted on in the Senate. Why bring it up again? Why do people with such strange priorities keep getting elected? And why is this a political issue?
Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your local state senator to ask him/her to vote against this legislation when it comes up for a vote on the Senate 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.
