Gender-bending policies follow cultural shift

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

The debate over gender, privacy, and restroom use erupted in school halls and shopping aisles this week. A federal appeals court on Tuesday effectively squashed a Virginia school district compromise for a female student who asked to use the boys restroom and locker rooms. The school provided a private bathroom, but the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said this week the student has the right to sue the school and take advantage of a new Obama administration ruling that sex discrimination encompasses gender identity.

Also this week, Target announced transgender shoppers can use the restrooms and fitting rooms consistent with their gender identities. In response, the American Family Association called on its supporters to boycott the retail chain, whose policy the AFA said exposes women and children to danger.

“Target’s policy is exactly how sexual predators get access to their victims. And with Target publicly boasting that men can enter women’s bathrooms, where do you think predators are going to go?” AFA president Tim Wildmon said in a statement. Other conservatives have called for boycotts as well, and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, announced on the House floor he would no longer shop at Target.

John Stonestreet and I discussed the cultural significance of the movement, particularly in schools.

“For all practical purposes, most of these schools are teaching a view of gender identity in the classroom, in health class, that would lead to this sort of decision anyway,” Stonestreet said. The arts and academia dissociated gender identity from observable reality long ago, and political and legal acceptance of transgenderism naturally follow.

But the acceptance does not go both ways, Stonestreet pointed out. He noted the case of a 6-year-old boy in Colorado whose parents demanded the school allow him to use the girls restroom: “This 6-year-old boy’s right to use the girls bathroom or to think of himself however he wishes trumped all those other little girls’ rights and the parents’ rights of those little girls.”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on The World and Everything in It.