Signage of the times

If anyone had told me even last year that I’d be devoting two of my columns within an eight-week time frame to the signage just outside the nation’s public restrooms, I would have suggested something like a giant leap into the nearest lake. But such is the state of our once great republic.

You’d think that just one quick discussion on the subject of how many choices we need to feel secure while relieving ourselves might be enough. And you’d think that a president with genuine crises on every side might tell everyone on his staff: “Whatever you do, don’t get caught up in a foolish and trivial squabble. We’ve got enough real problems not to waste our time and resources in a discussion that is certain to make us all look silly.”

But it’s too late now. I guess those of us here in North Carolina are to blame for launching the debate some months back. But as April faded into May, the Obama Department of Justice seemed to be following the president’s orders when it jumped into the fray with both feet. As a consequence, when I need a bathroom break, I’m not exactly sure which room just down the hall I’m supposed to head for.

This latest source of confusion comes from Washington in response to a straightforward bill approved a couple of months ago by the North Carolina state legislature, declaring simply that folks should use restrooms whose signs correspond to the gender indicated on their birth certificate. To be sure, most folks understood, there might be a few confused and troubled people, uncertain of their own sexual identity, who end up in the wrong place. But surely, a little common sense will get us through such challenges.

The real matter at stake is our culture’s constant rejection of God’s creation order.

But no, say the Washington experts. Vanita Gupta, acting chief of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, said the state of North Carolina, through its simple new law, is engaging “in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender people.” In a typically obscure passage, the letter continues: “Denying such access to transgender individuals, whose gender identity is different from their gender assigned at birth, while affording it to similarly situated non-transgender employees, violates Title VII.”

Don’t think for a minute this is a tiny regional struggle for power and influence, limited to a single state. Across the nation, literal signs of the times are already in place—and the handwriting is literally on the wall. Walking through the big airport in Minneapolis–St. Paul last week, my wife and I were confused when we noticed brightly renovated new options including “MEN” and “WOMEN” on one side of the concourse, and something more broadly inclusive immediately across the hallway. Maybe that’s just the way it’s going to be, I thought.

More food for thought came from the classy Hudson’s Bar & Grill in Vancouver, Wash., where we were visitors a couple of days later. The choices, in one way, were even starker. The sign for “WOMEN” seemed to have remained unchanged. But the sign for “MEN” had totally disappeared and had been replaced with a carefully matching “ALL GENDER” plaque. Was management at Hudson pursuing the debate, while staying aware that denying privacy to their female clientele would almost certainly produce a storm of protest?

Make no mistake. The debate in North Carolina and across the nation is not first and foremost about rights for sexually bewildered people. To a certain extent, the discussion is not even about sexual privacy—although there is an obvious connection between that colorful topic and the ultimate issues. As I stated in my March 19 column: The real matter at stake is our culture’s constant rejection of God’s creation order and its blatant denial that God created us male and female—and then called that very good.

And all that is not a trivial or sideline issue limited to a few public buildings in North Carolina, Minnesota, and Washington. Did any of us expect a decade ago the speed with which our culture would accept and then codify same-sex marriage? It is with the same lightning speed that our whole society is accepting new falsehoods about our sexual identity that a very short time ago would have seemed unimaginable. And now that movement enjoys the federal government’s explicit support.

Email jbelz@wng.org