About ten years ago Regina and I were going through a stretch of pretty rough road together, and all the hidden fault lines in our marriage were exposed. My best friend who had been one of the priests on the altar at our wedding heard my confession one day and said, “Gerry, for your penance, I’m going to ask you to fast for Regina.” I didn’t immediately appreciate that the fasting was as much for my benefit as it was for hers, but I learned something about authentic masculinity from that penance. I learned a whole new depth of what men are called to do for their wives, for their children.
We are called to be like Jesus, emptying ourselves for them, sacrificing, and even laying down our lives for them if necessary.
In light of that, we Catholic men, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and all other men, find ourselves in a nation where a politically powerful minority, the LGBT community, has declared war on our women and our daughters. Under the guise of appeasing a few seriously deluded men playing dress-up in women’s clothes, they are pressing for laws around the nation that open access to any restroom by any person claiming to identify with the sex of the persons for whom that restroom was built, regardless of one’s biological sex.
Here in New York City the madness has peaked. From CBS news:
Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an executive order on Monday that guarantees people access to single-sex facilities consistent with their gender identity at city facilities, including offices, pools and recreation centers, without the need to show identification or any other proof of gender. The move comes amid a continuing national debate over anti-discrimination laws.
“Access to bathrooms and other single-sex facilities is a fundamental human right that should not be restricted or denied to any individual,” de Blasio said. “Every New Yorker should feel safe in our city — and this starts with our city’s buildings.”
A more accurate translation would be that every transgender should feel safe, according to our mayor. Certainly our women and daughters don’t factor in. New York City has several public pools with large, open-space locker rooms for changing. What do women do with their daughters when a man strips off his bathing suit and reveals his biological difference? My daughters have never seen male anatomy, but if they were to work at one of those pools as lifeguards they would most certainly be exposed to men (most of whom are not transgender but your garden variety perverts) who may now legally walk right through the door, and flash women with no questions asked, and no laws broken. In any other venue, said male would be arrested and charged with a variety of crimes, including sex crimes against children. But thanks to Mayor deBlasio, all that is gone in New York City facilities.
Has anyone heard the men of New York howl in rage, protesting the Mayor? Me neither, and I live here.
While the LGBT gang and their accomplices on the left resculpt the American landscape, heterosexuals and people of faith who disagree with them are brushed aside like cobwebs. Bakers and wedding photographers have been financially ruined, others have saved their livelihoods by attending court-ordered sensitivity training. And now women and girls need to just shut up and sit down. Fundamental human rights are dictated by a tiny minority who shake down politicians and big business by threats of shaming in order to get their support.
The real shame, though, is the tepid response to these bathroom laws by men and women, but most especially by men, and that includes the clergy. It is beyond shameful. It is a disgrace. And so it is with the Catholic bloggers and writers who have bigger fish to fry than to address the enslavement upon us by a vicious and twisted minority and their minions.
Target, America’s second-largest retailer announced last week that they are enacting a bathroom policy akin to New York City’s. PayPal decided to punish North Carolina by withdrawing employment opportunity there when the state passed legislation preserving the dignity of all persons by preserving the longstanding code of decency regarding restroom use.
Here are two perfect opportunities for Americans to boycott and drive these businesses to their knees, sending a clear signal that we will not tolerate our women and children being treated in this way. To date, there is an internet boycott petition against Target with a scant 650,000 signers, in a nation of 320,000,000.
Notable Catholic authors have been silent, and some even asking what the big deal is, even in the face of a growing list of cases around the country of men posing in women’s clothes entering ladies’ rooms and filming them while masturbating in adjacent stalls.
Silence from our married men, our clergy, and our Catholic commentators has mostly been the response.
At dinner one night with Reggie LittleJohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, I asked her why the Chinese government feels the need to regulate birth, even in the face of a worker shortage that is hurting their economy. She replied that if the government can control your body, your marital relations, your dignity, it can control any part of your life that it wants to.
THIS is what the big deal is regarding the bathroom laws. The government in several states has demonstrated that it can control freedom of religious practice by penalizing the exercise of conscience regarding participation in gay weddings. The government has demonstrated that it can mandate the Catholic Church to purchase insurance policies that pay for contraceptives and abortion. Now the government in several states is demonstrating that the modesty and decency of men and women, boys and girls, means nothing and can be legislated away into oblivion.
The gay agenda is being used as the Trojan Horse to impose a totalitarianism that flies in the face of our Constitution, and our emasculated men barely raise a croak in response.
I learned a great deal from fasting for Regina. If I could fast for her, I could fight for her, for us, for our young family. It would be a great thing if all men fasted for their women and children. A lesser effort would be to boycott those businesses who assault their women’s dignity. If American men can’t even inconvenience themselves that much, then we deserve to be enslaved.
If we cannot fight for our mothers, our wives, our sweethearts, our daughters, then there is nothing left worth fighting for.
They are the crowning glory of God’s creation.
Coming Home 
You are definitely onto something!
This sums up it up perfectly: “The gay agenda is being used as the Trojan Horse to impose a totalitarianism that flies in the face of our Constitution,” We’ve become the frog in the boiling water of the old analogy; we allowed ourselves to tolerate seemingly minor increases in the “heat” of moral decay. Eventually it’s going to destroy us as a country; it’s already destroying us as moral, thinking individuals.
In the beginning of your article, you cite the call to be like Christ. How does any of this seem like something Christ would do? These laws are not here for perverts; they are here for transgender people. I have a friend who is transgender (male to female). She literally cannot use either bathroom. If she uses the men’s room, people look at her funny and tell her to get out (one time she was actually punched). If she uses the women’s bathroom, there is generally less issue, but there are people like you out there who will tell her to get out. Tell her she doesn’t belong. Tell her she’s a freak, a pervert. That nobody wants her around. Does this sound like Christ?
I implore you to try and empathize with our LGBT brothers and sisters. It may surprise you that this is what the Church teaches. Your article here is NOT consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church.
If perverts abuse these laws, they will be reported and arrested. People aren’t going to let it fly. But if a transgender person wants to use the bathroom in peace, and not be hated or physically abused, they should be able to do so. They aren’t going to bother the others in the restroom any more than you do on a regular basis. I guarantee you that they lay as low as possible.
I understand your concern for the safety of women. But it is not well grounded. You also completely ignore the idea of female to male transgender persons using a men’s room, which makes it seem like you think that women are weak and in need of protection, while men are capable of handling such situations.
I will pray for you and this country that we can solve our problems with love and the example of Christ. We need to accept our LBGT brothers and sisters as the human beings they are. They are just as much an image of God as you are. We need to search for ways to keep our families safe without rejecting the dignity of certain groups of people.
Sorry, Joe,
But the existential angst of a small, small population of psychiatrically deluded, chemically and surgically human beings does no justify tearing down the walls of protection for women and girls. Wait for women to be assaulted and THEN call the police?? That isn’t Jesus. That’s Satan, brother. You are as misguided as these policies and the deluded souls they are meant to serve.
I’ve read at least 30 cases from around the nation of arrests of predators who have used these new laws and policies to brazenly gain access. That isn’t Jesus. The only solution is to add single-seat family rooms that anyone can use. If transgenders don’t like that, then they are militating for unsafe, undignified environs for women and girls to serve their preferences. It shows that these transgenders don’t understand the first thing about being a woman. So let this experience be their first lesson.
As for not rejecting the dignity of certain groups of people, you do just that with these policies. Real women and girls lose.
You need a spiritual tune-up brother.
Dear Dr. Nadal,
I happen to live in Charlotte, NC… the city that seems to have the dubious honor of being the birthplace of this movement. I must tell you that we, as a city, are so dang proud of our mayors. Our previous mayor emeritus, Patrick Cannon, is currently serving time in federal prison for accepting bribes from FBI agents. Sadly, we just couldn’t get it right, as our current mayor, Jennifer Roberts, voted in the bill (along with our city council) to mandate LGBT antidiscrimination laws – which includes the gender neutral bathroom policy. Most people who thrive on sound bites blame our governor, Pat McCrory, for passing HB2. However, HB2 was a rational response to the cavalier stupidity of our mayor.
As a woman, a wife, and a mother, I am happy that Governor McCrory had the presence of mind to do the right thing. I’ve seen many Facebook memes that proclaim “… sure it’s about the bathrooms… ” Actually yes, it really is about the bathrooms. Major businesses, our public libraries, malls, YMCA et al – – already. have family/unisex bathrooms in place that are more than adequate for anyone who finds the single gender bathrooms inconvenient/inappropriate/confusing regarding their needs. I’m not even sure how to address the issue of gender neutral locker rooms – are you kidding me?
What a mess.
Your characteristic of people who are truly suffering is disappointing.
You are both right.
Respecting the dignity of the human person is paramount. Transgender people are human persons with dignity. If progress is to be made in seeking God’s will, a culture of encounter must be established. Indeed, family bathrooms are necessary. Diminishing transgender people to “psychological angst…deluded…militant” doesn’t help them. Would you really treat one like this if he walked through your door? That is not brotherhood.
The trouble with being right is that pride is lurking around the corner. Jesus wouldn’t approve of their lifestyle, but he certainly would have dinner with them, and He wouldn’t call them names,
I don’t believe that transgender people are perverts or that these laws will give predators of any kind greater access. Predators have always had access. There are not locks on doors no security guards. These new laws are a solution looking for a problem. Stop wrapping it Christian male heroism. It’s bigotry.
No Michelle, you’re wrong. Until the change in laws, if a male entered a women’s room, they would scream, security would be alerted, and the man arrested. Also, I realize that what passes for intelligence in many circles ishow fast you can label someone a bigot. Not here. On this blog you had better demonstrate a capacity for critical reading and thought.
Case in point, here is what I said regarding trans people and perverts:
“My daughters have never seen male anatomy, but if they were to work at one of those pools as lifeguards they would most certainly be exposed to men (most of whom are not transgender but your garden variety perverts) who may now legally walk right through the door, and flash women with no questions asked, and no laws broken.”
Stripping roughly 150,000,000 women and girls of THEIR rights so a few seriously deluded men can piss as they please is the real bigotry.
Get well soon.
Susan,
Transgenders are not being “reduced” by me to deluded status. They ARE deluded. Playing along with the delusion is abandonment, and that’s NOT what Jesus would have us do. They are abandoned by the psychological community, and then chemically and surgically mutilated. This is wholesale monstrosity on the part of the medical community, as the goal of therapeutics is to bring subjective perception into alignment with objective reality. It is NOT to mutilated the deluded patient.
You speak to me of pride. I would submit that going along to get along with this stuff is an amalgam of pride and sloth.
Outside of the larger context of the LIBERAL agenda, the LBGT agenda would be absolutely outrageous to any reasonable person. With the delusions of the liberal womb, people think the LBGT agenda the best thing since sliced bread. This will not change if the overall liberal “placenta” is left intact. It promulgates the many sub-agendas, including the LGBT. Hacking off one of the Hydra’s heads (even if you could do it) just won’t work. But… nice try.
Very well written, Gerard! Agree with you on every point. Thanks for standing up and speaking out.
I was told that because my molester wasn’t transgender I am not allowed to be afraid of any one of them who walk into the restroom when I am there! I don’t know how to respond to that, the terror I feel when a man, any man, walks into the WOMEN”S restroom is indescribable, yet I am suppose to tolerate it and the accompanying PTSD caused when I have encountered this situation.
Well, you know where I stand on the LBGT agenda, and on the need for unisex facilities everywhere, so there’s nothing I can add to this conversation.
…except this photo I took at a restroom at a supermarket in Kyoto:
the answer is to place change tables in the mens washroom which some men are working towards. Not forcing men into the women’s washroom.
Unisex restrooms for all would work, too — with changing tables, and privacy stalls for people who don’t want to expose themselves, or be exposed to others.
My husband used to bring our daughter into an open men’s locker room with him to when she was a preschooler and he took her the pool without me. No one every complained — in fact, he said other solo fathers did this, too. And if she got a glimpse of another man, I’m sure all she thought was that he looked just like her Papa.
I think it’s ridiculous, the extent to which the issue has been overblown.
L, you are so smart it hurts! There are indeed simple solutions to this, but any simple solution that disrespects the legitimate feelings of people like Nikki L. Shuller is neither. Also, the polemic on both sides may provide a steam vent for the inexorable inner angst and moral outrage, but (as I alluded to above) it gets both sides nowhere fast. Sometimes venting is important; it calms the soul, rallies the weekend followers, translates feelings into words, etc., etc., but it really doesn’t rattle the cages of society, and isn’t really meant to last. What is meant to last, L, is that fine speech you gave at the opening ceremony of the Sophie A. Krakowski School in Cambodia, and the education of many needy children there. That was you, wasn’t it? You’re my hero.
I think the option of offering privacy for all would go a long way to solving the vast majority of the problems.
And I’m no hero. We all give to the world in some way, and that’s just one of my ways. Sophie Krasowski was my maternal grandmother, who lived with my family when I was growing up, and imparted many of my core values to me. She had to leave school when she was 14 during the Depression to support her family, and she was never able to finish high school and fulfill her dream of becoming a nurse (instead, she worked as a waitress in various restaurants for most of her life). I always dreamed of being wealthy enough to donate a hospital somewhere and name it after her someday, but I didn’t attain that level of wealth. However, I did have enough to build a school in one of the poorest corners of the world (with a matching grant from the Asian Development Bank). I continue to support the school — the village recently got electricity, so I bought them two computers, and I send books and sports equipment every year, and pay one of the teachers. I get matching funds from my employer, too, which really helps.
In case anyone is still reading the comments here, I will post a shameless plug for the charity:
http://www.cambodiaschools.com/
L, I didn’t say you were a hero, I said you were my hero. That is entirely up to me, and I still say you are my hero.
Then I will say, thank you for the kind words — even after I admitted that my primary motivation for donating the school in Cambodia was my arguably selfish desire to see my grandmother’s name on something more than her gravestone.
I still stubbornly insist that there is a bit of heroism in us all.
Hey Gerard, you have a great and very informative blog here. I have not been very diligent about keeping up with the news and only just learned about Target’s new bathroom policy. I have signed the petition and will not be spending a penny at their stores until the policy is changed. Too bad, because there’s a Target next to my neighborhood that I have gone to regularly since it opened more than 10 years ago. My family and I must have spent tens of thousands of dollars there over the years. Not anymore. This Target and others in the area that I’ve been to all have single occupancy family restrooms. It already seems to be a standard feature at their stores, so there was absolutely no need for them to to allow men into the ladies room to make transgenders feel comfortable. And I’ve closed my PayPal account too.