This is a post I wrote for the folk at Pam’s House Blend (PHB), where I’m a contributor. So, this is cross-posted from this PHB diary.
~~Autumn~~

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Some Blenders have no doubt done the math and realized that, since I’m going to Democratic National Convention in Denver with the rest of the PHB bloggers this coming August, I’m going to be peeing within the state lines of Colorado. So with Colorado’s Public Accommodation law changing to add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the list of protected classes…
Well, I’m not exactly sure of the date as yet when the Colorado public accommodation legislation officially becomes state law, but the law as passed apparently directly impacts which set of restrooms transgender people/people of transsexual history are legally authorized to use within Colorado. (I guess I need to ask my attorney friend Kat about what the law actually states, and when the law becomes effective.)

But, let’s assume for the moment that the law is as the Denver Post and Focus On The Family/CitizenLink imply it is, and that one of the major impacts of this law is that people like me will be able to legally share public restrooms with natal women.

One of the consequences of this change in Colorado law will be unwarranted fear-mongering — well, at least what I would consider to be unwarranted fear-mongering. For example, Focus On The Family/CitizenLink puts it in terms of predatory behavior by crossdressed men in women’s facilities:

RADIO: 60 05.07.08 “SB200 - Predator” Draft:

SFX: [screen door closing book bag dropping on table]

ANNCR: If the Colorado Legislature has its way

GIRL 1: Mom! A man in a dress came into the girl’s bathroom at school today!

ANNCR: We could all be dealing with a new type of predator

WOMAN: [ambient sound under of woman getting out of car, door beep and close] Honey, there was a man using the women’s showers today at the fitness center I asked the management why?!…They said it was Colorado law!

ANNCR: And instead of our kids worrying about finals and the prom they’ll have to worry about who’s in the bathroom with them at school.

GIRL 2: [SFX: ambient hall noise, lockers close] No way I’m going in there I’d rather wait all day than go in there if he’s in there, too…

And, Peter LaBarbera has framed this in personal terms. He doesn’t ask what I actually do in public restrooms, but instead he asks:

Should this very confused man, “transgender” activist Autumn Sandeen, be allowed to use the female restroom?

In the way Mr. LaBarbera frames his question, the clear implication is that given the opportunity, he believes I’d do — or already do — sickening and despicable things to natal women and girls within public restrooms marked “Women.”

[After the fold, FOTF speaks; I'm planning have a photo shot of me by a bathroom door at the Democratic National Convention]

And, It’s the same kind of implication that Kim Trobee makes about transgender people in general in Focus On The Family’s The Turn Signal video I put a video link to in this Blend diary, and Bruce Hausknecht makes in the CitizenLink article Colorado Legislation ‘Tramples Religious Freedoms’…

SB 200 would apply to all “public accommodations” in Colorado — including gender-specific public restrooms in shopping malls and movie theaters, and public locker rooms in athletic facilities, which would suddenly be required to permit equal access to men, women and cross-dressers. Churches, mosques and synagogues would be exempt.

“With SB 200, we no longer have two ’sexes,’ ” said Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action. “We enter a brave new world with a myriad of ’sexual orientations.’ This bill, unfortunately, is in keeping with a national effort by ‘transgender’ advocacy organizations to accomplish an open-bathroom policy.”

Hausknecht said sexual predators can be expected to use this law as “cover” as they search for their next victims — in any public bathroom they come across.

Dr. Dobson, Kim Trobee, Bruce Hausknecht, and Peter LaBarbera offer no documentation to support their stated and/or implied public accommodation/public restroom hypotheses, and yet it seems clearly implied there is a belief that I am personally more likely to be a pedophile or a rapist than a person who doesn’t publicly identify as transgender, and/or publicly identify as a transsexual.

If conservative Christian organizations are going to state — or strongly imply — that municipalities and states that pass sexual orientation and gender identity and expression inclusive public accommodation laws will see, or have seen, an increase in crossdressed sexual predators in women’s public restrooms, then these organizations need to provide real documentation (such as a study that compares the number of crossdressed predators pre- and post- the passing of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression inclusive public accommodation ordinance/law) that indicates their hypotheses regarding public accommodation laws are statistically true.

Otherwise, these conservative Christian organizations are intentionally violating the ninth commandment in their direct and implied statements about people like me.

In the meantime…

In Denver this coming August, I will be sure to take a copyrighted picture of me entering a public restroom, with the full intent of giving Peter LaBarbera free rights to use that picture on his Americans For Truth About Homosexuality website, as well as to OneNewsNow (the American Family Association) and Focus On The Family/CitizenLink. When these organizations directly or indirectly bear false witness against me and my transgender peers, I’d like them to have an non-pornographic, accurate photo of how a transgender/transsexual person makes use of public accommodations — which is to say, I use the toilets as toilets are intended, wash my hands, check my hair and face in the mirror, and then I leave.

I’ll leave inappropriate bathroom behavior to Republican office holders and party officials, and leave pederasty and pedophilia to Republican office holders and party officials, pastors/ministers, and Catholic priests.

~~~~~
Related:
* If Dr. Dobson Were King, We’d All Be Wearing Depends
* When It Comes To Transgender People & Civil Rights, It Really Is Always About The Bathroom
* The Non-Trans Woman Thrown Out Of A NY Women’s Restroom Sues
* Outing #2: When You Endanger A Child For The Sensationalism Of It
* Latest Attacks Of Teh HomoSEXual Agenda’s Transgenderededs’s Bullet Points
* Apparently, Transgender People Are Many Bad Things
* The TVC & CWA Dump On Dana Beyer; Amy Contrada Warns Of The Transgender Apocalypse