Last week I posted on the “smelliness” of a story entitled Controversial Law on Gender Identity Tested by an ABC affiliate in Maryland — well, Teach The Facts and Equality Loudoun have updates: By golly, it smelled like a publicity stunt because there’s even more facts that really seem to say it was one. It appears that what the ABC affiliate (WJLA) left out of their story was extremely significant.
Here are some tidbits from the Teach The Facts piece that have come out since the original WJLA story broke:
…a trustworthy friend of [Teach The Facts] had a discussion with a manager at the [Rio Sport and Health Club] — we will not use their name since it wasn’t an official interview — who said that there was “an activist” in the lobby of the gym at the time that this “man in a dress” went in….
According to this manager, the person in a dress signed in with a crowd of other guests so it is not clear who it was or if it was a man or a woman; they then proceeded directly to the ladies locker room, went into it and to the back of the room, and then came out and left the building. When this person came in, the employee at the door thought something strange was going on and called for an attendant to go check the ladies room, but the person left before they got there. Rio staff say they do not know who the person was.
The manager at [Rio Sport and Health Club] said she did not know who called the media, but she said the activist in the lobby was filmed in an interview after the event. The only “activist” interviewed by Channel 7 (the only media outlet indiscriminate enough to send a reporter to the scene) was Theresa Rickman of the CRW [Citizens for a Responsible Government], who has written in our comments section that she goes to the Bethesda Sport and Health gym, not the one in Rio — so why would she have been there? In its newscast, Channel 7 failed to mention Ms. Rickman’s connection to the anti-gay, anti-transgender group, quoting her as if she were an ordinary citizen on the scene.
The manager at Rio told our friend, quote: “I think it was a publicity stunt.”
Equality Loudoun added some commentary:
The spokesperson for the group claiming that the new law prohibiting discrimination against transgender people will permit “men” to use the ladies’ room was present in the lobby of the health club – not her own health club – at the very time that this unidentified “man in a skirt” person signed in, quickly paraded through the ladies’ locker room, and then promptly disappeared. How interesting.
Also interesting: The woman in the locker room who reported this suspicious person to management was identified as Mary Ann Ondray – which seems to be a hasty phonetic spelling of her actual name, Andree. In one of the Anti-Gay Industry propaganda mills that was fed this story by CRW, they spell her name Andree. What would prompt them to change the spelling? There is no indication that they contacted her; the content of their story is basically a cut-and-paste from the Channel 7 story, with the addition of some commentary by another CRW spokesperson, Michelle Turner. It appears that Turner may have corrected the spelling of Andree’s name. But why would Turner have that information? Is Andree one of the 3000 or so names on CRW’s petition? We may yet find out.
This is looking more and more like what many of us have suspected it is — the locker room invasion by a-man-in-a-skirt was a mockery of actual transgender people like me by hypocritical Christian conservatives, orchestrated by the Theresa Rickman of Citizens for a Responsible Government. This was hypocritical specifically because they themselves apparently dressed the man-in-a-skirt in direct contradiction to their own interpretation of Deuteronomy 22:5 and Genesis 1:27.
This is particularly offensive to me because Theresa Rickman and company apparently felt a need to simulate behavior of transgender women in a way that no transgender woman I’ve ever known would behave. And, leave to WorldNetDaily to pick up on the story without bothering to check out if the story was a publicity stunt.
The news division at WJLA and WorldNetDaily need to apologize to the transgender people for falling for what looks more and more only to be a deceptively conceived publicity stunt. And, even more distain should be heaped on WorldNetDaily to smear transgender people because of a hypocritically executed stunt. If the man-in-a-skirt were a conservative Christian recruited by the Citizens for a Responsible Government, his motivations to deceive the public would be “sinful,” and the act of his dressing up in a skirt should be considered just as “sinful” as they consider transgender people’s dressing in clothing not associated with their natal sex. In other words, if they consider me a “sinner” for allegedly “cross-dressing” as an out-of-the-closet transsexual, then the Citizens for a Responsible Government‘s apparent plant would be just as “sinful” as I am for his cross-dressing stunt.
I can’t imagine that this kind of apparent deception would be something the Jesus they believe in would do, or even tacitly approve of.
Theresa Rickman, if you’re reading this, you and your man-in-a-skirt owe my transgender peers and me an apology — or an explanation. It sure looks like you and your organization bore false witness against us by having a man pretend to be transgender, and act in provocative in a way my peers just don’t. To me, it looks like you couldn’t find a case where an out transgender women had engaged in the kind of activities that you keep saying we would engage, so it’s becoming clear you created an incident to make the story.
If true, that would be you bearing false witness angainst your transgender neighbors — it makes you and your man-in-a-skirt liars.
I’ll be waiting to read your apology, or your explanation of how you knew to be at the gym to be interviewed before the provocative incident occured. And, I would expect you to name who the man-in-a-skirt was if this was pure publicity stunt, and he should be publicly apologizing to my transgender peers and me also — and probably to your Christian peers as well for behaving in direct contradiction to your own interpretation of Deuteronomy 22:5 and Genesis 1:27 to make your inane point.
I won’t hold my breath.
~~~~~
H/t: David at Equality Loudoun
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