I wonder if the CRG (Citizens for a Responsible Government) will be taking on another “shower issue” …

As Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett works to raise taxes and eliminate 225 jobs, a construction crew is installing a bathroom in his locked suite of offices, complete with a small sitting room and shower. The cost to taxpayers: $65,225.

Leggett’s aides said yesterday that his security detail did not want him using the public restroom because walking to and from the facility could expose him to harm. The shower was included, an aide said, because Leggett lives about 40 minutes away from the Rockville office and regularly attends evening events without having time to freshen up at home. “I don’t see this as a big expenditure,” Leggett (D) said. Describing himself as “the guy who flies coach and spends sparingly,” he said, “It’s not something I asked for.”

The timing of the project could be politically problematic. The bathroom budget was approved in June, but the construction coincides with his proposal to raise property taxes, offer employee buyouts and trim spending to close a $297 million budget shortfall.

“I can’t believe they would do that now. We’re taking it on the chin, and we’re looking for every dime we can find,” said County Council member Valerie Ervin (D-Silver Spring). “I think this is an extravagance, not something that has to be done.”

Ervin said she uses the public restroom on the sixth floor of the council building, although there is a bathroom with a shower available to council members and their aides in their secure suite of offices.

For almost all of his 12-year tenure, Leggett’s immediate predecessor, Douglas M. Duncan (D), used a public restroom. He had a private bathroom when he was first elected but scrapped it to create a kitchenette for employees. A major renovation of the executive’s floor in Duncan’s first year cost more than $1 million.

“We had perfectly good bathrooms right at the elevators,” he said yesterday. When asked whether he ever felt unsafe using the public restroom, Duncan chuckled, “Heck no.”

The rest of “County Executive to Get $65,000 Bathroom” can be read here.

British actor Paul Scofield, renowned for his stage and screen portrayal of Sir Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons,” died yesterday. Mr. Scofield, the New York Times noted …

… made his debut as Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet” on the school stage. “I had to wear an embarrassing blond wig,” he said. “But it was a turning point, because thenceforward there was nothing else I wanted to do.”

The Thomas More Law Center was also in the news yesterday. The TMLC has frequently been at odds with trans people, including …

• Opposing transsexual marriage in Kansas
• Opposing legislation against discrimination based on gender identity in Michigan
• Opposing trans-inclusive sex education in Maryland

I haven’t kept up with figure skating (since wanting to be just like Peggy Fleming … a long, long ways back), so until yesterday I had never heard of Mark Lund. Well, now I know that Lund evidently is not a fashion maven like Dick Button …

Weir’s outfits often sparkle like disco balls; in his short program he pretends to be a seagull. His total package has not only led to assumptions that he is gay — something not as taboo in figure skating as in other sports — but a controversy over his not being the right type of gay. During a figure skating broadcast last year, the announcer Mark Lund, who is openly gay, said, “I don’t think he’s representative of the community I want to be a part of,” and, “I don’t need to see a prima ballerina on the ice,” before praising Lysacek’s masculinity.

Figure Skating Rivalry Pits Athleticism Against Artistry

There must be some of the same something in the water in Ottumwa, Iowa as in Montgomery County, Maryland (JimK at the Vigilance blog today describes the most recent doings there)…

Listen, reconsider and amend. That’s what the City Council did Tuesday concerning the sexual orientation ordinance.

The ordinance was on Tuesday’s agenda for its second reading. At least 50 people packed council chambers and several spoke, for or against, the proposed city law, which was the last item on the agenda.

Those who favored the ordinance said it’s needed to prevent discrimination in housing and employment.

Citizens who spoke against it said the ordinance would enable a man to put on a dress, enter a women’s restroom and molest or kidnap a female youngster.

Ed Ball of the Ottumwa Human Rights Commission said the people doing that are pedophiles, not gays.

“These crimes are done by ‘normal’ people,” Ball said.

After public comment, Councilman Gordon Aistrope said he was also concerned about who would enter the restroom because the proposed ordinance includes “gender identity” as part of the protected classification.

“This does bother me. Sexual orientation, OK. Gender identity, no,” Aistrope said.

He moved to delete “gender identity” and Councilman Mitch Niner seconded the motion.

Councilwoman Shannon Addison said current medical journals and psychology publications have “clearly stated” it’s “not transgenders, not cross-dressers” who would molest youngsters in restrooms.

“A pedophile is a pedophile,” she said.

Police Chief Jim Clark also told the council that pedophiles and sexual predators are a “kind of their own.”

Clark said he hoped the council would delete either “gender identity” or “public accommodations” from the proposed city law.

Then the question was what happens next to a proposed ordinance that was just amended.

City Attorney Tom Kintigh said if the amendment passes, then the ordinance would move back to the first reading.

Addison said pulling “gender identity” out of the ordinance “won’t hurt.”

“If we do have an issue with gender identity, they can handle it at the state level,” she added.

The council voted unanimously to remove “gender identity” from the proposed ordinance.

On the first reading of the amended ordinance, Aistrope, Addison and Niner voted for it and Meyers and Councilman Keith Caviness voted against it.

Ottumwa City Council amends proposed ordinance — ‘gender identity’ deleted; law moves back to first reading

Speaking of water …

It’s in the Water: We’re All Transsexuals Now

Some of the trans people and happenings in the news the past week or so …

People …

• Former British paratrooper Jan Hamilton
• Transgender teen Rika Navarro
• Trans activist Jenn Burleton
• California administrative law judge Victoria Kolakowski
• Race-car driver Terri O’Connell
• British surgeon James Barry

Law, legislation …

• Philippine woman will have to remain a ‘he’ in birth certificate
• Legislation to bar discrimination in employment, housing or public accommodation on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity was introduced in the Ohio legislature.
• Legislation to add sexual orientation to the state’s Human Rights and Fair Housing acts advanced in West Virginia.
• In Georgia, an anti-bullying bill, one which does not specifically address bullying based on sexual orientation or gender identity, advanced, while a hate crimes bill (which includes gender identity and sexual orientation) remains stalled.
• Council Bluffs, Iowa is considering adding the protection of sexual orientation and sexual identity to the city’s civil rights code.
• In Massachusetts, advocates turned out for a hearing on a transgender civil rights bill.
• In Montgomery County, Maryland, election officials have cleared the way for voters to decide whether to uphold broad protections for transgender individuals passed by the County Council in the fall. Proponents of the trans rights legislation said they expected to file a lawsuit to overturn the petition and stop the referendum.
• New York has a new governor, a man who has been supportive of trans rights.

Arts & media …

• The Lambda Literary Foundation announced its nominees for the 20th annual Lambda Literary Awards.
• “She’s a Boy I Knew” documents the transformation of Steven Haworth into Gwen Haworth.
• Out magazine focuses on trans lives and culture in the April issue.
• Mercedes Allen continues her series on trans history at the Bilerico Project.

Features …

• “Is society ready for this pregnant husband?” in The Advocate.
• “Transgender people step out” in the Dayton Daily News.
• “When Girls Will Be Boys” in the New York Times.

Remembering our dead …

• Luna

From Andrea Lafferty and the nice folks at the Traditional Values Coalition, “Hillary Clinton She-Male Advisor Harasses Maryland Signature Gatherers” …

“Dana Beyer’s appearance and hostile behavior is a perfect picture of how confused these individuals are – and why no government agency or legislature should protect what is clearly a Gender Identity Disorder (GID),” said TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty. “Do parents really want someone like Dana Beyer entering a girl’s shower or restroom? I think not. The legalization and protection of a serious mental disorder cannot be permitted to stand.”

Once again, words just utterly fail me with these people …

There was a good read yesterday (“The Sentinel: Shower-Nuts Lied To People“) from Jim at Vigilance on the petition drive in Montgomery County …

I’m glad to see this story. I have wondered if there wasn’t any law regulating what you can tell people when you get them to sign a petition.

Unfortunately for us, The Sentinel is behind a paywall. Here’s the story.

Petition Faces Big Road Blocks

A top attorney with Montgomery County said that some if not all of the signatures gathered by Citizens for a Responsible Government for a petition may be invalid if it is born out that petitioners were misrepresenting the contents of the petition to potential signers.

Citizens as diverse as members of the media, church goers, county council members and their staffers have reported that the CRG, a group responsible for a petition drive to try and get a referendum vote on County Council bill 23-07, which protects transgender individuals from being discriminated against in employment, housing and public accommodations, have been misrepresenting the content of the bill and their petition for several weeks.

True, that. We heard them say all kinds of stuff. They said, This law will require men and women to use the same bathroom. They said it would enable pedophiles and predators to come into ladies rooms. We saw one guy with a sign that said, “Protect our children,” though the law has nothing whatsoever to do with children.

You can read the rest of the entry here.

GID, I mean. Not Genocide Identity Disorder …

Last week he compared us to Hitler and the Nazis …

… these Nazi brownshirt tactics.

These are same tactics Hitler used to gain power in 1930s Germany.

This week he’s comparing a “man in a dress” to a group of infamous mass murderers not named Hitler …

One 69 year old grandmother said of Mr. Beyer “a man dressed as woman came up to me and said he was here to ‘re-educate me’ about the bill.” The grandmother told Mr. Beyer that she was already educated.

Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh would be proud of Mr. Beyer’s “re-education” efforts and the joyous support of his bosses on the Montgomery County Council. As of today, Gender Identity Disorder is still a mental illness. Why is the council collaborating with madness?

What should never be doubted about fanatics like this individual is that they are usually projecting their own contemptible motives and malicious feelings upon those they are attacking.

Such comparisons trivialize the unspeakable evil committed by a Hitler, a Stalin or a Pol Pot and reflect poorly on the humanity and sense of reason of those making them.

Demonizing and dehumanizing a group, such as the writer is attempting to do to trans people, was a signature tactic of a Hitler or Stalin. So, know him by the company that he keeps.

Yesterday, we had Mongomery Public Schools blogger Not Jerry Weast invoking “Nazi brownshirt tactics” (THE BROWSKIRTS ARE COMING! School Sex Pushers Intimidate Petition Collectors), which Autumn wrote about earlier.

Today, we have an attorney (representing volunteers collecting signatures for Citizens for a Responsible Government’s referendum petition) alleging “intimidation tacics. Such tactics are commonly used by totalitarian [Nazi] governments” (Nearly 30,000 seek to turn off coed showers/County law gives special rights to those with ‘gender identity’ issues).

(By the way, I wonder how Dana Beyer feels about being compared to a Nazi?)

Now, here are a couple of examples of “Nazi tactics” that CRG should be familiar with …

From What Would Machiavelli Do? The Big Lie Lives On …

German filmmaker Fritz Kippler, one of Goebbels’ most effective propagandists, once said that two steps were necessary to promote a Big Lie so the majority of the people in a nation would believe it. The first was to reduce an issue to a simple black-and-white choice that “even the most feebleminded could understand.” The second was to repeat the oversimplification over and over. If these two steps were followed, people would always come to believe the Big Lie.

In Kippler’s day, the best example of his application of the principle was his 1940 movie “Campaign in Poland,” which argued that the Polish people were suffering under tyranny – a tyranny that would someday threaten Germany – and that the German people could either allow this cancer to fester, or preemptively “liberate” Poland. Hitler took the “strong and decisive” path, the movie suggested, to liberate Poland, even though after the invasion little evidence was found that Poland represented any threat whatsoever to the powerful German Reich. The movie was Hitler’s way of saying that invading Poland was the right thing to do, and that, in retrospect, he would have done it again.

And from The Gleiwitz incident …

False Flag Terrorism is an old and effective way to justify acts of aggression that would be hard to justify otherwise … Famous examples are the Berlin Reichstag fire in 1933 that gave Hitler reason to demand emergency powers and the completely phony attack on the Gleiwitz radio station used to justify Hitler’s invasion of Poland the following day. A corpse wearing a Polish uniform was arranged outside of a radio station in Silesia, anti-German messages were broadcast and the public told that Poland had attacked.

So, reducing the issue of transgender anti-discrimination legislation to pervs in the loo and co-ed showers (repeated again and again and again) and staging a Gleiwitz (Rio Health & Sports) — reminds you of whom now?

~~~~~

Related:

What Citizens For A Responsible Government Really Means …

Here I was earlier, doing a bit of googling … “gay agenda”? 389,000 entries … “homosexual agenda”? 337,000 entries … “transgender agenda”? 1,020.

1,020??? Heck!

I mean, things just haven’t been going well … being left behind or left out just doesn’t do much for one’s self-esteem … and now this.

But, thanks to Theresa Rickman of Citizens for Responsible Government and the Christian Broadcasting Network, we’re closing the gap …

CBNNews.com – Citizens in one Maryland county are fighting a new law that grants special rights to transvestites, cross-dressers and transsexuals.

Citizens for Responsible Government has launched a petition drive to repeal the measure that was passed by the Montgomery County Council.

The group says the bill essentially creates co-ed bathrooms and locker rooms that would put women and girls at risk.

They also say it lets transgender advocates indoctrinate kids in local schools.

And it allows transgender teachers and faculty to be open about their sexual choices.

Md. Group Fights Bill for Co-ed Bathrooms

1021. (Hey, it may be incremental progress, but as Barney Frank says, get used to it.)

And I’m feeling better now.

“We want it very clear-cut,” [CRG spokeswoman Michelle] Turner said.

~~~~~

Related:

When It Comes To Transgender People & Civil Rights, It Really Is Always About The Bathroom