Posted Nov 26, 2014 by Michael L. Brown

According to a petition on Change.org entitled, “End LGBTQ fear mongering by the Duggars,” Michelle Duggar “is warning Fayetteville [Arkansas] residents that transgender people are child predators and that the law will somehow protect that predatory behavior.”

The petition, with aggressive LGBT and media support calling for TLC to drop the popular family show, had garnered more than 169,000 signatures by Nov. 25. But a more recent counter-petition, launched on LifeSiteNews.com just a few days ago, already garnered more than 194,000 signatures.

The real question, though, is not what the petitions say. The question is what Michelle Duggar actually said and meant. Specifically, was her robocall really an example of “LGBTQ fear-mongering”?

Certainly not.

According to the Change.org petition, Michelle’s recorded robocall in August said, “The Fayetteville City Council is voting on an ordinance this Tuesday night that would allow men – yes, I said men – to use women’s and girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, showers, sleeping areas and other areas that are designated for females only. I don’t believe the citizens of Fayetteville would want males with past child predator convictions that claim they are female to have a legal right to enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls.”

In response to these calls, Lizzie Crocker wrote in the Daily Beast that Michelle Duggar was making “transphobic robocalls,” stating that, “Duggar is playing on the old and false conservative conflation of non-heteronormativity with criminal deviancy. It’s pure fear-mongering to say that letting a transgendered person use the same bathroom as women and children would be a public safety threat.”

According to a GLAAD headline, “Michelle Duggar spreads transphobic misinformation with calls to Arkansas voters,” while a headline on Salon.com read, “Michelle Duggar’s hateful anti-transgender rights campaign.”

So much for the rhetoric. Here’s the truth.

First, it is not transphobic for women and girls using bathrooms and locker rooms to feel uncomfortable when a man comes into that bathroom dressed as a woman.

He may genuinely believe he is a woman.

He may have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

He may be a very nice man.

But if he is a biological male, it’s only natural for many women to feel uncomfortable in his presence in the privacy of the ladies bathroom or locker room.

Of course, some will call me transphobic for referring to “him” as “he,” but unless someone can prove definitively that “he” really is “she,” I’ll call him “he.” Otherwise, we quickly go the route advocated on an NPR show last year where it was explained that some college kids will use a male pronoun to describe themselves at one event only to use a female pronoun at the next. The show was entitled, “Young People Push Back Against Gender Categories,” and we’re supposed to endorse this behavior.

To be clear, I don’t say any of this to minimize the pain endured by those who identify as transgender.

My point is that it is not “transphobic” for women and girls to feel uncomfortable with a biological male in their bathroom or locker room.

That is not transphobia. That is common decency.

Would you like to send your daughter or granddaughter into a restaurant bathroom, only to have them run out a moment later and say, “There’s a man wearing a dress in my bathroom!”

Second, as far as I can tell, Michelle Duggar was not alleging that transgenders were, generally speaking, child predators but rather that male heterosexual predators could easily take advantage of this law. Why wouldn’t they?

If they know that the law allows for men who identify as transgender to use the ladies room, why wouldn’t they take advantage of it? Why wouldn’t they dress up as women to be around women and girls in this private setting?

Don’t sexual perverts do perverted things? Don’t sexual predators do whatever they can to prey on the innocent? And are the gay activists guaranteeing us that there are no men who now identify as transgender women who are sexual predators?

If Michelle Duggar were making the generalized case that men who identify as transgender women are sexual predators, then that would actually be “transphobic,” but I don’t believe that was her point at all.

Third, there’s already a case in Olympia, Washington, where a man who is legally a woman but still has male genitalia shocked teenaged girls who found him sitting naked with his legs open in the girls sauna. (The police report stated that “she” was exposing “her male genitalia.”)

The girls, who are in high school, share a pool with a local college where the individual in question, whose name is now “Colleen” and who is about 45 years old, is taking classes. But since the school has a policy of no discrimination based on gender identity, there was absolutely nothing that could be done to stop “Colleen” from doing this again.

Is it transphobic to have a problem with this? Is it transphobic for parents to be upset that a biological male was exposing his/her male genitalia in the same sauna used by their daughters?

What makes matters even worse is that “Colleen” has blogged about having intense attraction toward women, and so this biological male, who now identifies as a female but is attracted to females, has full access to the girls’ locker room, showers, sauna and bathroom. And this is by state law.

It is not transphobic to say, “I don’t want a law like this in my state.”

That’s why my name is now on the petition supporting the Duggars.

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