Obama Gives Ladies Room Key to People With Penises

It was something the far right warned would happen, should Obama be re-elected in 2012. "Men who think they're women will be allowed inside women's restrooms! It'll be the apocalypse!" said Glenn Beck. "What these people want, is to include everyone in everything. If you're a man, and you're curious what goes on inside the ladies' room, being born a man shouldn't disqualify you. All you need do, is wake up one morning and realize you're a woman, a woman trapped in a man's body." Said Rush Limbaugh. "The key to the ladies room is then yours."

Everyone else laughed, but it turns our Glenn and Rush were right.

The Obama administration sent a letter Friday to every public school district in America warning them they should allow transgender students to use bathrooms consistent with their chosen gender identity, or risk losing federal funding.--AP

While the sweeping guidance does not have the force of law, it warns that schools that don't comply could face lawsuits or lose federal aid. This raises the ante in the debate over bathroom laws, which are the subject of a highly charged lawsuit between North Carolina and the Department of Justice.

The governor of NC says that he didn't choose this fight, the Obama administration choose North Carolina as a test case. Are people trapped in the gender on their birth certificates, when it comes to selecting bathrooms? Really, why should they be.... I mean it's America, and everyone should grow up to be whomever they want to be, right?

At the heart of Friday's letter, which was first reported by the New York Times, is guidelines on Title IX - the 1972 law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education.

"A school's failure to treat students consistent with their gender identity may create or contribute to a hostile environment in violation of Title IX," the letter, sent from the Department of Justice and the Department of Education, said. If schools are held to be discriminatory, they could lose Title IX funds, it added.

The letter outlined basic LGBT terminology ("A transgender male is someone who identifies as male but was assigned the sex of female at birth") and reminded schools that for the purposes of Title IX, "a school must not treat a transgender student different from the way it treats other students of the same gender identity."

Following the announcement, lookups for the word "transgender" skyrocketed more than 630 percent on Merriam-Webster.com, the dictionary company said on Twitter.

There can be no doubt that Donald Trump will seize on this as an election issue. Gay marriage, which America embraced, was different. It didn't affect anyone who didn't volunteer for it.

If nothing else, this controversy demonstrates that people in the beltway really are out of touch with the rest of America. It's hard to believe that Obama would have timed this as he did, right as Hillary and Donald turn their eyes to each other. This from Politico:

"While the Obama administration’s directive on bathroom access for transgender students was praised by supporters as a historic moment for civil rights, the sweeping new rules have re-energized the right — and a top lawmaker in Texas even argues that Donald Trump can use the issue as a springboard to the White House.

"The right has been consistently losing culture-war fights in the courts during the Obama era, most significantly in the Supreme Court case last year that legalized gay marriage. Now, conservative governors, state officials, education advocates and parent groups have extra motivation to unify in their revolt against a federal intervention directed by a president they loathe that will affect every public school in the nation.

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"I believe it is the biggest issue facing families and schools in America since prayer was taken out of public schools," Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick declared Friday, mere hours after the Obama administration’s letter was released.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/obama-transgender-bathroom-students-title-ix-223170#ixzz48bD5OEKU

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