The transgender population of the US is now estimated to be o.3% of the total.

The rest of us 322,000,000+* have to be real nice to them. For their sakes we must all make changes in the way we live and the way we speak. The government orders us to. And it tells us how. And it will punish us with the full force of the law if we disobey.

But with the best will in the world, what is to be done about the huge problem troubling government, business, states, stores, restaurants, hotels, schools, the military, the police, progressives and moralists: Which public bathroom/restroom/locker-room should transgenders use, the one reserved for the gender they started out as, or the one reserved for the gender they have become or are becoming or would like to become?

It is the dilemma of the age. 

From Truth Revolt, by Trey Sanchez:

Welcome to Obama’s America, where the government will provide you a list of approved words to speak and those you must never utter. Any violators will be punished and issued stiff fines.

It would sound like a conspiracy theory if it weren’t true, but it’s already happening in places like New York City and Chicago.

The following are legal requirements made by New York City’s Commission on Human Rights:

The NYCHRL [New York City Human Rights Law] requires employers, landlords, and all businesses and professionals to use an employee’s, tenant’s, customer’s, or client’s preferred name, pronoun and title (eg. Ms./Mrs.) regardless of the individual’s sex assigned at birth, anatomy, gender, medical history, appearance, or the sex indicated on the individual’s identification.

Most individuals and many transgender people use female or male pronouns and titles. Some transgender and gender non-conforming people prefer to use pronouns other than he/him/his or she/her/hers, such as they/them/theirs or ze/hir. [Footnote: Ze and hir are popular gender-free pronouns preferred by some transgender and/or gender non-conforming individuals.] …

This isn’t just the government as employer, requiring its employees to say things that keep government patrons happy with government services. This is the government as sovereign, threatening “civil penalties up to $125,000 for violations, and up to $250,000 for violations that are the result of willful, wanton, or malicious conduct” if people don’t speak the way the government tells them to speak.

These government-enforced rules don’t apply just to adult citizens but to children as well. The Chicago Public School (CPS) system has now decreed that children must address teachers and classmates with their preferred gender pronouns and if they willfully refuse, they face charges of sexual harassment according to Title IX discrimination policies.

CPS Chief Education Officer Dr. Janice K. Jackson said:

The guidelines released today will help ensure every student and adult in the CPS family can participate in an environment of complete tolerance and respect. CPS, like much of the country, has become far more aware of the needs and experiences of the transgender community, and it’s crucial for CPS guidelines to reflect our commitment to promoting safe and inclusive schools. These guidelines build on our commitment to fostering healthy and supportive learning opportunities across the District so that each of our students can reach their full potential.

What’s more, students who decide to change their gender at school aren’t required to notify their parents and in fact are protected by the school if they would like to keep the decision confidential:

When speaking with other staff members, parents, guardians, or third parties, school staff should not disclose a student’s preferred name, pronoun, or other confidential information pertaining to the student’s transgender or gender nonconforming status without the student’s permission, unless authorized to do so by the Law Department.

Whoa! New problem coming up right there. How will they allude to the student under discussion? The right (preferred) pronoun could let the secret out. But the wrong pronoun could put the staff member, parent, guardian, or third party in trouble with the law.

And that’s not all. A tide of problems is washing in:

This is all going to get extremely difficult to navigate as “gender fluid” folks can change their gender status based on how they are feeling on any given day. Will anyone be able to keep with when “ze” is better than “he” or when “sie” is more appropriate than “she” since the rules themselves are just as fluid?

And who gives his full blessing to the government forcing its ideology about gender on the rest of the country? None other than President Obama himself, who recently gave his own decree to the nation’s public schools, threatening litigation and loss of federal funding if students aren’t allowed to enter the bathroom of their choice while under the care of the state.

This is no longer a plot from some fictional dystopia. It’s reality.

It is to be hoped that when the history of America in 2016 comes to be written, historians will understand that the most important issue facing the government then, in the last year of the 44th president, was not the advancing conquest of the Western world by Islam; not the bellicose threats of Russia to nations under the NATO defense umbrella; not the wars raging in the Middle East; not the vast trade imbalance between the US and China; not Third World poverty; not the zika epidemic; not even the looming general election that would decide the future of the nation and the rest of the world, but the issue of which bathroom transgenders should use.  

We hope this post will be of help to them.

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*The US population was computed to be 322,762,018 at the start of 2016.