The Patriot Post® · Gov't: It's Our Potty and We'll Pry if We Want To
Is it a lavatory or a laboratory for social change? Depends on who you ask. Under the Obama administration, what happens in the bathroom is an issue for the boardroom, thanks to the Department of Labor. In an announcement this week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is warning the country that it’s “taking on” the issue of transgender politics — and expects the business community to as well.
Big Brother has already been a big nuisance, piling on regulation after regulation under ObamaCare, the EPA, IRS, and now OSHA. Its latest intrusion is a memo demanding that the W.C. become P.C. by allowing workers in offices across America to use the restroom of their choosing. “Restricting employees to using only restrooms that are not consistent with their gender identity, or segregating them from other workers by requiring them to use gender-neutral or other specific restrooms, singles those employees out and may make them fear for their physical safety.”
Apparently, OSHA is concerned with everyone’s safety except the 99.7% of the country forced to cope with this brave new world of bathrooms. As part of the memo (“Guide to Restroom Access for Transgenders”), the agency made it clear that no proof was required to use a certain restroom — despite the risks this all-comers policy poses. In this rush to embrace the Bruce Jenners of the world, no one seems to be talking about the real dangers these overcompensations cause.
As unnerving as a gender-free-for-all might be for workers, their fears probably have more to do with non-transgenders who might take advantage of such a policy. Giving people a license to use any bathroom is an open invitation for abuse. In a nation plagued by assault, employers may as well hang signs that say, “Sexual predators welcome!”
And, as even the Left’s own surveys show, only 21% of transgenders say they were “not able to work out a suitable bathroom situation.” That’s a tiny slice of an even tinier population. Yet for that, the government is willing to gamble people’s safety, rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in added expense (floor-to-ceiling walls in stalls), and, worse of all, enable a painful and destructive lifestyle. That’s not compassion. It’s cruelty. And while the memo isn’t technically binding, the government has ways of “encouraging” compliance. Here’s one: “If OSHA receives a complaint that an employer is denying a worker access to restrooms, the agency will conduct a full investigation.”
The world is literally falling to pieces, and what is our government doing? Policing office bathrooms. No wonder America’s credibility is in the tank.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.