The safe solution

Steve Austin, Atoka, Tenn.

As a society, we need to ask some hard questions. A small group, by estimates around 700,000, or 0.3 percent of the adult population, identifies itself as transgender. There is a movement to allow men in women’s restrooms, locker rooms, shower facilities and vice versa. There will be no physician diagnosis and certification, as in the requirement the for special facilities or circumstances we offer for the handicapped. And we all know facilities designated for the medically certified handicapped get misused and abused daily.

The transgender community claims they feel uncomfortable using their born sex facilities. So do we make the other 99.7 percent of the population uncomfortable having the opposite physical sex in our most private moments of undressing, and/ or relieving ourselves in restrooms? In public restrooms, should a grown man be allowed in areas where minor girls are, unsupervised? What are the financial liabilities that will burden our schools or businesses when someone is sexually assaulted by sick individuals using the law for personal pleasure?

Do I believe we should abandon these people who believe they are mentally something that physically they are not? No. I can compromise that if we are to cater, that we supply an alternate facility. That way we give choice to all. Women have their own, men have their own, multigender have their own.

It’s really the only safe solution.