DAVID MARCUS: Calling Rep. Sarah McBride ‘mister' isn't impolite, it's just reality
Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Europe Subcommittee, referred to trans Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., as "Mister McBride," causing a heated exchange that brought the hearing to a crashing halt. Ranking Democrat Bill Keating, of Massachusetts, rode to McBride's rescue.
"Mr. Chairman, you are out of order!" Keating thundered. "Mr. Chairman, have you no decency?" he harumphed, channeling the well-worn phrase from the 1950's McCarthy hearings. "This is not decent."
Now, we all understand that if we meet a trans person at a party or a ballgame, we can work around the pronouns and not be a jerk about it. But a congressional hearing is not a private event, it is the official public speech of our government. It should reflect objective reality.
In other words, Self did exactly the right thing to do in that official situation so as not to publicly sanction a delusion.
Over the past decade, since around the time orange became the new black, our society has struggled with how to show deference to those who wish to live as the gender they aren't while pursuing public policies that protect women.
But that was always the wrong question. That kind of accommodation for the idea that human beings can transubstantiate their gender was always going to bind us in the knots we face today regarding women's sports, or women-only spaces such as prisons, shelters and restrooms.
It is as if many Americans, including many conservatives, have been saying, "Okay, this is pretend, but we will go along with it as long as nobody gets hurt."
The problem is that the simple acceptance of the delusional position that everyone can choose their own gender hurts lots of people, not least of all children and young adults who are seduced by the almost godlike power of supposedly overcoming nature itself.
"It is because of adults in the room who entertained the lie that I was born in the wrong body and needed to transition that I now suffer from irreversible damage to my body." Prisha Mosley
As it turns out, the following day on Capitol Hill, Independent Women Ambassador Prisha Mosley was in attendance for Detransitioners Awareness Day. At just 16, Prisha, who seemed sure she was really a boy, had a double mastectomy, which she now regrets, but cannot undo.
"It is because of adults in the room who entertained the lie that I was born in the wrong body and needed to transition that I now suffer from irreversible damage to my body," Mosley told Fox News Digital. "The truth is not transphobic. It is never loving to lie."
This happened in no small part because good, decent people who wanted to be polite have allowed the unscientific and frankly absurd notion that people can switch their genders to gain legitimacy, to at least be a matter of opinion.
It is not a matter of opinion, it has never been a matter of opinion, and it never will be a matter of opinion.
Just days ago in Calgary, I ran into a protest against the policy of putting men in women's prisons, and we talked about how, 10 years ago, people were nervous about questioning the quasi-religious trans ideology even in private conversation. Today, reality can be proudly spoken, and should be.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein argued convincingly that language is not merely the vessel of our thoughts, it is the driver of our thoughts. Once we allow the words "man" and "woman" to mean something other than what biological reality dictates, that choice drives us to the madness and irreversible consequences we are seeing now.
Perhaps all of our efforts to accommodate the lie of transgenderism over the past decade have come from a true place of caring and kindness. But it doesn't matter, it is hurting people badly, and it has to stop right now.
Will the process of restoring reality on this issue lead to awkward and even volatile moments and situations like we saw in Tuesday's congressional meltdown? Absolutely. Will those who defend truth be called bigots? Without question.
But when we hear stories like that of Prisha Mosley, and so many others whose lives were forever altered by the insidious lie of transgenderism, we know that whatever slings and arrows come our way, acceptance of the lie makes us complicit.
Somewhere right now, a young woman or man is contemplating transition, willing to risk irreversible surgery, or even their own fertility to try to become something they never can be. For their sake, we must stop pretending and firmly place our boots back on the solid ground of biological reality.
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32 minutes ago
Women legislators fight for 'potty parity'
For female state lawmakers in Kentucky, choosing when to go to the bathroom has long required careful calculation. There are only two bathroom stalls for women on the third floor of the Kentucky Statehouse, where the House and Senate chambers are located. Female legislators — 41 of the 138 member Legislature — needing a reprieve during a lengthy floor session have to weigh the risk of missing an important debate or a critical vote. None of their male colleagues face the same dilemma because, of course, multiple men's bathrooms are available. The Legislature even installed speakers in the men's bathrooms to broadcast the chamber's events so they don't miss anything important. In a pinch, House Speaker David Osborne allows women to use his single stall bathroom in the chamber, but even that attracts long lines. 'You get the message very quickly: This place was not really built for us,' said Rep. Lisa Willner, a Democrat from Louisville, reflecting on the photos of former lawmakers, predominantly male, that line her office. The issue of potty parity may seem comic, but its impact runs deeper than uncomfortably full bladders, said Kathryn Anthony, professor emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's School of Architecture. 'It's absolutely critical because the built environment reflects our culture and reflects our population,' said Anthony, who has testified on the issue before Congress. 'And if you have an environment that is designed for half the population but forgets about the other half, you have a group of disenfranchised people and disadvantaged people.' There is hope for Kentucky's lady legislators seeking more chamber potties. A $300 million renovation of the 155-year-old Capitol — scheduled for completion by 2028 at the soonest — aims to create more women's restrooms and end Kentucky's bathroom disparity. The Bluegrass State is among the last to add bathrooms to aging statehouses that were built when female legislators were not a consideration. In the $392 million renovation of the Georgia Capitol, expanding bathroom access is a priority, said Gerald Pilgrim, chief of staff with the state's Building Authority. It will introduce female facilities on the building's fourth floor, where the public galleries are located, and will add more bathrooms throughout to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. 'We know there are not enough bathrooms,' he said. There's no federal law requiring bathroom access for all genders in public buildings. Some 20 states have statutes prescribing how many washrooms buildings must have, but historical buildings — such as statehouses — are often exempt. Over the years, as the makeup of state governments has changed, statehouses have added bathrooms for women. When Tennessee's Capitol opened in 1859, the architects designed only one restroom — for men only — situated on the ground floor. According to legislative librarian Eddie Weeks, the toilet could only be "flushed' when enough rainwater had been collected. 'The room was famously described as 'a stench in the nostrils of decency,'' Weeks said in an email. Today, Tennessee's Capitol has a female bathroom located between the Senate and House chambers. It's in a cramped hall under a staircase, sparking comparisons to Harry Potter's cupboard bedroom, and it contains just two stalls. The men also just have one bathroom on the same floor, but it has three urinals and three stalls. Democratic Rep. Aftyn Behn, who was elected in 2023, said she wasn't aware of the disparity in facilities until contacted by The Associated Press. 'I've apparently accepted that waiting in line for a two-stall closet under the Senate balcony is just part of the job,' she said. 'I had to fight to get elected to a legislature that ranks dead last for female representation, and now I get to squeeze into a space that feels like it was designed by someone who thought women didn't exist -- or at least didn't have bladders,' Behn said. The Maryland State House is the country's oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use, operational since the late 1700s. Archivists say its bathroom facilities were initially intended for white men only because desegregation laws were still in place. Women's restrooms were added after 1922, but they were insufficient for the rising number of women elected to office. Delegate Pauline Menes complained about the issue so much that House Speaker Thomas Lowe appointed her chair of the 'Ladies Rest Room Committee,' and presented her with a fur covered toilet seat in front of her colleagues in 1972. She launched the women's caucus the following year. It wasn't until 2019 that House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, the first woman to secure the top position, ordered the addition of more women's restrooms along with a gender-neutral bathroom and a nursing room for mothers in the Lowe House Office Building. As more women were elected nationwide in the 20th century, some found creative workarounds. In Nebraska's unicameral Legislature, female senators didn't get a dedicated restroom until 1988, when a facility was added in the chamber's cloakroom. There had previously been a single restroom in the senate lounge, and Sen. Shirley Marsh, who served for some 16 years, would ask a State Patrol trooper to guard the door while she used it, said Brandon Metzler, the Legislature's clerk. In Colorado, female House representatives and staff were so happy to have a restroom added in the chamber's hallway in 1987 that they hung a plaque to honor then-state Rep. Arie Taylor, the state's first Black woman legislator, who pushed for the facility. The plaque, now inside a women's bathroom in the Capitol, reads: 'Once here beneath the golden dome if nature made a call, we'd have to scramble from our seats and dash across the hall ... Then Arie took the mike once more to push an urge organic, no longer do we fret and squirm or cross our legs in panic.' The poem concludes: 'In mem'ry of you, Arie (may you never be forgot), from this day forth we'll call that room the Taylor Chamber Pot.' New Mexico Democratic state Rep. Liz Thomson recalled missing votes in the House during her first year in office in 2013 because there was no women's restroom in the chamber's lounge. An increase in female lawmakers — New Mexico elected the largest female majority Legislature in U.S. history in 2024 — helped raise awareness of the issue, she said. 'It seems kind of like fluff, but it really isn't,' she said. 'To me, it really talks about respect and inclusion.' The issue is not exclusive to statehouses. In the U.S. Capitol, the first restroom for congresswomen didn't open until 1962. While a facility was made available for female U.S. Senators in 1992, it wasn't until 2011 that the House chamber opened a bathroom to women lawmakers. Jeannette Rankin of Montana was the first woman elected to a congressional seat. That happened in 1916. Willner insists that knowing the Kentucky Capitol wasn't designed for women gives her extra impetus to stand up and make herself heard. 'This building was not designed for me," she said. "Well, guess what? I'm here.' ___ ____
32 minutes ago
As ADA turns 35, groups fighting for disability rights could see funds slashed
TOPEKA, Kan. -- Nancy Jensen believes she'd still be living in an abusive group home if it wasn't shut down in 2004 with the help of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, which for decades has received federal money to look out for Americans with disabilities. But the flow of funding under the Trump administration is now in question, disability rights groups nationwide say, dampening their mood as Saturday marks the 35th anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act. Federal dollars pay for much of their work, including helping people who seek government-funded services and lawsuits now pushing Iowa and Texas toward better community services. Documents outlining President Donald Trump's budget proposals show they would zero out funds earmarked for three grants to disability rights centers and slash funding for a fourth. Congress' first discussion of them, by the Senate Appropriations Committee, is set for Thursday, but the centers fear losing more than 60% of their federal dollars. The threat of cuts comes as the groups expect more demand for help after Republicans' tax and budget law complicated Medicaid health coverage with a new work-reporting requirement. There's also the sting of the timing: this year is the 50th anniversary of another federal law that created the network of state groups to protect people with disabilities, and Trump's proposals represent the largest potential cuts in that half-century, advocates said. The groups are authorized to make unannounced visits to group homes and interview residents alone. 'You're going to have lots of people with disabilities lost,' said Jensen, now president of Colorado's advisory council for federal funding of efforts to protect people with mental illnesses. She worries people with disabilities will have 'no backstop' for fighting housing discrimination or seeking services at school or accommodations at work. The potential budget savings are a shaving of copper from each federal tax penny. The groups receive not quite $180 million a year — versus $1.8 trillion in discretionary spending. The president's Office of Management and Budget didn't respond to an email seeking a response to the disability rights groups' criticism. But in budget documents, the administration argued its proposals would give states needed flexibility. The U.S. Department of Education said earmarking funds for disability rights centers created an unnecessary administrative burden for states. Trump's top budget adviser, Russell Vought, told senators in a letter that a review of 2025 spending showed too much went to 'niche' groups outside government. 'We also considered, for each program, whether the governmental service provided could be provided better by State or local governments (if provided at all),' Vought wrote. Disability rights advocates doubt that state protection and advocacy groups — known as P&As — would see any dollar not specifically earmarked for them. They sue states, so the advocates don't want states deciding whether their work gets funded. The 1975 federal law setting up P&As declared them independent of the states, and newer laws reinforced that. 'We do need an independent system that can hold them and other wrongdoers accountable,' said Rocky Nichols, the Kansas center's executive director. Nichols' center has helped Matthew Hull for years with getting the state to cover services, and Hull hopes to find a job. He uses a wheelchair; a Medicaid-provided nurse helps him run errands. 'I need to be able to do that so I can keep my strength up,' he said, adding that activity preserves his health. Medicaid applicants often had a difficult time working through its rules even before the tax and budget law's recent changes, said Sean Jackson, Disability Rights Texas' executive director. With fewer dollars, he said, 'As cases are coming into us, we're going to have to take less cases.' The Texas group receives money from a legal aid foundation and other sources, but federal funds still are 68% of its dollars. The Kansas center and Disability Rights Iowa rely entirely on federal funds. 'For the majority it would probably be 85% or higher,' said Marlene Sallo, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network, which represents P&As. The Trump administration's proposals suggest it wants to shut down P&As, said Steven Schwartz, who founded the Center for Public Representation, a Massachusetts-based organization that works with them on lawsuits. Federal funding meant a call in 2009 to Disability Rights Iowa launched an immediate investigation of a program employing men with developmental disabilities in a turkey processing plant. Authorities said they lived in a dangerous, bug-infested bunkhouse and were financially exploited. Without the dollars, executive director Catherine Johnson said, 'That's maybe not something we could have done.' The Kansas center's private interview in 2004 with one of Jensen's fellow residents eventually led to long federal prison sentences for the couple operating the Kaufman House, a home for people with mental illnesses about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Wichita. And it wasn't until Disability Rights Iowa filed a federal lawsuit in 2023 that the state agreed to draft a plan to provide community services for children with severe mental and behavioral needs. For 15 years, Schwartz's group and Disability Rights Texas have pursued a federal lawsuit alleging Texas warehouses several thousand people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in nursing homes without adequate services. Texas put at least three men in homes after they'd worked in the Iowa turkey plant. Last month, a federal judge ordered work to start on a plan to end the 'severe and ongoing' problems. Schwartz said Disability Rights Texas did interviews and gathered documents crucial to the case. 'There are no better eyes or ears,' he said.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Women legislators fight for ‘potty parity'
In a pinch, House Speaker David Osborne allows women to use his single stall bathroom in the chamber, but even that attracts long lines. Advertisement 'You get the message very quickly: This place was not really built for us,' said Rep. Lisa Willner, a Democrat from Louisville, reflecting on the photos of former lawmakers, predominantly male, that line her office. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The issue of potty parity may seem comic, but its impact runs deeper than uncomfortably full bladders, said Kathryn Anthony, professor emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's School of Architecture. 'It's absolutely critical because the built environment reflects our culture and reflects our population,' said Anthony, who has testified on the issue before Congress. 'And if you have an environment that is designed for half the population but forgets about the other half, you have a group of disenfranchised people and disadvantaged people.' There is hope for Kentucky's lady legislators seeking more chamber potties. Advertisement A $300 million renovation of the 155-year-old Capitol — scheduled for completion by 2028 at the soonest — aims to create more women's restrooms and end Kentucky's bathroom disparity. The Bluegrass State is among the last to add bathrooms to aging statehouses that were built when female legislators were not a consideration. In the $392 million renovation of the Georgia Capitol, expanding bathroom access is a priority, said Gerald Pilgrim, chief of staff with the state's Building Authority. It will introduce female facilities on the building's fourth floor, where the public galleries are located, and will add more bathrooms throughout to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. 'We know there are not enough bathrooms,' he said. Evolving equality in statehouses There's no federal law requiring bathroom access for all genders in public buildings. Some 20 states have statutes prescribing how many washrooms buildings must have, but historical buildings — such as statehouses — are often exempt. Over the years, as the makeup of state governments has changed, statehouses have added bathrooms for women. When Tennessee's Capitol opened in 1859, the architects designed only one restroom — for men only — situated on the ground floor. According to legislative librarian Eddie Weeks, the toilet could only be 'flushed' when enough rainwater had been collected. 'The room was famously described as 'a stench in the nostrils of decency,'' Weeks said in an email. Today, Tennessee's Capitol has a female bathroom located between the Senate and House chambers. It's in a cramped hall under a staircase, sparking comparisons to Harry Potter's cupboard bedroom, and it contains just two stalls. The men also just have one bathroom on the same floor, but it has three urinals and three stalls. Advertisement Democratic Rep. Aftyn Behn, who was elected in 2023, said she wasn't aware of the disparity in facilities until contacted by The Associated Press. 'I've apparently accepted that waiting in line for a two-stall closet under the Senate balcony is just part of the job,' she said. 'I had to fight to get elected to a legislature that ranks dead last for female representation, and now I get to squeeze into a space that feels like it was designed by someone who thought women didn't exist -- or at least didn't have bladders,' Behn said. The Maryland State House is the country's oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use, operational since the late 1700s. Archivists say its bathroom facilities were initially intended for white men only because desegregation laws were still in place. Women's restrooms were added after 1922, but they were insufficient for the rising number of women elected to office. Delegate Pauline Menes complained about the issue so much that House Speaker Thomas Lowe appointed her chair of the 'Ladies Rest Room Committee,' and presented her with a fur covered toilet seat in front of her colleagues in 1972. She launched the women's caucus the following year. It wasn't until 2019 that House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, the first woman to secure the top position, ordered the addition of more women's restrooms along with a gender-neutral bathroom and a nursing room for mothers in the Lowe House Office Building. 'No longer do we fret and squirm or cross our legs in panic' As more women were elected nationwide in the 20th century, some found creative workarounds. In Nebraska's unicameral Legislature, female senators didn't get a dedicated restroom until 1988, when a facility was added in the chamber's cloakroom. There had previously been a single restroom in the senate lounge, and Sen. Shirley Marsh, who served for some 16 years, would ask a State Patrol trooper to guard the door while she used it, said Brandon Metzler, the Legislature's clerk. Advertisement In Colorado, female House representatives and staff were so happy to have a restroom added in the chamber's hallway in 1987 that they hung a plaque to honor then-state Rep. Arie Taylor, the state's first Black woman legislator, who pushed for the facility. The plaque, now inside a women's bathroom in the Capitol, reads: 'Once here beneath the golden dome if nature made a call, we'd have to scramble from our seats and dash across the hall ... Then Arie took the mike once more to push an urge organic, no longer do we fret and squirm or cross our legs in panic.' The poem concludes: 'In mem'ry of you, Arie (may you never be forgot), from this day forth we'll call that room the Taylor Chamber Pot.' New Mexico Democratic state Rep. Liz Thomson recalled missing votes in the House during her first year in office in 2013 because there was no women's restroom in the chamber's lounge. An increase in female lawmakers — New Mexico elected the largest female majority Legislature in U.S. history in 2024 — helped raise awareness of the issue, she said. 'It seems kind of like fluff, but it really isn't,' she said. 'To me, it really talks about respect and inclusion.' The issue is not exclusive to statehouses. In the U.S. Capitol, the first restroom for congresswomen didn't open until 1962. While a facility was made available for female U.S. Senators in 1992, it wasn't until 2011 that the House chamber opened a bathroom to women lawmakers. Advertisement Jeannette Rankin of Montana was the first woman elected to a congressional seat. That happened in 1916. Willner insists that knowing the Kentucky Capitol wasn't designed for women gives her extra impetus to stand up and make herself heard. 'This building was not designed for me,' she said. 'Well, guess what? I'm here.' Associated Press writer Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed.
