What do I have to say about the bathroom situation? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
To those at Target who might read this someday, I must say I am incredibly disappointed by your recent actions. You see, I want to take my wife somewhere safe when we shop and now, I really can’t do that. Of course, my wife is a different case since she has PTSD and has been abused (Not by her own family!) and can have paranoia. Tie all of this together and your bathroom would be a nightmare for her as would your changing rooms.
In fact, I as her husband am on extra guard nowadays about this situation. Even if we go to a store like Wal-Mart or Kroger now, I fear that it is a matter of time and if my wife has to go to the restroom, I do not go at the same time or do my shopping then and have her meet me. I am watching outside.
Do you realize what could happen? Someone can come in and take a picture and before I can do anything about it, it is broadcast all over the internet. It can’t be removed. Now you can say some transgender people just want to pee. I don’t doubt that. I also don’t doubt that there are some scummy people who will want to take advantage of any loophole in the law to do evil.
You see, we know you want to be inclusive and diverse, but the truth is, you’ve made a mistake. One does not include everything by being inclusive any more than I could have an inclusive diet by including rat poison in mine. The question is what kinds of behaviors do we want to include. There is also nothing about diversity for the sake of diversity. If I go to a store with diverse products for sale, it’s because there are many options where I could find what I want. A sports store might sell a diverse range of sporting equipment, but I don’t shop there because I don’t care about sports and having them say “We have a diverse display of items” does not make me want to go. If you like Sports, that’s great for you, but the diversity is not itself.
The reason diversity can be good is that there can be a greater amount of ways to make the people happy. If my wife and I want to go out to eat, it’s great that we can choose from so many places. We are limited in our diets due to Aspergers, but even in our limitations we have diversity. The places we can agree on easily are pizzerias, Mexican restaurants, some fast food places, Subway, and Smoothie King. Let’s suppose we want to go Mexican one night. We have many different restaurants nearby we can choose from. That diversity is good.
Yet when it comes to the bathrooms, I don’t want a diversity of people in there with my wife. You know who I want in there with her? Women. I don’t want people who feel like they’re women. I want people who are actual women.
I also think that if the goal of diversity is to please the most, then you’d realize that you’re doing it wrong since you’re not pleasing the most. Consider that this pledge is going around to boycott you and it has 1.1 million signatures on it. We both know that for every person who signs the petition, there are many more who don’t sign it at all. The nearest in the competition I have seen is from Moveon.org. With this, you have about a tenth of the signatures.
I’ll grant you that I never went to business school so maybe I’m speaking out of turn, but I would think that if you made a decision and it got 1.1 million people not wanting to shop at your store and go to your competitors and got a tenth of them to come (And how many of them might have already been shopping there anyway?) then it’s probably a bad business decision. It looks like you’ve just bought into the modern groupthink going on today.
Beyond safety, there is another reason I oppose the redefinition. I believe that being a man means something and being a woman means something. I believe you’re born one or the other for the most part and you should strive to be what you’re born as. I believe that if have the body of a man and think you’re a woman or vice-versa, that you are living with a delusional belief, much like the person who has Cotard’s Delusion and thinks that they are dead.
What I would ask is how can you truly tell that yes, someone is not the same sex as the body that they possess? I have asked this question several times in debate. I have never been given an answer. The only basis given is feelings and why should I base such a thing on feelings? If I felt like I was dead, you would say I was delusional, and you would be right. If I said I felt like I was a small girl, you would say I was delusional and you would be right. (Oh wait. Someone is already doing that.) If I said I was a dragon, you would say I was delusional. (Oh wait. Someone has also already done that.)
Do you realize we’re living in a crazy world nowadays? It’s like everyone around us is trying to top one another by how many ideas they’re willing to accept. Now we’re calling into question the very nature of men and women and based on what? A feeling? We see this around us. We happen to have this belief that has been around for ages that there is something different and unique about the union of a man and a woman in holy matrimony.
It amazes us that our disagreeing position is not welcomed with the idea of diversity and we are not treated with tolerance. This tolerance is a one way street and always has been. The point is if you say you are only going to tolerate ideas that agree with you, that is not tolerance. By all means, disagree with us. By all means, argue with us. By all means, tell us why you think we’re wrong. Still, let us have the freedom to hold to our beliefs without the strong arm of the government coming in.
You see, Bruce Springsteen and Cirque De Soleil and everyone else can boycott NC because they disagree with a law and refuse to provide goods and services there. I disagree with their stance but you know what? That’s their right. They have the freedom to do that. Meanwhile, you have a business that makes wedding cakes or provides flowers or takes pictures and as soon as they say no because of their deeply held belief on what marriage is, they are attacked and their livelihoods ruined so much so that they are bankrupt without outside support. In what universe is this being tolerant towards someone who disagrees with you?
This has been going on long enough and just as we think it can’t get any more bizarre, it does. Now we are expected to have men go into a women’s room and vice-versa. This would have been unthinkable a century ago. We’ve had these for decades and no one has thought a thing about it and yet now, it’s supposed to be different.
So for the people at Target, I’m a person who cares about true beliefs and I see no empirical evidence whatsoever to think that someone with the body of a man or a woman is really the other. I see it instead as a dangerous epistemology and a door opening Pandora’s Box to who knows what else. If you want to keep this up, that’s your freedom and your right, but you can do it without having my family and I shop there.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
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