Schools should let transgender students be who they are. It should be a simple thing. Just like South Carolina should not be mandating where people go to the bathroom. The uproar of say Caitlin Jenner showing up in a men’s bat room or a very buff transgender individual showing up in a women’s bathroom will cause far more disruption. The men who speak with great fear of a man being with a little girl in woman’s bathroom may think that women’s bathroom’s are built like men’s. In reality, I think they don’t care. It’s their discomfort, or really their fear, their hate, of anyone that is different.

Just like there is virtually no voter fraud – the numbers are in the single digits over years there is no evidence of transgender individuals assaulting anyone in restrooms. They have been assaulted, but they aren’t doing the assaulting. The reports of Dennis Hastert molesting teenage boys while he was a high school wrestling coach have garnered little attention. That danger to young people in a locker room has been repeated and implicitly condoned by people like Joe Paterno, who is accused of covering up the assaults by his assistant coach, or the Republican’s who wrote letters of support for Hastert. I heard no calls to end the so called Hastert rule now that the originator of the rule is an admitted child molester. By the way if you are angry at the government’s inaction that “rule” gives the Republicans cover for not doing anything by saying there must be a majority of the majority before it can have a floor vote. This allows a minority of the majority to rule the party.

The transgender bathroom “issue” is shining example of the politics of fear, racism, misogyny and even hate, coupled with an absence of facts that the Republican party lives upon. They have so disassociated from reality that a reality “star” has become their standard bearer.

This has brought in to the light people across this country who want to go back in time They miss the time when the “races” weren’t allowed to mix. My 30 something cousin had the realization that he would have been illegal in that time. Many have said they want to go back further to before the civil war. They feel that they have been forced into things they do not like. The resistance to taking down the flag of the confederacy by those that lost the civil war. Since that moment there has been a split based on an interpretation of the bible that gave them the supposed “moral authority” to own other people. The use that same wrong biblical interpretation for all of their hate. Women are not equal to men. Races should not mix. The LGBTQ community should be changed, beaten or killed. They do not put value on black lives. They value the unborn fetus but not the born life.

The Republicans have brought lies and a refusal to acknowledge facts into this. They brought a promise to stop the first African American President. They made him other. He was from Kenya. He was Muslim. Lies that are still believed by the communities governed by hate and fear. They promised he could not provide health insurance for all. They invented death panels. Then they promised to repeal it. They failed at both. They could not stop him and they could not acknowledge his successes. So they just said he was evil, he was a failure, he was violating the constitution. None was true., and they dug their hole deeper. Now they have Trump and millions of people who are filled with hate. They want someone who will fulfill their hatred and give them their due and not make them give anyone else their equal rights. They want to be superior to everyone and they think Trump will bring them there.

We need to move forward to stop the culture of fear and hate. This underlying hatred needs to be examined. This world of hate and lies cannot continue.