In late 2015, the Washington State Human Rights Commission quietly put forward a new rule requiring all public establishments to grant locker room, shower, and bathroom access to any individual, at any time, regardless of that individual’s biological realities. The rule, which also curbed concerned citizens’ legal ability to ask “unwelcome questions” of an individual if they felt uncomfortable, has since been attempted in various forms and fashions in cities and states across the country.
When the Charlotte, N.C. City Council passed their version of the open-facilities ordinance earlier this year, the Charlotte LGBT Chamber of Commerce led the charge to make it happen.
And leading the Charlotte LGBT Chamber of Commerce was convicted sex-offender Chad Sevearance-Turner.
The Spartanburg Herald-Journal reported that Chad Sevearance-Turner had been a youth minister at a church in Gaffney, South Carolina. Sevearance-Turner was charged and convicted for “committing or attempting a lewd act upon a child under 16,” after taking advantage of a teenage church member while the child slept.
He recently resigned from the LGBT Chamber of Commerce after his record as a sex-offender surfaced.
While we know that not every person in gender transition is a sex offender, acting as though sex offenders do not exist in the LGBT ranks is an ignorant mistake.
In January, FPIW reported the story of Johanna Wolf, a Washington-based transgender activist and very vocal supporter of our Washington’s open-locker rooms policy. Wolf, prior to claiming womanhood and changing names, was known as Jonathan Adrian Wolf.
Jonathan Adrian Wolf was charged and convicted for the rape of a minor female in Nebraska in 2006.
By virtue of involvement in the efforts to keep Washington’s open-bathroom rule in place, sex offenders like Wolf want unmitigated access to women’s locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms.
After being convicted of raping women.
Sex predators are always on the lookout for an easy, low-risk opportunity to take advantage of victims, and we must not provide it to them.
Washingtonians have known from the beginning that this rule would only bring harm to innocent people. The University of Toronto, one of the first institutions to put this sort of policy in place, completely reversed its decision after biologically male students were caught “holding their cellphones over female students’ shower stalls and filming them as they showered.”
Not taking into account the damages that the loss of privacy causes, people of both sexes deserve better than to wonder if the man dressed in a dress is there for legitimate purposes or if they are there to take photos of them showering over the stall.
Locker rooms, showers, and bathroom facilities exist to protect privacy during vulnerable times. They should not be the laboratory for a social experiment gone awry.
