Right wing haters and their cheeto lose another bathroom battle.

I don't think it's that. This seems to be more an example of playing off of others fears, like every other example of moral busybodies trying to restrict the freedoms of others. Kind of like people trying to ban guns, or at least certain kinds of guns. Have to get people all paranoid about what might happen.

Except numerous examples of mass shootings actually HAVE happened.

It's been on the news and everything.

And you could also find examples of homosexual pedophiles, but that doesn't mean every homosexual is also a pedophile, just as mass shootings or any other crime committed with a firearm doesn't make every gun owner a mass shooter or a criminal. It's admittedly an awkward comparison, but I thought it was something your simplistic regressive mind could grasp.

Actually, my progressive mind progresses to the notion that you can't actually find examples of men dressing as women to infiltrate women's bathrooms (or vice-versa, outside your own sexual fantasies). Or at least, you'd find them in such vanishingly small numbers you couldn't possibly use them as a basis for lawmaking.

Mass shootings, though? Once a month, if not once a week at some periods.

The true regressives are those who put lives second to their ability to own a piece of property without regulation. Because WAAAA MINE!

Probably because I have no such fantasies, and no such problem with restrooms. Or did you forget I was one of the ones arguing for having either individual restrooms, or one big restroom with private stalls?

Only if you use the party's definition.

As the name suggests, the regressives are the ones taking our country backwards, which is what the regressive left has been doing.

Nope.

If the left were taking you backwards, you could hang blacks, shoot anyone who offended you, and make a success of yourself despite being a failure of a human being.

And it IRKS you that you can't, doesn't it?

Or have free reign to discriminate against someone based on their race, sex, sexual orientation, and/or "gender."

Or at least beat the crap out of them.

Like Anita Sarkeesian and so many other professional victims.

Jealous of a woman and admitting to the other two points I made?

Jeez, that's your argument?

Would you like to plead guilty to the Holocaust next?

I just flipped your argument around and illustrated my own point about the regressive left being regressive by your own definition, but, yeah, pretend that didn't just happen, by all means.

manipulating peoples fear in order to move them towards political goals is pretty much exactly what scapegoating means in a political context.

The unbroken track record of modern conservative leadership since the 50's has been "OMG, these people! Be afraid of them! Be angry about them! Vote conservative and we'll stop them!"

Trans folks are just the latest "them"

Yeah Democrats never use fear mongering tactics.

by the way, on the term "regressive" - you can say many things about liberals, often unflattering, but "taking us backwards" may be the single most inaccurate claim you can make. EVERYTHING the conservatives hate about liberals are things which move the country away from the way things were done in the past...except one...

(that would be the idea of going back to much higher taxes on the rich which existed from WW2 until Reagan - a period which was on the whole one of massive economic growth - but in the cases of taxation, "regressive" specifically means that it impacts the poor more harshly than the rich so...)

So other than that, there's no sane way one can apply "regressive" to liberalism in any grammatically correct way.

Never said that. Fear mongering the Koch's is the EXACT same thing as fear mongering Saros, you can creat a thousand such examples on both sides.

But conservatives specialize in demonizing entire groups of people, demographic segments of the population, the "others" that are fucking up our country that we need to do something about.

It's true that liberals have responded to that by saying "the Religious right is achieving success by demonizing minority groups which is a threat to our country" which can be twisted into an example of the same thing - BUT that's akin to the old saw that "if you don't tolerate my intolerance then you're being intolerant too"

i.e. it's bullshit.

Agreed.

If it makes you feel any better, I'd say that the regressive left could not really be called liberal, which is part of the reason I make a point of using the term regressive left or some variation of moral crusader when referring to them. They don't deserve to be called liberal because they do not hold liberal values. They are bigots who want to divide us based on arbitrary attributes assigned to us at birth, and to institutionalize this bigotry through the government like the authoritarians that they are.

Politicians on all sides do love others to blame. That said, the sheer ridiculousness of bearded cross dressers with penises demanding entrance into women's rooms or teen boys demanding to shower with women in school showers is what has done the trans extremists in.

If you guys had any sense at all you would be pushing for single occupancy gender neutral bathrooms instead of going full bore stupid on the fringes.

Oh, there are much, much bigger issues far more deserving of time and public attention. That Democrats seem to spend so much time on fringe issues such as this is exactly what is killing them. It alienates the masses of centrist folks, doesn't win any votes, and worse is time which better could have been spent on bread and butter economic and good governance issues.

It is why they need to get smart, go back to the basics, and just dump the angry extremists who are killing their party.

Reading comprehension is your friend. It's not just the Democrats focusing on trans rights, it's the Republicans as well. It was one of the first things Trump dealt with after taking office. Should Democrats just roll over and let the Republicans do what they like to trans kids without a fuss?

Fuckface, NO ONE was making a deal about bathrooms until NC made it a big deal and the other bigot states jumped on the wagon.

Like Doc said, what should've been done in the face of blatant discrimination?

Well, THAT is just a blatant lie. Did you miss Obama making an executive order demanding all schools be forced to allow anyone into any bathroom or shower they want? That is what kicked things off and everything after that was reaction and counter action.

If they had half a brain Dems wouldn't have pushed this vote losing culture battle.

Nope. That happened in May 2016, whereas the NC anti-trans law that made that measure necessary happened in March 2016.

Next you'll be telling us how awful it is that a Bigfoot is allowed to hold office.

You know I love ya, but there's some history here even you don't know I guess.

Okay, background first:
The first known political jurisdiction to pass a non-discrimination ordinance that put gender identity on the same basis with race, religion, et al (that is in employment, housing, and public accommodations - which includes restrooms and etc) was Minneapolis - in 1975.
The first statewide bill was Minnesota in 1993, the first major school district that we know about was in 2004.

By 2011 there were over 200 cities and local jurisdictions, 18 states, and hundreds of school districts under these laws/policies (and most major retailers had policies of their own.

Okay, there was essentially no controversy at all surrounding the passage of these, because the Social Conservative Pharisees were focusing their energies on same-sex marriage which peaked for them in 2004. Of course in their internal communications if they became aware of such a policy they'd grumble about it but it wasn't a focus.

So, in Spring of 2012 Anchorage Alaska set out to pass one of these ordinances and the local subdivision of AFA blew up the ton with ads which portrayed a grown man following a little girl into the restroom and stirred up enough passion with that lie to turn the vote and defeat the ordinance. The Pharisees took note of how successful this was, while also realizing they had lost the public on SSM and realized they had their next powerful propaganda issue. Since then, they have been targeting any locality attempting to pass such an ordinance and trying to defeat them with mixed results; they also moved into writing "model legislation" which they shopped to red state legislators to try and get states to over-rule local laws (ala HB2 in NC) and "religious freedom" laws which have basically the same effect (like HB1523) in Mississippi.

North Carolina was far from the first conflict - indeed the passage of, and subsequent defeat of, HERO n Houston TX in 2015 came before - but it was a perfect storm in that they tried the Anchorage Maneuver in Charlotte - successfully in 2015 and then unsuccessfully in 2016 - happened at the same time that they had successfully placed their supremacy legislation in the General Assembly, so NC had a bill handy to rush through as soon as Charlotte passed their ordinance. This set up one of their beloved "class of cultures" tropes that they could use to manipulate their supporters.

Then layered on top of that was the "Dear Colleague" letter from the Obama DoJ and DoE in May of last year which - at the request of school administrators who wanted clarification - affirmed a series of court orders which found that Title VII and Title IX where they mentioned "sex" protected people from gender identity discrimination. It also included a description of "best practices" which were already being employed in hundreds of school districts across the country.


So you have the right basic idea - that SocialCon Republicans are manipulating an issue no one really cared about because their gullible followers will go into fear and anger mode about anything that's fed to them....but the actual turning point was actually about 5 years ago.

1.5 million U.S. students already attends schools which operate under the policies outlined in the letter.
Various courts had already ruled that Title IX, in where it mentions "sex" protects students from discrimination on the basis of gender identity (this is based in the implications of a Title VII case - Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins)

The leadership of the National Association of Secondary School Administrators ASKED the DoE and DoJ for clarification because the membership was uncertain what their obligations were under Title IX and it is the statutory job of those departments to provide clarifications to the schools under their jurisdiction. So they did.

The studied the schools which have already implemented these policies, some for mover a decade, and collected - again, this is SOP in educational circles - the Best Practices these districts had come up with to deal with the situation.

But of course, to the Social Cons, if Obama wipes his ass it's some sort of evil conspiracy to corrupt Americas children because they know their ill-informed and gullible sheep will believe any ridiculous thing they tell them. Often they can convince idiots such as yourself as well.

And as I pointed out above, the Pharisees were hot and heavy on the anti-trans bullshit three full years before the letter was issued.

Also, the only voters in an uproar about this were already hard core conservatives who were never going to vote Dem anyway

Thanks for the correction @Nova ....i just took it for granted growing up where I did that no one would even try to get a bathroom bill passed here (the one Dinner mentioned re: protections in schools for trans children passed without too much fanfare).

Yes, yes, Dems did nothing wrong yet, magically, just found themselves practically out of office at local, state, and federal positions nearly nation wide. Dig deeper Shep. What turned these local cases into nation wide news all over the tv screen? When Obama weighed in.

For better or for worse he stuck his big foot into the issue and cost Dems a lot of races which they could have won but instead lost. Now, that is reality. They need to go back to the basics and leave the culture war extremists behind if they actually want to win elections in those red states which hey desperately need if they want majorities or the power to draw district lines. Thanks is the truth you ignore because you have an agenda. Fact.

One thing about this is true: Standing up against discrimination very likely did cost the Democrats votes.

But this is the wrong advice:

It is not a 'culture war extremist' position to allow people to pee in public restrooms, much less to allow kids to pee in the restrooms at their schools. If you have to give up such trivial basic truths to win an election, then winning becomes worthless. What is worthwhile is changing public opinion and so win in order to fight discrimination, rather than embracing discrimination in order to win.

please dumb ass. Dems have been losing ground since they lost big in 2010 and Obama didn't whisper a word of official encouragement on the dreaded "bathroom" issue (which is a completely fictional concern created by the Pharisees) until 2016. So your argument is that concerned parents retroactively voted against Democrats six years ago when they found out what Obama did in 2016?

There was ONE election in which ANY evidence suggests that trans people were an issue - and that guy lost.

To be sure, a lot of other right wing assholes who demonized trans kids won, but they were all supposed to win without serious competition. In fact, it demonstrates what callous monsters they are when they throw kids under the bus to energize votes they don't even need to win to coast into re-election.

Meanwhile, in Washington State for instance the Pharisees repeatedly fail to even get enough signatures to put their bigotry on the ballot.

You simply making the usual bullshit correlation argument - trans rights have expanded (geographically) a lot in this century, meanwhile Democrats took significant losses, therefore to the dumb-ass mind, their MUST be a connection.

Here's some other correlations for you:

I'm not quite getting this. Are you saying that in Tennessee, it took 13 hours for the Right Wing to recount their personal tales of molestation? That state isn't that big.

The thing I don't get about this whole Cheeto thing is Trump has never looked orange, ever. Some hater made a stupid Photoshop of a picture that dyed him orange but everyone with a level of intelligence higher than toast automatically saw it for what it was. Namely a really bad and obvious Photoshop.

Not Turdrun though, nope, proving that he really is that stupid he fell for it hook, line, and sinker.