The Spectrum & Daily News Editorial Board

Since the legislature in North Carolina passed and Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law their state’s controversial Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act banning individuals from using public restrooms that do not correspond to their sex as listed on their birth certificate, the topic has been hotly debated.

Entertainers began canceling events in North Carolina; businesses began pulling out of the state; President Obama issued a directive to the nation’s public schools directing them to accommodate transgender individuals; and North Carolina, along with a number of other states, have either filed lawsuits or are threatening to do so in response.

Here in Utah, three members of the Alpine School District School Board — Paula Hill, Wendy Hart and Brian Halladay — penned an open letter to Utah’s elected officials in which they said allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms, locker rooms and showers of the sex with which they identify was "morally reprehensible.” The trio went on to suggest that Utah should be willing to reject all federal funding for public schools and ignore the directive form the Department of Education.

Last week, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert called the executive order “one of the most egregious examples of federal overreach I have ever witnessed. ... Unfortunately, this is exactly what I have come to expect from the Obama administration. If we have to fight this order, we will not hesitate to do so.”

While we are loathe to condone federal overreach, we find ourselves marveling at the amount of time, energy, and, if the lawsuits go forward, money paid to lawyers being invested in this issue.

Considering the many pressing issues facing the world, nation and the state of Utah today, we fail to see why this debate has gained such stature in the consciousness of the American people.

We live in a world in which glaciers are shrinking and sea levels are rising due to climate change; terrorists are mowing down innocent civilians with suicide bombs in Europe; civil war in Syria continues to displace millions of refugees; Russia continues to threaten its neighbors; and North Korea continues to pursue the development of nuclear weapons.

We live in a nation where the benefits of a recovering economy continue to flow disproportionately to the wealthy and the income gap continues to widen; far too many Americans are still struggling to afford healthcare; the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party continues to call for a religious test to allow people to enter the country; mass shootings continue to plague our society; the national debt continues to rise; and a gridlocked political system seems unable to address any issue more substantial than declaring the Bison the national mammal.

We live in a state where questions regarding the funding of a multi-billion dollar pipeline to bring water from Lake Powell continue to go unanswered; we continue to rank last in the nation in per-pupil education spending; the majority of our population is forced to live much of the winter under a blanket of pollution; and many of our poorest residents aren’t eligible for healthcare coverage because they make too much to qualify for Medicare, yet not enough to qualify for insurance subsidies through the Affordable Care Act.

That’s a long list of problems that seem far more significant to us than which bathroom transgender people use.

We have to wonder if the politicians who initiated this debate in North Carolina and continue to push the issue around the nation aren’t simply using this titillating topic to distract us from the real issues that continue to plague our society.

There hasn’t been a rash of transgender people harassing people in locker rooms. There was not a wave of public outcry to keep Caitlyn Jenner from using the women’s restroom.

North Carolina’s legislature attempted to fix a problem that didn’t exist.

If bathroom security is such a problem, where was the talk of legislating which bathrooms United States senators could use after Idaho Sen. Larry Craig was arrested in 2007 for lewd conduct in a men’s room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport?

Should we be worried about voyeurism in public restrooms? Shouldn’t we want to protect our children from sexual predators in locker rooms? Certainly. But that’s not what this debate is about. This debate is about a law that discriminates against transgender individuals who have committed no crime and forces them to endure public shaming as they walk into a restroom that does not correspond with the way they are dressed but rather corresponds to a checked box on their birth certificate.

We need to put aside the junior high school level debates and graduate to debating and solving truly pressing issues.