Nick Jimenez

Special to the Caller-Times

Even as Texas voters are still going to the polls in record-setting numbers for the early voting period that ends Friday, Texas political leaders are charting out legislative priorities for the January session.

You might ask what are the top issues for Texans as Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick see them?

Is it the thousands of Texas children who may be in danger although they are supposed to be in the care of the state?

Is it finally getting school funding right which the Texas Supreme Court found to be legal but which the author of the ruling said is "undeniably imperfect, with immense room for improvement."

No, not even close. The biggest issue that Abbott and Patrick are focusing on is bathrooms.

Yes, bathrooms. Johns. Potties. The Head. Water closets. The ladies' room.

The aim of legislation would be to bar the small percentage of transgender Texans who identify themselves as females though they are males from entering women's public restrooms.

Patrick has already branded what such a bill would be called: the Women's Privacy Act. (Why are such discriminatory bans always about protecting our women?)

But even Patrick recognizes that it's highly likely that transgender persons are already using women's restrooms without a whole lot of fuss.

Yet Patrick sees a greater threat.

"Transgender people have obviously been going into the ladies’ room for a long time, and there hasn't been an issue that I know of," Patrick told the Dallas Regional Chamber.

"But, if laws are passed by cities and counties and school districts allow men to go into a bathroom because of the way they feel, we will not be able to stop sexual predators from taking advantage of that law, like sexual predators take advantage of the internet.”

The lieutenant governor is using fear, rather than facts, to arouse his political base. The fear is that waves of men pretending to be women will be besieging women's public restrooms. Kind of like the fear of waves of imposters pretending to be voters helped pass the state's voter photo ID law.

This is fear based on the wrongly held belief that society is rife with Americans who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.

Yet the Gallup Poll has consistently found that no more than about 4 percent of the American population self identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, far from the 25 percent that most Americans seem to believe.

But for the purposes of political pandering and for discriminating against a minority, the issue is perfect.As it turns out, all conservatives are not on board with Patrick and Abbott, who has also said he supports such a law.

Recently 200 small businesses signed an open letter, sponsored by Equality Texas, an LGBT rights organization, warning state leaders that such a discriminatory law would hurt the Texas economy. Likewise, the Texas Association of Business, a group which lines up with Republicans on most issues, has broken with the GOP on the anti-transgender initiative, no doubt aware that other states, such as North Carolina, have lost big corporate bucks after passing similar legislation.

"Companies, voters and political donors won't stand for legislators dictating government overreach into individual liberties," businessman David Wyatt said.

Wow, that sounds like something a far right-winger would say about a pinko liberal.

But here's the real danger of brandishing such deliberately divisive issues: substantive questions that affect thousands of Texans, often the most vulnerable, will stand to get pushed aside in the political cage match brawl over transgender bathrooms.

Take the matter of the thousands of children who need to be placed in foster homes. The state's foster care system has a backlog of almost 3,000 children who need to be placed. But child protective services is so overwhelmed that agency heads say that hundreds of those children have not even been checked on and may be in danger. They believe the agency needs to hire more than 300 case workers to handle the load.

But taking care of children who are in danger of being abused doesn't move the political needle. That is unless true political leaders care about children and believe that the state should protect them.

Neither does trying to develop a school funding system that is fair, efficient and supports an educational system that gives Texas schoolchildren the opportunity to make the most of their talents.

Those are not the kind of issues that stir up the blood, divide people and pander to the basest of emotions - like protecting women's bathrooms.

Nick Jimenez has worked as a reporter, city editor and editorial page editor for more than 40 years in Corpus Christi. He is currently the editorial page editor emeritus for the Caller-Times. His commentary column appears on Wednesdays and Sundays.







