The Chris Moeller Archives

The grandmother of bathroom panic

For you young folk, the irrational fear over transgender people being allowed to use ladies’ restrooms is not new to this millennium. One of my earliest political memories is of a lady named Phyllis Schafly, who was a high-profile character in American political life in the 1970s, a passionate opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment for women to the U.S. Constitution.

A St. Louisan, then and now, the founder of Eagle Forum, and a pioneering pearl-clutcher, she warned the country that passage of the ERA would lead to such calamities as unisex bathrooms and equal pay for equal work. She was one of the early figureheads of the Christian fundy movement, really at the forefront before the whole thing ignited behind the anti-abortion movement and the Reagan presidency. In 1979, in the WKRP in Cincinnati episode "Carlson for President," during which Arthur runs for Cincy city council, one of his opponents on the debate panel, the one that has written a book called “It’s a Man’s World, Girls”-- that’s Schafly. That's who she was. She was Anita Bryant without the musical chops or the orange juice, Curt Schilling without the fast ball.

Despite a continued activism, the 91-year-old Schafly has really been off the national radar for about 30 years. I remember hearing about ten years ago that one of her children came out as gay (as did the children of fellow fundies Dick Cheney and Alan Keyes), but that’s about it. In St. Louis, these days, the name Schafly now means ‘micro-brew’ to most people. (There's no immediate family connection to the local brewery.) But she has still been around. I just looked her up. The ERA never came to fruition (nor has equal pay) and, until now, bathrooms have remained largely segregated by genitalia. It’s beyond me, incidentally, why macho men would be so concerned that other people with penises, those that self-actualize as women, even children, are using the other restroom. Get out of our locker rooms, they’re saying, out of our military, our scout troops, our schools, and our churches, but come pee next to me.

Maybe this latest integration danger posed by the federal courts and the Obama administration will place Schafly's name back into the headlines. The threat of a pedophile lurking in the next stall has returned. And this time, it has legs. If we let transgender people have bathrooms, next thing they'll want is wedding cakes. And then, eventually, we'll have to change the laws to make pedophilia and sexual assault illegal.

posted by CM @ 8:41 PM