On Feb. 8, the Charlotte City Council is expected to discuss opening virtually all public bathrooms and showers in the city to members of the opposite sex by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity or gender expression. Because gender identity is totally subjective, the effect of the ordinance would be to prevent any objection to men using a bathroom with women.
If you recall, an attempt to pass a similar ordinance was rejected by the city council, 6-5, last year. But the intervening election has changed the political composition of the council. The proposed City Code would allow the awarding of "damages, including compensation for humiliation and embarrassment and punitive damages ... and ... attorneys fees" to anyone refused admission to a bathroom.
Genesis 5:2 tells us: "Male and female He created them." Christ repeated that passage in Matthew 19:4: "Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female.'" The Church, therefore, has always recognized that men and women are created by God to be different.
That teaching, however, is being directly challenged in today's society. A difference in sexual identity conflicts with the current radical ideology which attacks the very idea of sexual identity. That ideology contends that the differences between men and women are merely created by society, rather than biological in origin. Proponents have therefore tried to break down all societal distinctions between the sexes. The campaign began with language, attempting to deconstruct completely the meaning of sexual identity itself. Instead of referring to the biological sex of individuals as male or female, the term "gender" is now used to describe a purely subjective state of mind. And in addition to gays and lesbians, there can now be "transgenders," "transwomen," "transmen"," genderqueer" and "gender fluid," among many others.
Gay "marriage" and abolition of sex-specific bathrooms are merely two examples of this campaign against the understanding of sexual identity, and ultimately, the Church. This is because the Church is the only institutional obstacle to the ideological views of these radical thinkers.
If the proposed "bathroom bill" passes the Charlotte City Council, it will further undermine our societal values and put innocent people at risk. Until now, Charlotte's ordinance against sex discrimination contained three exceptions: (1) "Restrooms, shower rooms, bathhouses and similar facilities which are in their nature distinctly private," (2) "YMCA, YWCA and similar types of dormitory lodging facilities," and (3) "A private club or other establishment not, in fact, open to the public." Although, at the time of writing this article, the specific language to be voted on this year has still not been disclosed, the proposal rejected last year would have eliminated those exceptions – thereby making almost all public restrooms and showers open to everyone regardless of sex.
Why do we care? For that matter, why do we have separate public bathrooms and showers for men and women? The simple answer is: modesty and safety. These reasons are obvious to anyone with common sense.
The first reason for having separate public facilities for men and women is to allow for the virtue of modesty. Modesty is a part of the virtue of temperance and refers to restraint in speech, dress and actions in order to avoid creating the temptations that are part of human nature. Modesty also protects the intrinsic dignity of the person against exploitation by those who would treat that person as an object.
The second reason for having separate public facilities for men and women is safety. Not every man who goes into a women's locker room will commit a sexual assault, but the expectation of privacy and lack of public view characteristic of bathrooms, dressing rooms and athletic facility locker rooms make them ideal places of exploitation by sexual predators.
The risk is real. A group opposed to the Houston "bathroom bill" collected reported instances of sexual violence against women by men claiming to be transgender or dressing as women to gain access to women's facilities. Although prohibiting men from showering or dressing with women would not prevent all sexual assaults, putting them together would make such assaults much easier to commit.
Aside from these risks, businesses compelled by the ordinance to open their women's restrooms and shower facilities to men would also face an increased risk of lawsuits for negligence. Negligence is the failure to take reasonable care to avoid injury. Businesses could be forced to put guards in restrooms to avoid claims that they failed to take reasonable steps to prevent crimes.
Like the push for official recognition of gay "marriage," proponents are using bathrooms as the next step in their campaign to force society to conform to their radical ideas about sexual identity. Ultimately, the failure to successfully oppose these ideas by teaching and political opposition will result in persecution of the Church itself. The Church must recognize what is happening and speak out. The rest of us can be involved and pray.
Robert D. Potter Jr. is an attorney in Charlotte.
The Church has opened holy doors of mercy at cathedrals and churches around the world to signal the beginning of the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy 2016. As I thought about what this grand gesture might mean for those of us who belong to the Byzantine Rite, I began to think about how often we pray for God's mercy in our rite.
In the Byzantine Rite, the holy doors of mercy are opened every day in daily prayer and in Divine Liturgy.
At the beginning of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the priest and deacon pray together words that have been prayed by others before them since the fifth century: "Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us. We sinners bring this appeal to You, O Master, for we have no defense."
They follow these words with a prayer that begins: "Lord, have mercy on us, for we have put our trust in you."
Before kissing the icon of Christ and that of the Mother of God, they pray: "Open the doors of mercy to us, O blessed Mother of God, that we who hope in you may not perish but be delivered by you from danger, for you are the salvation of the Christian people."
In every Divine Liturgy, we pray for God's mercy for ourselves and others 75 or more times. In each of the hours of the daily office, we pray for mercy at least 30 times and often more than 50.
The deacon prays Psalm 51 at the start of every Divine Liturgy, and this great psalm of confession and repentance is prayed at four of the eight daily hours. "Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy. And according to thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity."
In preparation for Lent, we hear the clearest statement about mercy in Scripture: Our Lord's parable of the Publican and the Pharisee as written by Luke (18:10-14).
In the parable Our Lord teaches that the prayer of the Publican will win this humble supplicant salvation, while that of the proud and self-centered Pharisee will not. Our Lord begins the parable with these words: "Two men went up into the temple to pray."
The prayers of these men could not be more different. The Pharisee's prayer is self-congratulatory. He gives thanks to God for being unlike moneylenders, adulterers and men like the Publican, a tax collector. A man who values the actions he takes, he recounts that he fasts twice a week and tithes. "O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men..."
The Publican, however, stands away from others in the temple. His eyes are lowered, and he beats his chest. His prayer is simple: "O God, be merciful to me a sinner."
His humility will save him. Perhaps like the Pharisee he fasts twice a week and tithes, but unlike the Pharisee he seeks God's mercy.
In the Byzantine Rite, the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee is the first of four Sundays of preparation for Lent. It is preceded by Zacchaeus Sunday and the gospel about a different tax collector Our Lord encounters in Jericho (Luke 19:1-10).
Zacchaeus is filled with joy when the Lord tells him that He wishes to reside in his house during His time there. The crowd murmurs that Our Lord will stay with a sinner, but Zacchaeus stands before the Lord and says:
"Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wronged any man of any thing, I restore him fourfold."
Zacchaeus condemns no other. Rather, he opens his heart to the Lord, and Our Lord responds that salvation has come to his house.
At the core of Byzantine spirituality is the ancient "Jesus Prayer." Repeating this prayer of mercy over and over again, hundreds of times a day, is transformative: "O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
The Byzantine Rite is a school of mercy that teaches us to recognize our sins and to pray always for God's mercy. Through this constant prayer, we learn to be humble and merciful.
Father Deacon Kevin Bezner serves at St. Basil the Great Ukrainian Catholic Mission in Charlotte.