Great American Bathroom Controversy

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRAYSON. Madam Speaker, I rise today to address the great American bathroom controversy.

On my right, this is a picture of someone who may or may not be recognizable to many Americans today. I will say her name. The name may be more recognizable to some. Her name is Christine Jorgensen.

Christine Jorgensen was born in 1926. She grew up in the Bronx, like I did. She went to high school at Christopher Columbus High School, which was near the public housing where I grew up in the Bronx. In fact, my father taught history at Christopher Columbus High School. I don't know whether he taught Christine or not, but it is possible.

In 1945, Christine was drafted and served in the U.S. military. Now, that may be a puzzle for some of you listening to me right now who say: I didn't realize that women were drafted in the 1940s. Well, at that time, Christine's name was George, George Jorgensen. That is the name she was born with.

She was, in fact, on her birth certificate male, something that she struggled with greatly all through the time that she was growing up-- being a male--something that she struggled with being in the military, and then after leaving military service.

In 1951, she heard about the possibility of changing her gender. So she went to Denmark and underwent three or more surgeries, plus a very substantial amount of estrogen treatments, came back to the United States, and then forever thereafter, after 1953, was known as Christine Jorgensen.

Christine Jorgensen was out. She was well known in America as someone who was transgendered. I knew about her story when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. She made no effort to hide. She didn't feel any shame about it.

In fact, she was proud of the fact that she had been able to take advantage of what medicine had to offer and live the life that she felt she would have been able to live from the beginning if she had the proper gender.

She had some degree of fame. Republican Vice President Spiro Agnew referred to her once in a speech to mock one of his political opponents. She performed both as a singer and as an actress all through the 1950s, through the entire 1960s, and well into the 1970s. She was the most famous, if you will, transgendered person in America probably to this day.

Now, I have to tell you I don't know exactly where she went when she had to go. I don't know exactly whether she went into a men's room or a ladies' room. But here is an interesting thing. Even though this is something new under the Sun, even though America never had to address this issue before, no one ever even bothered to ask.

I don't remember anybody saying ``Christine Jorgensen ought to go to the men's room. She was born a male'' or, for that matter, ``Christine Jorgensen identifies as a female. She should go to the ladies' room.''

Isn't it odd that America in the 1950s seems to have shown a lot more maturity than America is showing today with our great bathroom controversy right now, where the cisgendered people of America try to dictate to the transgendered people of America where they can go to the bathroom, or, at least, frankly, the more bigoted among us.

Now, we had a law passed recently in North Carolina. I am going to go out on a limb and say that it passed almost exclusively with cisgendered Republican votes in which they tried to dictate which bathroom Christine Jorgensen would have to go to if she were alive today and had to relieve herself.

Amazingly enough, they actually decided in their wisdom that Christine Jorgensen, if she were alive today, like all of her transgendered brothers and sisters, would have to go to the bathroom that she didn't identify as but, instead, the bathroom that was on her birth certificate.

Now, this is particularly ironic. There was one form of discrimination that Christine Jorgensen did actually face during her lifetime. She was not allowed to get married.

She was not allowed to get married to a man because her birth certificate said she was a male. She was not issued a marriage license on account of the fact that a male was trying to marry a male.

Well, my goodness, here in America, just in the past 12 months or so, we finally managed to solve that problem. Christine Jorgensen could get married today to her lover.

Now we have a whole new problem. Now, thanks to Republicans and bigots in North Carolina, we have a law that would require Christine Jorgensen to go to the men's room. Think about that. Think about that. In fact, the natural consequence of that law is what I am about to show you right here. That.

So you folks in North Carolina who are obsessed with where the transgendered go to the bathroom, this is the result you have come up with, to have people who self-identify as women, people who look like women, people who act like women--they somehow are being driven into the men's room.

The same thing is true of the transgendered who identify as men. You are going to force people who look like men, act like men, identify as men--you are going to force them into the ladies' room. My God, what is wrong with you? That doesn't make any sense at all.

Now, let me tell you something. If I had been back in the day growing up in New York and Christine Jorgensen happened to walk into the men's room--it never happened, but let's say it did--I would have thought that is odd, but I wouldn't have said a word about it.

I wouldn't have gone over to her and said to her: Excuse me. I don't think you are supposed to be here. On the contrary. I would have just made an appropriate mental note, assumed that she probably found herself in the wrong men's room, and I would have let it go.

I would not have felt any fear. I would not have felt any hatred. I would not have felt anything that would indicate to me that somehow I should discriminate against this person. Nevertheless, I would have thought it was odd.

What this law does is guarantee that experience or, worse, to have people who identify and look and dress and act like women forced to go into a men's room, to have people who identify and look and act and dress as men forced to go into a ladies' room. Are you nuts?

Listen, I have heard that the Republican Party is the party of small government. I have also heard that, on the issue of abortion, the party of small government wants government small enough to fit into a woman's uterus. Now it turns out that the party of small government wants government small enough to fit underneath a toilet seat.

Can't we all be adults about this? Can't we all be adults about this, the way we were in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s? Do we really need a new law on this subject, much less a stupid law, a bad law, a ridiculous law?

I understand that it is possible, even in the absence of this law, that there might be some conceivable problems about this kind of situation. I am not sure exactly what they are. I am pretty sure that, if everybody exactly acted as an adult, we could get beyond them without having to litigate over it.

I am wondering how you even enforce a law like this. What are we going to do? Have to give saliva samples every time we want to go to the bathroom to see what gender we were born with? My goodness.

Bear in mind that there is a law against loitering. There is a law against wide stances in a bathroom. A Republican Senator learned that a few years ago. There is a law against disorderly conduct. There is a law against voyeurism. There is a law against indecent exposure. In fact, in a really bad situation, there are laws against assault and even rape.

So why do we need a law to dictate that people who identify as men have to go to the ladies' room and people who identify as ladies have to go to the men's room?

We had laws like that once. We used to say that we didn't want White people to have to be uncomfortable going to the room with Black people. I represent part of the State of Florida. I can remember when we had laws like that. And then somehow or another we pulled ourselves together and we realized how ridiculous that was.

Well, how is this any different? Thank goodness the Attorney General recognizes that it is not. People who are cisgendered have no right to dictate where people who are transgendered urinate any more than people who are White have the right to dictate where people who are Black do it. That is not America. Let's show some common sense.

Now, if we did actually want to deal with real problems, we could deal with this one. A little boy and a little girl, both looking into their diapers, and the caption is: Oh, that explains the difference in our wages.

Now, if you want to talk about gender in America in the early 21st century, we could start with that. Why is it that women still make only 79 cents for every dollar that a man makes in countless occupations and professions even today? Why is that?

If you want to get to the heart of what is really going on between the sexes in America today, why don't we do something to address that problem?

And if we want to be more dramatic about it, let's remember the fact that, in America today, 91 percent of the victims of rape are women. Could we take our legislative energy and possibly apply it toward dealing with that problem, which actually is a problem that affects countless women across the country?

Let's not protect them from having to go to the same bathroom as a transgendered person by insisting that people who look and act and identify as men go to the bathroom with them.

Let's instead try to pass wise laws that would equalize pay between men and women, oh, and if we possibly could, reduce the incidence, the terrible incidence, of rape.

But getting back to this North Carolina law, there is a deep legal principle that this law offends. It offends me and it offends a lot of people with a good conscience.

That deep legal principle is this. It goes by four letters: M-Y-O-B. That is an even higher law than the law that was passed by the North Carolina legislature. MYOB: Mind your own business.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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