One of the newest frontiers in the politically correct transgender wars is the push by liberals to force women and children to sleep next to men who identify as women in gender-specific homeless shelters.
These are extremely vulnerable women, many of them escaping abusive relationships or suffering from mental illnesses or disabilities. Putting them together with men in the close quarters of a homeless shelter with little to no privacy, with mattresses jammed right up next to each other and group showers, is a clear recipe for disaster and further victimization.
And yet, according to The Hill,
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is expected in September to finalize regulations that would allow people to stay in homeless shelters based on the gender they identify with.
The proposal has set off a firestorm, pitting LGBT groups against religious organizations that operate many homeless shelters.
“Transgender women are women regardless of whether they were born male,” said David Stacy, government affairs director at the Human Rights Campaign.
Um, no, they are not women “regardless.” As American Family Association President Tim Wildmon asked, “What if I self-identify as a woman today, and tomorrow I want to self-identify as a man?”
Sadly, we know that in a battle between religious charities and LGBT activists, the government will always favor LGBT, no matter the adverse effects. In this world, political correctness is more important than actually HELPING people. They don’t care if this means the religious group has to shutdown and no longer provide much-needed services, such as in the case of Catholic Charities ending its program providing adoption and foster home services. They’ve even called for churches to be stripped of their tax exempt status over gay marriage (remember, the power to tax is the power to destroy.)
In fact, the left wants to push out religious charities and instead grow the welfare state to make the poor and vulnerable slaves to big government and its social engineering projects. In the end, the very people these programs are ostensibly suppose to help are harmed by the liberal do-gooders’ interference and trapped by a poverty cycle intended to keep them wards of the nanny state.
LGBT radicals are waging a war on women and taking the side of potential predators, reality be damned.
Tim Wildmon, president of the conservative American Family Association, lamented having to “make room for people who are sexually confused at the expense of everyone else.”
“No one is in favor of beating up transgender people,” Wildmon told The Hill, “but why do you have to force other people to feel really uncomfortable, and in some cases unsafe, just to make your political point?” …
Opponents of the regulation say homeless shelters should be a safe haven for women who have been abused by their husbands and boyfriends. They say those women may feel that they are in danger living with a transgender woman who was born a man.
LGBT advocates say those fears are overblown. …
“One of the guests at a rescue mission overheard someone on the street saying, ‘Dude, if you go down to the rescue mission and tell them you’re transgender, you can sleep in the women’s dorm and even shower with them,’” said John Ashmen, president of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions. “So that idea is out there, but I don’t know of any missions that have called the police because of it.”
I’m sure liberals would say this has NEVER or would never happened. Except it has already. In Canada, a man identifying as a woman sexually assaulted a 5-year-old girl and other women while staying at a women’s shelter. We will never know the true consequences of the decision to allow men in women’s shelters. Homeless women are far more unlikely to report being victims of sexual assault.
And let’s not forget the transgender-identifying man who exploited Target’s bathroom and dressing room policies to victimize girls by taking pictures of them undressing for his own sexual gratification just last month. For these reasons and more, women are uncomfortable with and opposed to having any kind of men in their shelters. Will this fear lead women to think twice about staying in shelters?
How will these shelters be able to determine if the person is a real transgender and not a predator pretending to be one to gain access to women and children where they sleep? If the rules are you can’t discriminate and must allow the person access to shelter of the gender they identify with, that means the homeless shelter can’t question sincerity, they must take the person at their word or risk violating discrimination policies.
“It makes no sense at all,” Wildmon said. “Good, Christian organizations that are trying to help people do not need Washington dictating their bathroom or bedding policies.”
Now pray there is something we can do to stop this!
