The transgender bathroom issue is about much more than bathrooms. In a previous article, The New American asked, “What next?” As if in answer to that question, the transgender battleground has now expanded to include college dorm rooms.
While “the slippery slope” is often considered a logical fallacy, it must be acknowledged that there is sometimes a slope so slippery that there is no safe stopping point between Point A (in this case, the “right” of transgendered people to use the bathrooms of their choice) and Point B (in this case, the continued — and likely ultimate — decay of morality).
As this writer put it in that previous article, “There is a tipping point — a point of no return — for any society. Can a society survive the breakdown of morality in which girls shower with boys?” As American society continues to pushed down that slippery slope, college campuses are scrambling to adjust their student housing to accommodate President Obama’s novel interpretation of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. Secular colleges and universities are — predictably — positively bending over backward to open women’s dorm rooms up to men who “identify” as women (and vice versa). And while many conservative Christian colleges and universities have applied for religious exemptions to allow them to maintain their religious identity, many others have not.
In fact, several Catholic colleges and universities have been called out by Adam Cassandra of the Cardinal Newman Society in his article “Catholic colleges embrace ‘demonic’ gender ideology in housing policies” for deviating from the teachings of the Catholic Church by embracing a “gender identity” that ignores the scriptural fact that “God created them male and female.”
The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, has stated in the April 2016 campus newspaper that it plans to allow transgender students to be housed in dormitories consistent with their “gender identity.” The new policy will be in effect for the upcoming 2016-2017 academic year. As Cassandra wrote in his article:
The Cardinal Newman Society asked Coolbaugh about the promotion of gender ideology with the implementation of this policy. Coolbaugh was also asked if there was any discussion at Holy Cross about requesting a religious exemption from Title IX with the U.S. Department of Education to protect the college from implementing gender identity policies. Religious colleges and schools can request exemptions from Title IX if the law’s requirements conflict with their religious tenets. No response was received by time of publication.
Never to be outdone, the University of San Francisco (USF) — which is also ostensibly a Catholic school — took the issue to a whole new level, telling students that they need to realize that “human beings are not necessarily male or female as ascribed by their assigned gender at birth.” In keeping with that denial of human nature and the divine order of creation, USF has a policy to allow open dormitories and bathrooms for use by any and all.
Considering how simple it is for a religious school to obtain a waiver, these schools have shown their true colors by not doing so.
Secular schools, on the other hand, have no option of a waiver. Beginning next school year, millions of college freshmen all over the nation will be rolling the dice on their assignment of a roommate. Because of the way in which Title IX is being mangled in its interpretation, students will not likely be told ahead of time that they will be rooming with someone of the opposite sex. As LifeSiteNews reported:
The most offensive part of the new policy is that, under the Obama administration’s federal guidance:
• School districts must allow biological males and females to spend the night together in the same hotel room on field trips;
• Colleges must let men who say they are transgender be roommates with one or more women; and
• School officials cannot even tell those young women or their parents in advance that their new roommate is a man, without risking a federal lawsuit.
As the Daily Caller reported:
Colleges across the country have already implemented gender-inclusive housing on their campuses, and some are working fast to create these housing options in time for this fall’s freshman class. The wide variety of gender-inclusive housing options is intended to give straight students the option to live with gay people of the opposite gender, transgender students, and students comfortable with various genders.
“Title IX and the ‘dear colleague’ letters make all of us, all institutions, more accountable for students who may be on the margins,” the dean of students at Georgia State University, Darryl Holloman, told Reuters in a Saturday report. Georgia State University had gender-inclusive housing for the first time during the 2015-2016 school year — students at the college, regardless of gender, are allowed to room together.
Considering the backlash over Obama’s letter and the states which have filed a federal lawsuit over the administration’s heavy-handed and lopsided approach to this issue, it will not be surprising to see colleges and universities in those states standing up where many Christian colleges and universities have chosen to take a seat. God help us.
