Never mind gang violence, TNReady failures, lack of effective school leadership, or rampant bullying and violence with the complicity of school officials. Our elected officials in Nashville have finally proposed a real solution to a real youth problem - force schools to police bathrooms, and students to provide a birth certificate, before they can pee.

Seems absurd? I agree.

These kinds of bathroom bills are the latest in manufactured moral panic, passing in states like North Carolina and Mississippi, but being vetoed and criticized in South Dakota, South Carolina, and Iowa.

Those in favor claim the laws are necessary to protect our youth from alleged predators just waiting in the wings to swoop upon our unsuspecting children in the bathrooms. Those opposed, in addition to pointing out how ridiculous the whole thing is, point out that the laws don't accomplish any real protections at all, and in fact amount to little more than a thin justification to attack an already marginalized group; that being the estimated 1 in 300 students in Tennessee who happen to be transgender.

Rep. Susan Lynn, of Mount Joliet, is the sponsor of HB2414, the version of the bill in the Tennessee house. She doesn't even refute the negative impact on transgender students. Instead, she claims the increased risks of harassment, assault, and suicide faced by those students is an unfortunate but necessary price to pay for the protection of everyone else.

If I told you today that we could cure child cancer, but in order to do so, we need to choose about one kid for every 300, and sacrifice their life, most of you would be justly and understandably horrified. How could anyone even consider such a thing?

Even the more morally flexible, or practically minded of you, though... those concerned with the ‘greater good’... would at the very least need some serious answers to important questions before even considering such a plan. Questions like, are we certain this actually solves the problem? Is it a common or heinous enough issue to outweigh the cost? Who decides who pays the cost? What do we tell the parents of those kids? What do we tell the children themselves? And are we absolutely certain we have exhausted all other options and made every reasonable effort to lessen the burden?

And yet Rep. Lynn, and her Senate counterpart, our own local Mike Bell, have failed to answer even the most basic of those questions when applied to the bathroom bill. They can't tell us, for instance, how a bill with no criminal justice component, and very little promise of being consistently enforceable, is going to prevent a hypothetical abuser from committing an act that is itself already a reprehensible and heavily prosecuted felony. They haven't demonstrated that these abusers are even a real threat in Tennessee, or that if they were, their numbers outweigh the risk to an estimate of more than 4,000 trans students in Tennessee. They haven't demonstrated beyond a doubt that this is even the only solution to this supposed problem, or that they've made any effort at all to mitigate the risks they openly admit this creates for transgender students… a risk which could see trans suicide, most often the result of a lack of social acceptance, increase by more than half among students.

Personally, I think any bill that comes with a body count better have a darn good justification. But, with so many concerns left unaddressed, I have significant doubts this bill is about protecting students at all. More plausible, it seems, is that it is simply a direct attack on our trans youth, disguised in a “save the children” smokescreen. It's reprehensible that any legislature would consider such a farcical move, but here we are.

Please, stop this nonsense. Tell the state legislature and Governor Haslam that Tennessee doesn't want to have a hand in this discrimination, and that the lives of all of our students should be considered before making reckless and ridiculous changes.

Charina Anne Starr
East Ridge

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I can't add much to Ms. Starr's eloquently worded appeal, except to say this state's legislators may do well to consider the backlash these bills are drawing in other states, the jobs lost in North Carolina being the most recent consequence. 

It seems a waste, and perhaps a proverbial cutting off of one's nose to spite one's face.

Darlene Kilgore

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Well, it could be worse. You could have a women's bathroom beside Republican Jeremy Durham's office in Nashville or a boy's bathroom beside Republican ex-Speaker of the House Denny Hastert.

Stephen Greenfield