The Buzz: Equality Down the Toilet

Earlier this week, Houstonians faced a question at the polls: “Are you in favor of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, Ord. No. 2014-530, which prohibits discrimination in city employment and city services, city contracts, public accommodations, private employment, and housing based on an individual’s sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, marital status, military status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, or pregnancy?”

You probably forgot how the question began once you got to the end, but you also likely got the gist of it when you read two words: “prohibits discrimination.” So why did 61 percent of voters reject the proposition?

Because they were apparently scared that creepy men would be able to slither their way into women’s restrooms and do…I don’t know…what creepy men do.

“I got three daughters,” Todd Ward told The New York Times, The city worker, who had voted against the ordinance, explained, “You have too much child molestation going on. It’s equal rights, but there’s not an equal right for me to go into a women’s bathroom. That’s common sense.”

Except there is nothing commonsense about what happened in the country’s fourth largest city, the mayor of which, for whatever it’s worth, is openly lesbian.

Though the statute never mentioned lavatories, conservatives were quick to pounce on the notion that HERO, or Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance, which intended to offer protection for transgender individuals, would permit men to exploit the law to engage in predatory behavior in restrooms. As a result, groups opposing the regulation waged a heavy battle to mutate the issue into one about who gets to pee where, using the slogan “No Men in Women’s Bathrooms,” to shape—more like distort—public views. There was even a TV ad that showed a man hiding in a woman’s restroom stall, while a little girl with a pink backpack used a different stall. The commercial closes with the man entering her stall.

Scary, right?

You know what’s scarier? That such attempts were successful in shutting down efforts to bolster greater equality. According to Freedom for All, a gay-rights group that supported HERO, 17 states and more than 200 municipalities currently prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Yet as Jared Woodfill, a HERO opponent who sued to get the Houston measure on the ballot, told the Los Angeles Times, “If we win here, I think it will be an opportunity to defeat these types of ordinances when they pop up.”

Houston mayor Annise Parker, who worries that a vote for intolerance will now impact her city socially and economically, explained, “This was a campaign of fearmongering and deliberate lies.” The truth, sadly, is that the scare tactics worked. For now.