Walgreens Follows Target’s Lead With Misguided Bathroom Policy

LGBT, ,

According to news sources, pharmacy giant Walgreens recently adopted a company-wide policy similar to Target’s letting men enter women’s restrooms — and vice versa — in its more than 8,000 stores.

The policy reportedly was implemented after one customer in California complained about being barred from entering the women’s restroom.

Apparently Walgreens hasn’t learned from Target’s mistake.

Since rolling out its bathroom policies nearly 2 years ago, more than 1.5 million people have signed the American Family Association’s pledge not to shop at Target, and the retailer’s stock price has tumbled from nearly $83 per share in 2016 to $73-$74 per share as of this morning.

In December Target announced plans to close 12 of its larger stores in 2018. According to CNBC, the stores are located in Minnesota, Kansas, Michigan, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Illinois, and Texas.

Even Target’s management has acknowledged that letting men enter the women’s restrooms and changing areas at its stores has been bad for business. However, the CEO has stopped short of saying the policy itself is bad.

Policies like these not only are bad for business. They’re bad for customers. Giving men an excuse to loiter in or around women’s restrooms or changing areas puts women and children at risk.

For example, last year a New Jersey man allegedly videotaped women in the changing area of a Target store.

A few months earlier a different man was caught photographing women in a Target store’s changing area as well.

In 2016 a Seattle man entered the women’s locker room at a pool twice — once while a girls’ swim team was present. When confronted, he told staff, “the law has changed, and I have a right to be here.” No action was taken against the man.

These are the sorts of problems that happen when businesses let men enter women’s restrooms. However, that doesn’t seem to be stopping Walgreens from following in Target’s misguided footsteps.

Photo Credite: By Anthony92931 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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An Unscientific Federal Study

Transgender,

According to various reports, the National Institutes of Health is using federal tax dollars to launch a study “proving” it’s OK to perform sex-change operations on children.

Researchers intend to show transgender affirmation therapy is safe and effective for children who disagree with their biological sex. John Stonestreet at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview writes,

Let’s be clear about what “affirmation therapy” really means: Children are given high doses of puberty-suppressing drugs. Doctors then flood their systems with testosterone or estrogen to induce the formation of opposite-sex characteristics like breasts in males and facial hair in females. Some patients, partway through this process, will undergo “sex-reassignment surgery” in which their internal and even external genitals are removed or remodeled.

This so-called “treatment” will render them infertile for life and can create a host of side-effects, like cancer, infections, gallbladder diseases, and spikes in blood pressure. There is also no long-term research on how these high doses of hormones affect bodies in the long run—bodies that weren’t designed to handle them in the first place.

There is, however, abundant data on the psychological damage of medically “transitioning.” One study from Great Britain found that 20 percent of patients who’d undergone this procedure regretted it. Walt Heyer, a man who formerly lived as a transgender woman and now identifies with his biological sex once again, thinks that’s a serious underestimation.

Advocates for children have said time and time again that encouraging kids to disagree with their biological sex is dangerous.

The American College of Pediatricians writes, “puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. Reversible or not, puberty- blocking hormones induce a state of disease — the absence of puberty — and inhibit growth and fertility in a previously biologically healthy child.”

Read John Stonestreet’s entire column here.

Photo Credit: By Rafael Alcarde Palomares (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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WA State Looks at Offering Third “Gender” on Birth Certificates

Transgender,

According to news reports, the State of Washington is weighing a proposed rule change that would allow people to list a third “gender” on their birth certificates.

Currently, birth certificates in Washington contain a space to list a person’s sex as male or female. Under the new rule, people who do not self-identify as either male or female would be able to put an X in that space.

Many of the people who support the rule change feel as if they are not truly male or female — calling themselves “non-binary.”

All of this reminds me of an article our friends at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview wrote in 2014:

We’re all familiar with the argument by now: homosexual attraction is an innate characteristic—maybe genetic. Therefore, denying same-sex attracted individuals the ‘right’ to get married is the same as racism.

But an alternate narrative has appeared on the horizon, and by ‘horizon,’ I mean the cover of a recent TIME Magazine issue, where it’s used to promote the ‘T’ in the acronym ‘LGBT.’ The ‘T,’ of course, stands for ‘transgender,’—those who say their biological sex and their perceived gender don’t match. The mantra here goes, ‘I was born this way, but I want to change. In fact, I have a right to change.’

So we’re told that the biology of the ‘L,’ the ‘G,’ and the ‘B’ can’t change. But when it comes to ‘T,’ the biology doesn’t matter.

Confused? Well, you’re not alone.

You cannot in one breath say a person’s biology controls their feelings — as many homosexuals claim — and in the very next breath say a person’s feelings are more important than their biology — as transgender and “non-binary” people claim. The two arguments contradict each other.

 

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