Your job is serious business

On Tuesday, June 11th, I sent the following letter to Travis Clardy, Representative for District 11 (Cherokee, Nacogdoches, & Rusk Counties) in the Texas State House of Representatives.

Dear Representative Clardy,

This is a response to your reported comments in the Tuesday, June 11, 2019, Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel newspaper (“Clardy: 86th Legislature a success”). Within the overall upbeat report, you made this derogatory remark about the bathroom bill from the 2017 Legislative session: “We didn’t get sidetracked this time talking about a lot of stuff that nobody cared about.” You clearly had the bathroom bill in mind, since, according to the Sentinel, you followed that flippantly with “We didn’t spend time talking about bathrooms unless there was somebody visiting the capitol who said, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’”

As someone who has consistently supported you in the past, I take umbrage at your assessment that “nobody cared about” the bathroom bill. Perhaps you and your colleagues did not care. Perhaps many of your constituents do not care. Apparently, the Senate cared. Seemingly, the governor did as well. Other of your constituents care.

The bathroom bill is not one of my highest priorities. It can probably best be resolved, when practical, by those responsible providing public facilities for individual/single use so that gender will not matter. Yet it is not practical that this will be done anytime soon because for many it will be cost prohibitive. People who are truly confused about their gender likely present little threat in public restrooms. Nevertheless, accommodation for the so-called “transgender” provides cover for those who wish to enter deceptively into restrooms and dressing facilities of the opposite sex. Who can be sure in every case whether the bathroom visitor is transgender or simply up to no good? Someone should care! You should care.

I can easily live without your voting for a bathroom bill. (I suspect, though, that Speaker Straus did not allow a vote on the issue so none of you would be on record.) I cannot quite as easily live with your ambivalence toward the issue, which creates in me an ambivalence toward casting future votes for Travis Clardy for House of Representatives District 11.

Thanks for listening. Have a good day.