We think the Illinois legislature should have better things to do than spend its time arguing about the gender-based configuration of restrooms in private businesses.
Restaurants and office buildings are much better able to figure out how their customers and tenants would like to go to the bathroom and alongside whom. One size does not necessarily fit all and a bunch of politicians in the state Capitol hardly is well-equipped to wrestle with the number of stalls, urinals, trash bins, diaper stations or the appropriate length of stall doors. Better to leave that to those on the ground, so to speak.
Nonetheless, the language used by Republican Sen. Neil Anderson of Andalusia during the debate over a bill introduced by Democrat Rep. Katie Stuart was shocking, to say the least. Stuart’s bill, which was debated Thursday, provided (with certain conditions) that “any multiple-occupancy restroom may be identified as an all-gender, multiple-occupancy restroom and designated for use by any person of any gender.”
Anderson, who said he has a young daughter, took offense to that and said, on the floor: “I’m telling you right now, if a guy walks in there, I’m going to beat the living piss out of him. So this is going to cause violence, and it’s going to cause violence from dads like me.”
Unacceptable.
Americans have differing views over bathrooms, privacy, inclusion, the nature of protected spaces for women and girls, single-stall versus multiple-stall, gender-inclusive bathrooms and legislative overreach. Anderson certainly was free to vote against the bill, as did many Republican senators on a bill that passed the Senate by a 35-20 majority and now appears headed into law. But that kind of nasty language, those kinds of juvenile threats, have no place on the Senate floor or anywhere else in Illinois.
A legislator saying they planned to beat up a fellow citizen, apparently on no greater matter than having walked into a restroom, is stunning, and clearly encourages violent behavior.
Anderson should take to the floor and apologize. On pain of expulsion.
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