I get it. We should outlaw discrimination. We should make sure everyone feels safe. We should make sure that people feel comfortable in bathrooms. Does this law do that? We are so stuck on the politically correct response that I don't think anyone stops to think about what the laws say and do. Before people went to showers. Then a law said that transgender people can choose their shower, if you stop them you can be taken to court. People fighting the law say that people should be able to chose who showers where without threat of a lawsuit. Should a man who feels like a women shower with the girls? Should a women who feels like a man shower with the boys? Will allowing this to happen stop discrimination? Will allowing this to happen create a safer environment for people in bathrooms? Will allowing this to happen prevent transgender people from being discriminated against?

We should have every law possible to fight discrimination. But, I am not sure this law will make people any more comfortable in the bathrooms. I have a boy who will be taught to treat everyone equally. But, I don't know how I would teach a daughter to react to a man in the shower. Does she ask if she is transgender, or does she just leave the shower. I'm not trying to be mean. I can't count on both hands how many times I have showered with gay men and felt fine with it. I'm not for any law that tells transgender people where they must shower. But I am seriously cautions of straight perverts. Then again, I don't think any law can protect us from straight perverts. I just find the whole tone on this argument from both sides unfortunate.

@1 I'm not sure what law you are talking about as though it's a new thing. The Anderson-Murray Antidiscrimination Law that protects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people from discrimination through the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD) (RCW 49.60) and covers public accommodations was passed in 2006. Transgender and Intersex people were using the bathroom for their gender long before that law was passed, because it was what made sense to them and would cause the least notice. Back then they just didn't have the protections they've had for the last decade.

There hasn't been any history of problems based on that law over the last 10 years, and it's only become an issue now. In the run-up to a presidential election following a landmark ruling on marriage equality from the SCOTUS. If there were a problem here, we'd have heard about it and had statistics to support it's existence before the WLAD was passed in 2006. We didn't, and we haven't in the ten years since WLAD became law either.

There are already laws dealing with the "straight perverts" that concern you, and I-1515 does nothing to make anyone safer. In fact, forcing transgender people, who are sexually assaulted at almost twice the rate of the general population, to enter a facility at odds with their gender identity puts them at increased risk of violence as the National Taskforce to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women makes clear in their statement on the subject (http://4vawa.org/4vawa/2016/4/21/full-an…).

The framing of your questions have the idea that "men and men and women are women" baked into them. While you seem supportive of treating transgender people fairly and with dignity, you've also cast transgender women as men, and transgender men as women - essentially saying they don't exist. By substituting your judgement about who they are and how they can live for their own, it's difficult to see you as a supporter of non-discrimination.

People using public accommodations need to mind their business, do their business, and go about their business. Just as people have been doing for decades.

There's a reason why the Stranger is so disjointed and makes people crazy with some articles letting you "continue reading" and others making you "read article." I'm damned if I can figure out why. I can't see why sometimes it's one way and other times it's the other way. It's maddening since if you go back you have to find where you were since whoever programmed the pages wasn't smart enough to make it so you could find where you were. Ever since the Stranger changed its format a couple months ago it's almost miserable reading it now.

@3 some posts are blog posts only while others are links to articles from the printed paper. If it says "read article" you are going to the paper. If it says "continue reading" it is a blog post only.

The need to scroll back up after expanding an article or looking at comments is aggravating though.

@1, is there currently a problem with men showering with little girls in your facility? No. Therefore no new law is needed. Aside from the fact this law is hateful and would lose the state billions of dollars in federal money and from boycotts, it actually infringes on YOUR privacy. How else to enforce this thing without genital checking everyone who goes in to a gendered facility? Even Donald Trump gets what a dumb idea this is. Just leave the law as it is and don't sign the f*cking initiative.

@1 If you don't want a man in your daughter's shower, you should do everything to oppose I-1515. Birth-gender laws like that ensure that trans-men like Buck Angel, Shawn Stinson, Chaz Bono, and Aydian Dowling will be forced to use the women's shower, and they're not women anymore.

There is nothing more sensible than letting people use the facilities that fit the gender they're living in. "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck..." The hyped fears about perverts and crazy people are not ameliorated by laws like I-1515, since while it states those as a justifying premise, it's a false promise offering no protection whatsoever.

1515 is 1337 speak for Isis. Just putting that out there.