Then there’s the issue of our children. Is it kind to your daughter to take her into a restroom where men are present? Again, reality matters. Men are bigger than women. Men are stronger than women. Men are different than women. To knowingly have your daughter use a bathroom stall next to a man (when other options are present) communicates that protecting her is not a priority, and it increases a negative sense of vulnerability. No young girl should be made to use the restroom with men present. Assuming that no trans person is a child abuser (which is a huge assumption that I don’t even make with people at church), the simple act of requiring her use the bathroom with men there is in and of itself a perversion.

Probably by now everyone knows about the Presidential bathroom decree that makes Target’s position look like child’s play.

Following the Target decision I read numerous posts from moms sharing how they intended to navigate using the loo with their little people. The vast majority of what I read from Christian moms were urging a march-in-that-bathroom-and-teach-my-little-one-to-love-everybody-by-smiling-at-the-man-in-the-girls’-room kind of approach. Most were wanting to recognize the humanity and struggle of the man who sees himself as a woman. Some even scoffed and vehemently rejected the idea that this could heighten abuse, instead insisting that men who believe themselves to be women were nothing like child predators, and confusing the two was judgmental and un-Christian.

Here’s where I agree with that thinking: we should recognize the humanity of men who think they are women and are in the women’s restroom. Where I differ is how we do that.

Boiled down, the trans-fiasco is one giant feelings-fest. Feelings are the new Baal. We don’t find our way out of it by teaching our young children that the way to love a man who thinks he’s a woman is by ignoring reality in favor of feelings-only  love.

The thing is, you can smile at the trans person in the bathroom. You can hand him the paper towel in an effort to teach your daughter that you love everybody equally and treat everyone with respect. You can tell her that somehow you’re being Jesus to that man. But you’ll simply be teaching her that reality doesn’t matter, only feelings. Because the reality is, that man can’t tell your “Jesus smile” from an “I think being trans is awesome smile” and your paper towel passing didn’t further him along one iota in knowing the true Jesus.

If moms want to go all WWJD on the trans bathroom issue, then consider what Jesus did with the woman at the well whom he’d just met.

“Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” (John 4:16-18 ESV)

Jesus never played around with reality. He never substituted felt needs for actual ones. His compassion was a compassion based in reality.

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