Assembly Member Leticia Castillo (R), a clinical psychotherapist, has introduced AB 1998 to protect privacy in bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and other intimate facilities by clearly defining "sex" in state law when it comes to intimate spaces as biological and immutable: male and female.
Greg Burt, vice president of California Family Council, says it is "unconscionable" that the state allows men to invade women's bathrooms and showers and expose themselves to females of all ages, and this bill will prevent that from happening anymore.
He assumes the Democrats will not want to give the bill a hearing, but his organization is going to force the issue that has been ignored for far too long.
"More and more, we are having instances of predatory men who simply declare themselves female, and then they go into these bathrooms and strip off their clothes and parade around naked," Burt reports. "The law cannot stop them because here in California, your sex is not determined by your biology; it's determined by your self-identification."
That means any male can simply say he is a woman, and there is no legal way to keep him out of a girls' bathroom.
More than 10 years ago, Burt and others tried to warn lawmakers that this would happen, but legislators called them fearmongers.
"They thought there are so few trans people, who's this going to affect? People aren't even going to notice they're trans because they look like women," Burt remembers. "Well … we have men parading around in women's bathrooms, and the law is helpless to stop them."
He believes this can change now if enough people say something, and conservative Christians are not the only ones who are already speaking up.
Tish Hyman, a black lesbian, for example, has been "on a tirade," in Burt's words, since she was confronted in a gym by a man last year.
"Things are starting to change here in California," Burt says.
