title:  Alabama’s Only Gay Rep Just Dropped A Devastating Truth Bomb On The Bathroom Bigots
text: Alabama State Rep. Patricia Todd (D) made waves earlier this week when she dressed her thoughts up in an extremely articulate op-ed for AL.com that addresses the current  controversy  over where people should pee. Rep. Todd, the only openly gay lawmaker in Alabama, has had just about enough of the ridiculous rhetoric the right has been spewing about men dressed as women legally entering restrooms to molest young girls.The notion is ridiculous; there s no evidence to back it up. Conservatives, for some reason, have to attach something perverted to anything they feel is sexual in nature. Even though a person born a man who has transitioned into a woman going tinkle in a stall in a public bathroom has zero to do with sex, the right has no choice but to go there. Hate and fear are the only way to maintain a long-lasting bigotry towards things conservatives are too shallow to understand.In response to all of the silliness, Rep. Todd wrote:Recently a fellow legislator wanted to talk with me on the issue and he said he supported the law in North Carolina that mandates people use the bathroom of their birth sex. I asked him how many transgender people he knew personally. His answer, of course, was NONE.Therein lies the root of the problem. Rather than having an open mind and considering that transgender people are just people and not some bizarre offshoot of humanity looking to rape your children, bigots are far more likely to just support whatever law comes their way that will prevent them from ever having to have contact with that which they fear. If they can make our children safe in the place where people expose themselves most then maybe there s hope for us a society.It s so stupid. It s just mind-numbingly idiotic. Todd continues her piece with a short list of facts that if people would just listen to would end this controversy right here and now:It s simple. Go to the bathroom. If there s someone in there you don t want to share that intimate a space with, wait until they leave. It s almost guaranteed that a person who spends a lot of time in public and uses public restrooms regularly has been in one with a transgender person. They are more often than not victims of verbal and physical abuse and will hold it until they find a unisex bathroom to avoid confrontation. What we re doing as a society when we put laws like this in place is proving that no matter how hard we try to evolve as a society, the chains of religion and bigotry will always try to drag us back down.Featured image by Al Drago/Getty Images