The Left has given common sense a great big swirly, America.
Consider the plight of Captain Butch Arbin, a 40-year veteran of the beach patrol in Ocean City, Md.
He’s facing the wrath of City Hall and militant LGBT activists over his handling of a bathroom controversy involving male and female lifeguards.
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Female lifeguards had complained that male lifeguards were using their dressing rooms. The male lifeguards are not transgender. They are presumed to be men who identify as men, which in PC parlance is called "cisgender."
Some of the guys were apparently using the ladies room out of convenience – seeing how there are more male lifeguards than female.
So Arbin fired off an email to set things straight by referencing a recent dustup over President Obama’s decree that men who identify as women should be able to use the porta-potty of their choosing.
“WE are NOT Target,” he wrote to the lifeguards. “USE the locker room that corresponds to your DNA…If You’re NOT SURE go to Target.”
Now, that right there is funny, folks. Target is the national retailer that set off a firestorm when it announced customers could pretty much use whatever bathroom suited them.
It’s just too bad that the LGBT activists in Maryland don’t share our sense of humor.
Someone leaked the captain’s email to the news media and – well, let’s just say the veteran lifeguard landed in some mighty hot water.
“It’s nothing short of making fun of transgender people, and it’s absolutely unacceptable for a city employee or a public employee to make fun of transgender people at all,” Equality Maryland Executive Director Patrick Paschall told The Washington Post.
Paschall accused the beach patrol captain of demeaning transgender people and suggested the email might result in physical harm to the LGBTQ community.
“No one should be surprised when the increased drumbeat of harassment increases to discrimination and even violence against LGBTQ people,” he said.
Oh, please.
Arbin said the email had nothing to do with transgender people.
“I used humor to make the point,” he said. “I was ONLY looking out for the women of the patrol and was not attempting to put down any group or individual, only maintain a nice facility for the women who choose to use a gender specific facility.”
He told the Baltimore Sun that the guys were leaving the toilet seats up – and that was an issue for the ladies.
“I don’t care about being politically correct,” he told the newspaper. “That’s one of the problems in the country right now.”
So the LGBT activists and left-wingers are trying to politically water board this poor guy simply because he was looking out for the female lifeguards.
Facing a tsunami of illegitimate outrage, Arbin issued a public “heartfelt” apology.
Still, City Hall threw him under the cabana.
Ocean City spokesperson Jessica Waters called his actions “completely inappropriate.”
“He just stepped way out of line,” she told the Post. “It’s not a reflection of Ocean City in any way, and we welcome all types of people.”
That’s a lovely sentiment, dear. But does that mean it’s city policy to let men who identify as men leave the seat up in the ladies room?
Ocean City Today, the official newspaper in those parts, issuing a brilliant defense of Arbin.
They suggested that he should tell his critics to pound sand – writing in a stinging editorial about having to “take special care that we don’t put a toe over the line of hurting anyone’s feelings.
“Butch Arbin ought to tell those who would see him disciplined for a recent email to take Ocean City’s 10 miles of sand and pound it.”
They sound like my kind of people.
“One thing wrong with society in these turbulent times isn’t Arbin or anyone like him, but is the increasingly delicate dance of public discourse at a time when those who seek tolerance are themselves intolerant,” the newspaper wrote in a staff editorial.
I hope they get a Pulitzer for editorial writing.
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