REUTERS
Kudos to House Speaker Mike Johnson for end-running a needless floor fight over bathrooms by issuing a simple statement: “All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) had offered a resolution to impose that policy, in reaction to the much-ballyhooed election of Congress’ first transgender member, Sarah McBride of Delaware.
Which of course prompted outrage from McBride and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who claimed Mace was out to “bully a member of Congress.”
Look: Mace may be a publicity hound, but she’s also a rape survivor (at 16) and all-around women’s-rights backer: As a state legislator, she led the way to pass a ban on shackling pregnant women in prison and to get a rape exception into an abortion-limits law.
And, as the speaker rightly noted in settling the stormlet, “Women deserve women’s only spaces.”
Let’s hope reasonable folks in both parties can agree on that simple truth.