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Transgender Gym

One action Eric Holder took as he was leaving the office of attorney general was to issue an official memorandum that creates special employment status for “transgendered” persons under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Meanwhile other state officials and legislatures have also extended similar rights to men and women who have changed or are changing their gender identity.

If you wonder what the implications are to such actions, you need only see what happened in a gym in Michigan. Yvette Cormier went to Planet Fitness to shape up. Instead, she got shipped out.

She walked into the woman’s locker room and saw someone wearing a wig that she said was “huge” and “very manly.” She said she was “freaked out” and complained to the front desk about the transgender man/woman. After the employee told her it was company policy to allow members to use whichever locker room associates with their gender identity, Yvette decided to tell “everyone in the locker room what happened.” That’s why Planet Fitness canceled her membership.

She then decided to contact the corporate office of Planet Fitness. You would think that they might have tried to find a resolution. But the company’s public relations director stood by the decision and said that company’s “gender identity non- discrimination policy states that members and guests may use all facilities based on their sincere self-reporting gender identity.”

Planet Fitness is free to enforce whatever policy they want. And customers are also free to avoid a gym and fitness center that allows men who think they are women to undress and shower in a women’s locker room. Before you join a gym, I encourage you to see what policy they might have and what state regulations might have been enacted.

Sadly this is a preview of coming attractions unless government officials begin to use some biological common sense. We will see more of this in restrooms and locker rooms across the country unless we challenge some of these federal and state regulations.

Viewpoints by Kerby Anderson

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