The sponsor of the controversial 'bathroom bill' this afternoon delivered a passionate 20 minute long defense of her proposal in the media, and blamed a lot of the opposition, especially in the media, to sexism, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
"I will tell you as a woman, this is not a joke," Sen. Lois Kohlkorst (R-Brenham) said. "This is about dressing rooms, lockers, showers, and restrooms. This is about privacy and protection for all people."
The measure would limit the use of public restrooms to the gender on the person's birth certificate, to fight locally approved 'non discrimination ordinances' which allow a transgender individual to use the rest room that matches the individual's 'gender orientation.
Kohlkorst denounced the media, especially the Houston Chronicle, for using sexist language to criticize the bill, with the Chronicle claiming in an editorial that she was 'dancing while Nero fiddled when Rome burned.'
"I am one of the first women since 1845 to serve in the Senate of the State of Texas," she declared. "I am not a dancer."
She said 'non discrimination ordinances' and the type of order issued by the Obama Administration last May requiring them to open up restrooms and locker rooms to transgender individuals, an order that has been rescinded by the Trump Administration, will 'destroy Title IX,' the 1972 law that opened the door for women to participate in high school and college sports, because women will not want to go out for sports because they won't want to shower with biological men in the locker room.
"Privacy is not bigotry," she said. "Women's rights. Intimacy. Innocence of children."
Kohlkorst said her bill will make it a Class B misdemeanor for a man to enter a woman's restroom, or vice versa. She pointed out that it is currently not against the law for a man to enter a women's room.