Social conservative groups are calling hypocrisy on a series of large employers who have threatened and bullied the Special Session of the Legislature, demanding that the 'bathroom bill' be defeated, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
The measure to limit the use of public restrooms and locker rooms to the birth gender of the user has easily passed the State Senate, but House State Affairs Committee Chairman Byron Cook has yet to schedule the bill for committee action, something that outrages Jonathan Saenz, an attorney who heads the evangelical Christian activist group Texas Values.
"One by one, the reasons given by House leadership for blocking the Texas Privacy Act are proven false or misleading," Saenz said. "The fact is that a majority of Texans support privacy in our intimate spaces."
Leading the opposition to the bill have been several major corporations, including American Airlines, Google, and Hilton Hotels. They argue that limiting transgender rights to use the restroom that matches their sexual identity would send a 'message of exclusion' and would badly damage the state's economy.
But Saenz says Texas Values has investigated the restroom rules in the company's own offices and corporate headquarters, and he says all of them require employees to use the bathroom that matches their physical gender, and do not allow people to switch restrooms if it matches their 'gender identity,' which is exactly the same as the language of the 'bathroom bill' they claim is 'bigoted and discriminatory.'
“... Big business is demanding Texas expose women and children to policies that could endanger them in the most private of places ... by allowing men into women's restrooms and locker rooms,” the group says in an ad targeting House Speaker Joe Straus (R-San Antonio) and other member of the State Affairs Committee. “But those same businesses like Hilton, Marriott, La Quinta, American Airlines, Google, and others refuse to enact the same unsafe policies in their own facilities… even though they are free to do it.”