Which bathroom should you use? And why is this a question?

The American people are seemingly obsessed with public restrooms these days and precisely how people use the potty. The fear is being stoked by concerns that individuals who "self-identify" as the opposite sex, will take advantage of liberal policies and assault others, especially women and children.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - Amid growing concerns over government corruption, a lagging economy, terrorism, and income inequality, one issue has come to the fore. What bathroom should people be allowed to use?

This hasn't been much of a question since the 1960s, but here it is again, dominating social media, the news cycle and even entire legislatures as states rush to pass laws that remind people that boys go to boys' restrooms and girls to girls'.

These laws are not responses to a sudden surge of transgender-inspired violence against women and children. In fact, there are no reported cases that we could find of a "self-identified transgender" person sexually assaulting another person in a public restroom. Not one, ever.

There are many cases of transgender people being assaulted however.

The real fear people have is that a heterosexual person, likely a male, will claim they are transgender to use a women's restroom and gain access to the opposite sex. And while this has never been a significant problem throughout the history of public restrooms, it may well become one as restroom habits are spotlighted in the media.

This concern does not spring from fears over transgender bathroom use, but over heterosexual male abuse of public policies to facilitate rape.

Many people assume that transgender people are ultimately motivated by sex and perversion and regard them as potential sexual predators. In fact, a transgender person feels as though they are supposed to be the opposite sex, despite how they were born. This is a personal conflict, and while it is associated with sexual self-identity, there is no evidence is equates to an uncontrollable compulsion to engage in sexual activity.

The Church teaches that gender is assigned by one's genetics and physical characteristics, and that we are called to embrace our God-assigned  gender. We are not to modify our bodies so as to change our gender, for such modification is sinful and does not change the fact that we are genetically one gender or another.

However, we are also called to compassion, and respect, and sensitivity. It is important that as we encounter people who are different from us, we treat them with Christian kindness.

We don't know how many people are transgender, although the most commonly cited estimate is 1 in 300. If that's true, then chances are most of us have already shared a restroom with such a person. The fact we have do so without remark is evidence that we do not need to make this a major public policy issue and the subject of new legislation.

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Should a person abuse the privilege of using a public restroom to gain access to the opposite sex, for the purposes of sexual perversion, then that person ought to be arrested and prosecuted. But by all evidence it the heterosexual male that should be the object of concern.

Finally, our nation is plagued by a host of substantial problems that impact the daily lives of nearly all Americans. The bathroom issue is largely a non-issue. Nobody is going to stop or detain anyone, nobody is going to ask, or check to see what a person's anatomy is.

It's time for us to stop the madness and pay attention to what is really happening in our country and our world.

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