TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — A bill that requires people to use the public restroom that corresponds to their birth sex was passed by the Florida Senate on Wednesday. Once signed into law, using the opposite sex’s restroom and changing facilities and refusing to leave when so ordered will be considered trespassing.
The bill, referred to as the Safety in Private Spaces Act, states that “The Legislature finds that females and males should be provided restrooms and changing facilities for their exclusive use in order to maintain public safety, decency, and decorum.”
In a way, the bill itself exemplifies how the Left’s introduction of gender fluidity and transgender norms is placing a strain both on people’s minds, but also the workings of bureaucratic institutions and principles of democratic lawmaking, where definitions must be made with as little ambiguity as possible.
During the second reading on Tuesday, one Democrat senator presented various hypothetical scenarios that she argued would make the bill fall on its face. One of these concerned the case of a bearded lady being caught in the men’s restroom and told to leave – despite having had so many testosterone treatments that she had started to grow facial hair. How would such a person be received in the women’s restroom, the senator asked.
“The bill requires a person to use the restroom that corresponds to their sex at birth,” the legislation’s sponsor Sen. Erin Grall (R-Fort Pierce) simply stated, refusing to get pulled into any complicated debates based on the Left’s embrace of alternate reality. All attempts to amend the bill were voted down by the Republican majority.
In its definitions, the bill text is clearly taking legislation back to a paradigm that has been challenged by the past years’ focus on questioning what used to be self-evident biological facts:
“’Sex’ means the classification of a person as either female or male based on the organization of the body of such person for a specific reproductive role, as indicated by the person’s sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, and internal and external genitalia present at birth.”
The bill now heads to the governor’s desk for DeSantis to sign it into law.
