MAN, OH, MAN! GET THAT GUY OUT OF THE GIRLS' ROOM

An Ontario human rights case involving a pre-op transgender man
seeking access to a women-only gym is just one more listing in the
catalogue of human-rights commission absurdities accumulated over the
last 40 years. It stands with another piece of present lunacy in which
a bar owner, also in Ontario, is caught between conflicting
jurisprudence: the Ontario Human Rights Commission says he must allow
the smoking of medical marijuana outside his premises, but Liquor
Control Board of Ontario regulations are clear he will lose his
liquor-licence if he does.

However, one ignores such cases at one's peril. They illustrate a grim
and damaging social pathology now at work in Canada. In the stampede
to a new definition of rights, the old idea of getting along as
society's cement has been abandoned --as have old concepts of what's
even appropriate.

Take the case of the women-only gym. Set aside the awkward fact that
it's acceptable in Canada today to have exclusive gyms for women.
Anachronistic as it seems--try starting a gym that excludes women --I
actually can justify the women-only gym on the same grounds I would
justify exclusively male gyms: if that's what people want, live and
let live.

The facts are that two years ago, gym owner Jim Fulton opened a
women-only section at his fitness club. Not long after, an apparently
female person applied for membership, noting as he/she did so, that
"she"was actually a male sex-change candidate, who hadn't yet had the
surgery.

Now, one can appreciate this individual's dilemma. Before irreversible
sex-change operations are performed, a prospective transsexual is
advised to try living the other gender's life. Thus, a male would
dress female, perhaps use makeup, and showing up in the men's
locker-room looking like a woman might not be something he would want
to do. On the other hand, having this same fully endowed person in a
girls-only changing room is almost certainly something the women
wouldn't want. In fact, the consensus of the admittedly modest sample
I surveyed was that it would "creep me out."

So, when Fulton told the applicant he needed time to think, he was
doing what any responsible business owner would do: trying to figure
out where he stood with the law. Sure, the human rights commission was
a possibility; but he also had legal obligations to his clientele,
with whom he had signed contracts to provide an exclusively female
environment.

He didn't get much grace. He soon had a lawyer's letter from the
applicant--to whom he says he had still not actually refused
membership-- asking for an apology.

And money.

Was it a shakedown? The Globe and Mail reports another pre-op
transsexual was refused membership at Guelph's Exclusively Women's
Fitness Centre four years ago, but won an undisclosed settlement at a
mediation session. If it walks like a duck . . .

But the Ontario Human Rights Commission took this complaint seriously.
Its code wraps in gender-identity with sex as a prohibited grounds of
discrimination. And, says a commission spokesman, the code pays less
attention to what stage in the process transsexuals are at than what
they feel. Commented Afroze Edwards to the Globe, "I think the
important thing to remember is how they identify themselves. . . .
Regardless of whether they're preop or post-op, it's their lived
gender that's important."

I suppose in the crazy human rights world, that passes for a
well-considered judgment on an admittedly difficult decision. However,
it's a feebleminded thing to say: Sorry about the man who wants to be
a woman, but we're more concerned with the women who don't want every
Tom, Dick or Harry in their changing room.

In other words, tolerance may be an obligation upon the majority. The
minority obligation is not to flout decency.

So, while transsexuals have rights, they are not insuperable rights:
get the operation done, then join the gym. It won't hurt you to wait.

Or in the case of the medical marijuana users, fine, you won your
point, you have your pot legally. Now smoke your medicine at home
rather than put an innocent bar owner in a spot.

Human rights commissions are way off course. Most of us can support a
quick-and-dirty remedy for people who are denied a job because they're
a woman, or accommodation because they're black, and that's the kind
of equality human rights commissions were established to police.

It is not creating a better world, however, when self-absorbed people
put other people in a bind to advance what they see as a right, and
HRCs abet them. The commissions should realize they look like fools
when they don't have the sense to turn some of these cases down. As
for social pathology, what kind of a country will it be when the legal
system endorses me-first, and doesn't sometimes signal that majorities
have some right, too?