Rep. Hurst’s SAFER Act Preserves Girls’ and Women’s Privacy and Safety

What is a woman? Should males who identify as women be allowed to use women’s locker rooms, bathrooms, rape and abuse shelters, prisons, dormitories, sorority houses, and other historically female-only spaces?

Most of the media and radical activists, unfortunately, will insist that of course they should. 

But we know this is not fair or kind to the girls and women who are forced to undress in front of fully-intact nude males. It’s not fair to the girls across the country who have been raped in girls’-only spaces by males claiming to be women. It’s not fair to women prisoners who have been housed with men (who present as women) and were then raped. It’s not fair to the countless girls and women who have been videotaped or photographed by men while undressing or using the bathroom.

These aren’t just fears. Or worries about what could happen. These are actual headlines:

• A “gender-fluid” boy sexually assaulted a young girl in the girls’ bathroom of a Loudoun County, Virginia school. The boy was transferred to another school where he allegedly raped another female in the girls’ bathroom. 
• In support of an Alabama bill protecting girl’s safe spaces, the sponsor of the bill stated that girls were getting raped in school bathrooms across the state, including a 14 year-old girl and seven other similar cases in just one Alabama county alone.
• A transgender inmate in New York raped a female prisoner while in the women’s section of the jail and has been sentenced to seven years.
• A Los Angeles man dressed in drag, entered a Macy’s department store bathroom and videotaped women under bathroom stalls.
• A convicted child sex abuser dressed as a woman entered the women’s locker room at a water park in Oregon; he was arrested and charged with unlawful contact with a child and unlawfully being in a location where children congregate. 

These are just a few of the many stories that share the same theme: women being violated in their safe spaces. If you want to see more, view the long list here. 

The concern is not that transgendered individuals are more likely to be sexual predators, but rather that sexual predators have posed as transgendered in order to gain access to vulnerable women and girls, as so many of these heart-breaking stories show.

One bill, sponsored by Representative Celeste Hurst, would (1) protect the safety and privacy of Mississippi’s girls and women, (2) define a woman and man from birth, and (3) provide a cause of action for any violation of the Act. Entitled the SAFER Act, HB 1428 has been referred to Public Property and Judiciary A committees.

A similar bill, SB 2024, has been sponsored in the Senate by our courageous Senators Josh Harkins and Jeremy England, men who are standing up to fight alongside the women and girls in their lives, as well as for all Mississippi women and girls.  The Senate bill has been referred to Judiciary A.

In addition to protecting girls from sexual assault, this bill will protect school districts and other state institutions from lawsuits. A school district in Virginia is already being sued for 30 million dollars for failing to protect a young womanfrom being raped by a “gender fluid” male in the girls’ restroom. This bill will reduce litigation against schools, saving precious resources for teachers in the classroom.

Please pray for the passage of these bills. They have to pass out of their respective committees by March 5th. Will you stand with our courageous lawmakers? If so, kindly ask your lawmakers to support these bills.

– Lesley