21st-Century Parenting: A Whole New World

This is not at all what I had planned to write about today, but I've got a burr under my saddle, and it's gotta come out.

When various groups and organizations find out you're a conservative Christian, they put you on all sorts of lists. They ask you to protest all sorts of things. I get a couple such requests a week, and I almost always hit "delete" and go on my merry way. This week, however, I followed a link that took me to Target's recent declaration about its restroom and dressing room policy. Now I find myself pondering my future with Target.

There are a lot of places I could easily boycott. Pep Boys and Home Depot come to mind. Target would be a very difficult place for me to avoid. I've been a fan since the mid-'80s, when I discovered I could get a box of Rice Krispies and a cute pair of shoes in the same place. But there's more to my pondering than just the inconvenience factor. The bigger question for me is whether or not this is an issue I want to take a stand for, and if so, will my "stand" accomplish anything for the Kingdom of God?

Does God care which bathrooms people use at Target? I don't ask that sarcastically or tongue-in-cheek; I'm serious. Some of you whom I love and admire and respect will adamantly say, "NO!" Boycotting is a waste of time and only stains the testimony of people who are to be known for our love, not our hate and judgment against others who are different. Others of you whom I love and admire and respect will say that God absolutely cares and that we must resist the tidal wave of political correctness and stand on the side of biblical truth.

Target could  have made this a much less divisive issue if they had gone the route of creating one "unisex" bathroom/dressing room. I might have rolled my eyes at it, but beyond that, I wouldn't have given it much thought. It would be an empty little room 99.9% of the time. But allowing people to choose the restroom that reflects their personal gender identification affects everyone. I'm not willing to say, as many have, that it compromises the physical safety of women and girls. If a bad man wants to get into a women's restroom and inflict harm, he'll figure out how to do it with or without Target's assistance. What I resist is someone else making a parenting decision for me, one that comes completely on someone else's terms and which I have very little control over. Here's what I mean.

I picture the many, many trips I have made to a Target restroom with a baby strapped to me, a kindergartner clinging to my leg, and a preschooler, still in the early throes of public-restroom-using, trying to convince me that she really doesn't have to go, despite all evidence to the contrary, and screaming over the self-flushing mechanism. Meanwhile, my older boy child waits outside the door, having deemed himself "too old," at 7, to go into the women's restroom, so of course I'm wondering what mischief he's gotten into while standing unattended next to a Skittles display. Now I picture, in the midst of all this, a man--clearly a man--walking into the restroom dressed like a woman. Two things are going to happen. First, one of my little girls would ask as loudly as she could, "Mommy, why is that man dressed up like a woman?" Next, I would have to answer her. Right there, in front of the transgendered person exercising his freedom, I would be forced into a parenting conversation that I am ill-prepared to have. It's 6:00 at night, I'm exhausted, my kids are dirty, crying, and worn out, and all I needed was a gallon of milk. Yet now I get to sensitively explain that this is America, and as this man "identifies" as a female, he has every bit as much right to be in there as we do.

I don't disagree that parents need to have these conversations with their children. We'd be fools not to. But I believe that we parents should get to choose when and how we have them. They should not be thrust upon us in a restroom at the end of a long day. All other moral and theological issues aside, that is my problem with the new Target policy.

Several years ago my family was preparing for a trip to Disneyland in October. We caught wind of the fact that we might be there over Gay Pride weekend, so I went online to investigate. Turns out it was not the weekend we were going, but I found myself sucked into the online dialogue about it anyway. There are people who want to make everything a Political Statement, and some of these people seem to show up on one weekend at Disneyland, eager to express their "pride" in the most demonstrative of ways. Let's kiss and cuddle and make a statement to the world! The flashier the better!

Then I saw a statement from someone who was more concerned with thoughtfulness and consideration of others' feelings than with his own personal liberties. He was a gay man who urged the members of his community to respect the intent of Disneyland. It's a place for kids. Parents have spent years saving up and planning for this trip, and they happened to be unlucky enough to arrive on the wrong weekend. We can be proud, the man said, while still being sensitive to these parents, by realizing that they may not want to have a tricky parenting conversation in the midst of their vacation. He called for restraint, for sensitivity, for kindness instead of boldness. Whether he had kids himself or not, he got it. He understood that teaching our children is the hardest, most important job a human being can have, and it should be done with thoughtfulness and intentionality, not on the fly while sitting behind two kissing men on the "It's a Small World" ride.

That's how I feel about the Target bathroom controversy. I truly don't know if this is a Kingdom issue or whether I should boycott or not. What I do know is that parenting is really hard, and that Target just made it harder.