Georgia ACLU director quits, opposes trans women in female restrooms
Former Georgia ACLU director resigns over opposition to transgender bathroom rights
“I found myself principally and philosophically unaligned with the organization.”
—Maya Dillard Smith, former interim director of the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, in an interview with Atlanta Progressive News.
Smith slammed the ACLU, accusing it of being “a special interest organization not unlike the conservative right, which creates a hierarchy of rights based on who is funding the organization’s lobbying activities” in a statement to Atlanta Progressive News.
“I have shared my personal experience of having taken my elementary school age daughters into a women’s restroom when shortly after three transgender young adults over six feet with deep voices entered,” Smith said. Instead of actually talking to her kids about what happened and starting a dialogue, Smith reacted by resigning from her position with the ACLU and launching a campaign.
She told WXIA that sharing a bathroom with a trans woman is “traumatic.” Smith uploaded a YouTube video on her website, “Finding Middle Ground.” The video has received nearly thirty thousand views (with the comments disabled). The discrimination tactics she uses are less blatant than traditional conservative fear mongering, but the video still reeks of ignorance (even if she does exploit a cute kid to do her dirty work).
“There’s some boys who feel like they’re girls on the inside and there’s some boys that are just perverts,” the girl says in the video — sounding more like a Ted Cruz Ad than a ten year old girl. While Dillard may call it protection from “perverts,” experts call it B.S. In the 200 localities where trans individuals are allowed to use the bathroom according to their gender, there have been zero cases where a transgender person has attacked someone else.
While Smith claims to “believe there are solutions that can provide accommodations for transgender people and balance the need to ensure women and girls are safe,” she fails to comprehend that trans women are women and that women’s rights must protect all women.
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