We just wanted to be treated like equal citizens, like human beings.

The purpose of religion is to provide personal, individual guidance and to enhance a personal relationship with God, not to use as a tool of hate and discrimination against others. If one believes the book of any religion is to be used to promote hate and segregation against certain members of society, one clearly needs to read it again, the point has been missed!

I believe there are far more important issues the state of Tennessee needs to be spending time and money on other than who is using which bathroom – such as education, Knoxville’s homeless population and why some of the vacant buildings downtown are not used to provide more shelters and services to help make the homeless independent, productive members of society again, bullying in schools, education, etc. But since discrimination and bathrooms are the subject at hand, no transgender person has ever been arrested or convicted of sex crimes in public restrooms! I do not wish to be a part of any community that supports division of its members through acts or laws based on hate, fear, bigotry, racism, religious differences, gender, sexual orientation, income, disability, or any other number of reasons that people use to categorize and segregate. We are all human, all created equal, and all want the freedom to just live our day-to-day lives as happily as possible. As for the bathroom situation, regardless of what gender a person was born as, if they are dressing as, and appear to be a woman (for instance), isn’t it going to cause more problems for them to be using a men’s bathroom? If people are going to bring children into the debate, imagine explaining to a 5-year-old why a “woman” is using the men’s restroom. Imagine the possibilities of hate crimes committed against these individuals because they appear to be the wrong gender for the facility they’re using! Trans people have been using the restrooms of the gender they identify with and live as for years, and most people have probably never even known or paid any attention. So why is it an issue now? This is just another example of “labeling” and discrimination based on those labels. (It’s just as ridiculous as the trivializing and demeaning of the Bible, or the book of any religion (and the faith of those who believe in it), to be made “the state book”. ) Maybe one day no one will be black, white, gay, straight, handicapped, rich, poor, fat, skinny, Christian, Muslim, nerdy, athletic, Asian, Mexican, disfigured, homeless, pretty, depressed, etc. Maybe one day we’ll all just be “people”, and treat each other as such. Maybe one day we’ll stop seeing our differences and start embracing our similarities. That’s the community I wish to be a part of!