Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Wed, 9 Sep 1992 10:34:08 EDT
From:         Jamie <PL436000@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: The War Between the Jasons

>From:         Kerry Stephenson <KSTE@PURCCVM.BITNET>
>
>Hi all:
>
>jamie tells Travis that gender segregated bathrooms aren't a violation
>of equal protection because "You have your own bathroom, and it's just
>as good."

(That's funny. I always thought public restrooms were segregated
by sex. Are they also segregated by gender?)

>This fails on 2 counts:
>                1) "Separate is inherently unequal."  (Overturned
>                   Plessy.  Works with race.  Why not gender?

Impeach Missy Justice.

The actual phrasing, from (of course) Brown v. Board of Ed., is
"We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine
of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational
facilities are inherently unequal."

In that decision, Chief Justice Warren provided substantial empirical
evidence that segregated public schools are IN FACT detrimental to
black students. He faulted Plessy not for a mistake of principle, but
for a mistake about the conditions of the United States with respect
to racial relations.

Can Missy Justice provide extensive empirical evidence that one of
the sexes "generates a feeling of inferiority," that "segregation
with the sanction of law has a tendency to retard educational and
mental development" of one of the sexes?
If so, then a state would have to show a compelling interest
in sex-segregated restrooms.

>                2) Men's bathrooms are not "just as good as"
>                   women's bathrooms.  Most women's bathrooms are
>                   larger and have furniture in them, sometimes even
>                   an entire outer area filled with couches and chairs
>                   in which one can rest (many here at the University).
>                   How many men's bathrooms could be used as small
>                   apartments?  (This remark void where the housing
>                   authority is on the payroll of the real estate crooks.)

Gosh.
I wouldn't know about this stuff. Really.
But, if there really is a substantial difference in quality of bathrooms,
public ones, and the difference is correlated by sex, then I suppose
someone who cared enough would have a pretty sound basis for a suit.

Let's try to figure out exactly what Missy's point is.

We can assume, I suppose, that she thinks that it is perfectly all
right, and not contrary to the 14th amendment, to segregate bathrooms
by sex. She SEEMS to be saying that there is no relevant difference
between racial segregation of public schools and sex segregation
of public bathrooms. Does that mean she thinks that Brown v. Board
was mistaken? That the states should be allowed to segregate
public schools? What, exactly, does our Missy Justice think is
the constitutional problem with racial segregation of schools?

For the record:
I think that the problem with racially segregated schools is VERY
closely related to the problem with marriage laws that discriminate
against homosexual partnerships. I think that there is no such problem
with sex segregated bathrooms, for two reasons. 1) the reasons for
segregating bathrooms by sex do not seem, on the face of things,
to have to do with bigotry. 2) social conditions in America today
do not lend the same symbolism or psychological effect to segregation
of public bathrooms by sex as they do to segregation of public schools
by race.

Jamie
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