Editor,

Gender specific restrooms, dressing rooms, locker rooms, shower rooms, homeless or emergency shelters have ceased to exist in Washington state. WAC 162-32-060, a badly written regulation, passed by the Human Rights Commission in December 2015, states that individuals may choose which room to use based on their gender identity or expression, which may differ from their birth gender.

This state code, which was written to help transgenders, opens wide the doors that once protected the privacy and safety of women and children. I’m not worried abut the true transgenders, however, this regulation opens the doors to perverts and sexual predators posing as transgenders.

Each year my family visits a waterslide park in central Washington. The locker rooms only offer a couple private dressing rooms and a few toilet stalls and lack private showers. Therefore, most people must dress at the benches along the walls, exposing themselves to everyone near by. With this law in effect, any man can walk into the women’s locker room and watch my 12-year-old daughter and me undress ourselves, and he can provide us with unwanted exposure to his male genitalia.

Due to this law, I can’t ask him to leave or use a private area. If I question his being there, I am violating his privacy, according to this law.

Fellow Washingtonians, do you want your wives, daughters, sisters, and girlfriends exposed to possible sexual harassment or even assault or rape?

This is not a transgender issue. This is a safety issue.

To protect women in locker rooms, please sign the petition for Initiative 1515 by July 8. This initiative repeals the Human Rights Commission Open Bathroom/Shower Rule; removes liability from businesses who want to maintain gender-specific rooms; and requires schools to maintain gender-specific bathrooms/locker rooms, and requires that schools provide any gender non-conforming students with a reasonable accommodation that protects the privacy and safety of all students.

This initiative doesn’t prevent private businesses from having gender-neutral restrooms, locker rooms, etc.

For more information, see justwantprivacy.org.

Sincerely,

LORINDA K.F. NEWTON

Clinton