Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith Chides Rep. Darby About Transgenders

SAN ANGELO, TX &ndash “I’ve waited all this time to ask you about the bathroom bill, and I can wait no longer,” Texas Tribune publisher Evan Smith chided Representatives Drew Darby (R-San Angelo) and Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock).

“Is there a sense of urgency?” Darby quipped back.

This legislative session, lawmakers are considering the Women’s Privacy Act, a law that allows access to facilities such as bathrooms based upon gender at birth rather that the gender with which a person claims to identify with. The law is similar to the North Carolina bill passed last year in response to municipal ordinances, such as one enacted in Charlotte, NC, that opened access of (in particular) women’s bathrooms to men who claim to be female or identify as now being female. It’s the so-called transgender issue.

Darby thinks the transgender issue is a waste of time and effort, and rife with land mines. Evan Smith placed the issue front and center to Darby and fellow representative Burrows yesterday at the 38-minute mark in their conversation. Smith and the Texas Tribune were in San Angelo at Howard College Thursday to make a recorded “conversation” with the west Texas politicians.

The legislation threatens to “blow up the building,” Smith pontificated. The ‘bathroom bill’ is enclosed in Senate Bill 6. The central tenant of the bill is that it overrides any current local nondiscrimination ordinances that allow citizens claiming transgender status to use the bathroom that matches their sexual identity.

Proponents of the bill see it as an anti-predator law. Civil rights advocates say it discriminates against the transgender community. Some in the business community are worried that if Texas passes the law, it will persuade companies not to re-locate to Texas, or harm the Texas conventions and tourism business, especially if Texas becomes a target of a boycott.

“What are you going to do, Chairman Darby?” Smith poked.

“I will tell you, I think the people in this room know where to go to the bathroom,” Darby answered. “We don’t have a problem here. It’s not a problem until you make it a problem.”

“So you think it’s a solution in search of a problem?” Smith asked.

“Absolutely,” Darby said.

“I believe in local control. And I think the folks in this room, whether it’s the City of San Angelo, or SAISD, are smart enough to figure out a policy that protects women—I have a wife and four daughters. The reality is I don’t see this as a problem, [and] it has not been a problem,” Darby said.

The transgender restroom issue popped up briefly in San Angelo last year in response to executive action by President Barrack Obama. The president issued a federal directive on restroom access in public schools. There was a planned protest of the district if boys were to be allowed into the girl’s restrooms. Superintendent Carl Dethloff quickly quelled the rebellion explaining that the district will tackle transgender privacy issues on a case-by-case basis, such as allowing a student claiming transgender status access to the private restroom in the nurse’s office.

Conservative lawmakers such as Texas Sen. Charles Perry believe the legislature must place more statutes on the books to shield Texas institutions like public schools from future meddling by the feds or from rulings of progressive judges.

For Darby, however, the issue is a distraction. Darby sits on the House Appropriations Committee and chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Natural Resources, Business and Economic Development and Regulatory Agencies.

Darby and his fellow appropriations committee members are facing significant drop in state revenue this session due to the slump in the oil and gas industry.

Watch the entire hour-long conversation here.