Pastor John Pavlovitz is on a mission...to say "stuff that needs to be said."

An essay he wrote in late February is now making the rounds: Christian, Let My Transgender People Go! (When Bigotry Uses the Bathroom)

It's not that I haven't written the exact same things myself, but my motives are suspect since I am myself trans. Pastor John is not.

I'll pick out some of my favorite paragraphs, but reading the whole thing would be a benefit to you and probably society.

This week Charlotte’s City Council voted 7 to 4 to approve new legislation protecting the LGBTQ community. These measures would allow these folks to shop and use public transportation and go out to dinner without being discriminated against (you know, like real human beings). Similar legislation is pending in many other cities.

Cue the predictable sky-is-falling, hand wringing and chest beating from so many of my professed Christian brothers and sisters, who rushed to social media the next morning to tearfully lament the insidious danger now certain to be unleashed on the stalls and urinals of the Queen City.

The assertion is that women and children are now in new and grave danger; not from Transgender folks necessarily (though there certainly were many suggestions of exactly that) but by predatory straight guys, who these religious folks believe will use this legislation for their gain, claiming they are Transgender and/or dressing up in women’s clothing in order to easily enter the ladies’ room to commit acts of violence.

What in the hot and humid Hell are we talking about here?

This is the kind of Don Quixote-esque manufacturing of a non-existent enemy that American Christians specialize in, in order to mask the fact that they are woefully uniformed, propelled by religious-fueled fear, and that they frankly find all this public and personal plumbing talk—icky. Their ignorance of the complexities of what a Transgender person is, causes them to caricature those people in order to fit the desired Christian narrative they’ve lived in, often reducing Trans people to cross-dressing female impersonators. (Too much Bosom Buddies and not enough Public Television).

Whatever coming danger the opponents of this legislation are imagining for women or children, is already present. If sick straight men (who are overwhelming our societal predators) want to sneak into restrooms they don’t need to pull a Tootsie and claim they’re Trans to do it. Guys already do vile things and they aren’t seeing this LGBTQ anti-discrimination legislation as some welcome boost for business.

Do these folks have any idea what openly Transgender people go through on a daily basis; the relentless taunting and bullying and physical violence they endure? Do they know the alarming rates of depression and self-harm and suicide among the Transgender population?

Because if they did have an inkling or if had done any reading or educated themselves at all, they would know that no straight guy is going to attach that label to himself just to get some perceived advantage on deviant behavior. No heterosexual man in his right mind would willingly subject himself to the kind of horror that other heterosexual men subject the Transgender community to each day. This is another no-brainer.

The clear and present threat that all these terrified Christians are really concerned about is straight guys behaving badly, and yet this is not the battle we are choosing to fight. As so very often, the Church is engaging in a convenient holy war of misdirection.

We’re punishing Transgender people who want to use public restrooms, because we don’t trust heterosexual men not to be predatory animals.

We’re diminishing the quality of life of the Trans community because so many straight guys can’t control themselves and they can’t be left alone with women and kids.

Transgender men and women shouldn’t have to hold their bladders every day because we can’t get our act together and because we aren’t willing to open up a book that isn’t the Bible or isn’t featured on FoxNews.

Maybe we need to take a good, hard, unflinching look at the straight guys in our midst and ask why they are so very broken—and allow Transgender folks pee in peace for God’s sake.