The bathroom battle is already lost

"President Barack Obama intends to force every public school to permit transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that match their chosen gender identity even if this choice differs from their present physical gender," law professor Andrew Spiropoulos writes.

Many states, including Oklahoma, argue that the federal civil rights laws the president is purporting to enforce do not address the difficult issues concerning transgender individuals. 

The states, as usual, are right on the law. And the president, as usual, will get his way. Why? Because school districts know if they refuse to obey the mandates, the administration will cut off their federal education funding. Speeches about the rule of law may move emotion, but it is cash that moves action. 

This battle is already lost – the feds rule. But it is important to understand when it was lost. The states weren’t defeated when President Obama was elected. They lost their autonomy when they decided to take the federal money. Many people don’t know that the Constitution prohibits the federal government from forcing states to implement federal policy. But it does allow Washington to purchase state compliance. 

Therefore, the time to fight federal overreach is not when the federal Don Corleone comes to collect his debt. You can only protect your sovereignty, self-respect, and policy autonomy by spurning the seductive offer of federal cash. Once you’ve sold out, there’s no turning back.

Meanwhile, author and pastor Douglas Wilson asks: "If your kid is still in the government schools after this fiasco, my only question at this point is, what is it going to take? Are you going to hang on to the salt and light argument until mandatory sex reassignment surgeries are being performed by sophomores in high school biology classes, using plastic picnic ware? And their reason for the plastic surgical instruments was because you and your hateful kind voted against the last levy?"