Answers in Genesis got a dose of reality, and it slapped them hard in the face. They sent a pair of representatives to the American Alliance of Museums‘ National Conference, and boy howdy were they ever shocked. They had all-gender bathrooms and stickers to declare your preferred pronouns!
Drs. Purdom and Rivera are responsible for designing many of the wonderful programs, workshops, and other educational activities we offer here at the Creation Museum. But the potential usefulness of the AMA meeting was completely eclipsed by the “virtue signaling” and political correctness of the organizers.
It eclipsed it so much that Purdom and Rivera skipped the whole conference and went sight-seeing in New Orleans.
The whole point of a conference supporting LGBTQ+ individuals is to get that irrelevant stuff out of the way: the conference is about museum content, and by stripping away all the formalities, they streamline everything. Does anyone want to waste time correcting every single person who comes up to them and misgenders them? No. Put it on a sticker, put it in the program, put it on a conference slide, presto — no fuss acceptance.
One of the first things Georgia and Jennifer noticed when they arrived were the signs posted outside the restrooms.
As you can see, the AAM invited everyone to use whichever restroom facility they wanted. Now, that view is anti-science, anti-genetics, anti-biology, and anti the truth about male and female. Jennifer said that, because the lines to the women’s restroom were long, several women left the line and used the men’s restrooms since the signs invited them to use whichever restroom they wanted. This is probably not what the organizers had in mind!
Science does not dictate society’s approach to gender issues, so that’s not anti-science. It’s not anti-genetics or anti-biology, because we know that sexual differentiation is complex and multi-layered, and isn’t the result of a holy book decreeing that there can be only two genders. Having to pee or poop is something all humans have to do, so it makes sense that such facilities can be used by all humans.
I suspect the organizers had the fact that attendees could use any facility that they wanted in mind — using a restroom is not some grand statement that requires a fanfare and a calligraphic testimonial about the nature of your particular gender. Again, the organizers want people to just get the job done so they can get on with the business of the conference.
In a further denial that we’ve been created male and female (Genesis 1:27), the convention featured ribbon stickers for attendees to attach to their name tags if they so chose. These stickers announced one’s preferred pronoun, and they came in three options: he/him/his, she/her/hers, and fill in the blank for whatever pronoun they preferred.
Ho hum. Completely routine at conferences nowadays.
Clearly, the AAM wants to be seen first and foremost as an LGBTQIA+ ally. But, really, it’s an outright denial of biological and biblical reality—we’re created male and female. A denial of this truth leads to confusion and chaos, as was exhibited throughout the convention.
I’ve been to many conferences with this approach. I’ll be attending Convergence next month, where gender neutrality is taken for granted. It causes no confusion or chaos, but rather the opposite. How would they know that the convention was chaotic? They abandoned it the first day!
What the Hamites want you to think is that this was an example of persecuting Christians.
It’s interesting that the AAM was being very cautious not to offend anyone and to come across as welcoming, tolerant, and accepting to everyone . . . except for Christians or others who believe that we’re created male and female. They don’t care if they offend or isolate Christians, a trend we increasingly see in a culture that claims to be tolerant. What we see is that they are only tolerant of views that agree with theirs! It makes you wonder how many museums that belong to AAM have policies and teaching that align with these secular, unbiblical views.
So, having a sign on the restroom door that says you aren’t allowed to stare at, question, or threaten other users is offensive to Christians of his sort. Which of those three things did the AiG contingent want to do?
Most educated, aware professionals implement such tolerant policies as much as they can, and as educated professionals, they are a majority secular in purpose.
So really, this conference turned out to be a gathering not primarily about museum programs and workshops, but the AAM allowed it to be an LGBTQ agenda-driven conference disguised as a museum conference.
No, it was primarily about museum programs and workshops, open to all professionals, and how you peed was disregarded. Ken Ham just thinks a museum conference ought to be more about putting people into one of two bins.
Speaking of disguises, why were those two frauds even in attendance? The Ark Park isn’t a museum, it’s a church disguised as a science museum.
I’m happy to see, though, that we now have a simple way to keep creationist trolls out of our events. Just put this sign on the door.
Big bonus: It’ll repel all those regressive atheists, as well! It’s amazing how much alike creationists and a certain ugly contingent of the atheist community sound.
Does calling it “virtue signaling” imply the AiG staff knows they are worse people than those they criticize?
“What we see is that they are only tolerant of views that agree with theirs!“ – the irony burns deep in this one. Yet another of the daily examples where the evangelical Right, and the alt-Right, are determined to impose their views on everyone else, and any attempts to not allow them to do so is presented as being anti-religion. An extreme example of projection.
I think Purdom is one of the worst of these people many of them are simply ignorant. She apparently has a doctorate in genetics, and yet carries on with her science bashing, anti evolution propaganda, as if she knew no better.
From the time I was in New Orleans for ASCB many moons ago, that sight-seeing ain’t exactly a wholesome activity. They probably fainted the first door they looked in in the French Quarter.
Bwahahahahaha.
What, have they never been to a rock concert? Oh. Yeah. Probably haven’t.
Well, hell, since Jennifer & Georgia need an education, I was about 15 in the mid-80s when I first encountered the idea of many women deluging the men’s bathroom (fortunately metaphorically) solely because the lines were shorter. I was seriously gender naive (okay, say ignorant if you want) at the time, of course. Maybe being trans had something to do with my ability to shrug and make no comment on the women choosing to use the men’s bathroom while attending whatever mediocre concert that was (Def Leppard?), but if so it was probably mostly because being “weird” had given me huge reasons to try to avoid being noticed (not least in bathrooms, where I had been beaten bloody a couple times). My feminism was better than most other 15 year olds from the Portland exurbs, but that’s not saying a lot and it was sure better in theory, where I could sit around and talk with people I already knew about what should be, then in practice that might require me to talk to people I don’t know about actually doing something.
No, most of what made me shrug and ignore this seeming violation of protocol wasn’t some enlightened, post-gender comfort with any gendered situation, come-what-may. Instead it was that no one else seemed to be batting an eye! It turns out, get this!, that the disproportionate lines at rock concert bathrooms had led to shopping for the shortest line regardless of gender for enough years that the people who had actually been to rock concerts before already knew to expect it. It was, in a word, normal.
For some reason the same venue became more picky during Trailblazers basketball games, so when my older sister came with me to the men’s (boys’?) room, we BOTH got kicked out and I ended up using the women’s room, and it was all so weird and so normal and so what-the-fuck-is-with-these-rules-anyway?-why-can’t-I-just-pee-and-go-back-to-watching-the-game-without-your-gender-bullshit? that even in a childhood full of social confusion that pair of nights stand out for me as illustrative of how truly stupid the US gender system truly is…or at least was.
You might not actually repel regressive atheists with that sign; it’s likely they’ll queue up outside the door wearing their “Reason™️” t-shirts to “well, actually” every poor bastard who tries to use the bathroom.
Kinda funny how right-wingers project the term “virtue signaling” when they’ve been at it for decades (i.e. pretending to be “pro-life”, wrapping themselves around the flag; attacking “secular” science; God-branding all their wackaloon ideas such as pet dinosaurs, etc., etc., etc.,)
Or perhaps that’s “virtue ostentation”?
To the extent that “virtue signalling” even works as an insult, it’s because it implies that the person who is performing the signalling is all talk and no action — that they are signalling their virtue without actually doing anything to help the problem. If I brag on my social media that I’ve signed an online petition about something, I suppose I could be justly accused of virtue signalling.
These people aren’t signalling — they’re actually doing something to help their trans attendees fit in more easily. That makes this the opposite of virtue signalling. I suppose, if we had to give it a name, I suppose we could call it — virtue?
The pearl clutching over preferred pronouns has always confused me. People have regularly requested to be addressed in a particular way my entire life. E.g.: “Don’t call me Mr. Jones; that’s my father. I’m Bob.” Fine, except their birth certificate lists their first name as Robert…
Yeah, it’s so hard to care about the problems of others, and I’ve noticed that those who identify as dicks never seem to have a problem with others guessing their pronouns.
The charge of “What we see is that they are only tolerant of views that agree with theirs!” is not projection or hypocritical, since they’ve never claimed to be tolerant of anybody who doesn’t agree with them. Well, except for that whole “turn the other cheek” thing, but they obviously don’t believe in that, or much of anything else their scriptures say. It’s such a stupid argument, and yet after all these years they still act like they just coined it and my, aren’t they so clever for coming up with this mic-drop of a burn.
I’m still trying to figure out why they think a secular conference should even be concerned about being biblical in their policies. Does the bible even mention museums? o.O
@brucegee1962
Also, the virtue being signalled isn’t even a virtue in their eyes, so why call it “virtue signalling”? Shouldn’t it be “vice signalling?
It seems they are accusing the signaller of actually agreeing with their point of view, but just pretending not to. So wouldn’t that make the person secretly virtuous?
This is from the same people who think accusing someone of fighting for social justice is supposed to be some kind of devastating insult.
You can’t see the pictures here ( https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/10/the-creation-museum-1/ ), so I have to link to the web archive. As you can see in the picture there, “confusion and chaos” is a reference to their alliterative chant, the “7 C’s in God’s Eternal Plan”, and is meant to lead in to “Christ-Cross-Consummation”.
Just in case anyone was Curious.
Reading those old posts reminds me how utterly hypocritical the creationists are with their cranky contumelious complaints, but what else is new?
All I can hope is that at some point they have a need to email the university where I work in the UK. We put preferred pronouns in our email signatures. I’m sure this would cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth on their part.
“Jennifer said that, because the lines to the women’s restroom were long, several women left the line and used the men’s restrooms since the signs invited them to use whichever restroom they wanted. This is probably not what the organizers had in mind!”
I highly doubt the organizers really cared?
and, like Crip Dyke @ 4 pointed out, have these people never been to a crowded bar? I’ve been in a few conservative-dominated spaces in my life, and this isn’t an uncommon event, and every time I observed it, it didn’t cause much in the way of an uproar.
I’m somewhat more surprised that they didn’t comment on the lack of men lining up for the women’s restroom in order to sexually assault women.
goddamned bigots…
What a delightful article Ken Ham has written! That sure was fun to read.
It’s interesting how toilets have turned into such a huge deal. In our own homes most people have a single toilet for everybody. From this I conclude that Christians must be OK with men and women peeing in the same toilet. So why are public toilets such a huge deal? In itself, everybody using a single toilet doesn’t make any claims about genetics, biology, or science. It’s just that—all people pee in the same place. Current situation with public toilets being divided for men and women is just a leftover tradition from the past. So why do Christians care about them so much? It’s not even reasonable to worry about who else has peed in the same toilet that you just entered. Whatever. Why do they even care that much?
My suspicion is that transphobes make such a big deal about toilets only because they have realized that this is something trans people want. For trans people who have no place to pee this is an important problem. For all the cis people out there, it shouldn’t even matter at all. Why do they even worry about somebody of a different sex having used the same toilet they are using? Thus for transphobes being against shared public restrooms is simply a way how to demonstrate their hatred towards trans people, a way how to make a stance, a way how to hurt trans people.
Awww. Poor believers! They must have suffered an immense emotional trauma by seeing a woman go to a men’s restroom.
Actually I do suspect that reducing waiting lines for restrooms was one of the things organizers had in mind. Probably not their main goal, which was treating trans people decently, but still a nice side perk. I mean, everybody likes shorter lines for restrooms, that’s a nice benefit.
Wow, shared public restrooms now offend Christians. Feeling offended simply by the fact that other people don’t follow your religious teachings is your problem not somebody else’s.
How is that suppoded to imply that God wants us to use separate restrooms? Was there a quote in the Bible that “thou shalt pee in separate rooms”?
LGBTQ+ opponents frequently have very simplistic explanations, such as “you’re born either a man, with a penis; or a woman; with a vagina.” How do they respond to clear evidence in the world that this is simply not true? For example, the mere existence of Castor Semenya puts this to the lie.
More likely “thou not pees when burning goats”, which obviously not only means use separate rooms (a neat trick outside the village), but also to burn sheep (and heretics) instead, as there is no prohibition on burning either, or peeing whilst the offering is still combusting. The separate rooms bit is kept so the magic sky faeries don’t notice the charred remains don’t taste quite right…
The last time I went to a club, there was a huge, slow-moving line to the women’s room, and a short, fast line at the men’s. There was really no point in having them segregated, so I invited the women to use whichever room they wanted. Next time I went back, there was a single line, and people used whichever room had space for them. I think a few guys were upset that they had to wait 30 seconds longer, but the whole arrangement was vastly more efficient.
“How would they know that the convention was chaotic?”
PZ, you don’t understand. They know that “a denial of this truth leads to confusion and chaos” exactly because, when confronted, their behaviour became confused and chaotic. Combined with their already confused and chaotic minds they could nothing but run away.
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together…mass hysteria!
As a social justice warrior: yay, equality of pee!
As a capitalist oppressor: yay, less rent to pay! I can have fewer restrooms and still accommodate all my employees and guests!
The office we rent has a “it was never a dress” cape picture for one restroom, but it’s interpreted to be funny and not a direction that only those with capes can use that restroom. Other than that there are no signs that try to regulate what you’re supposed to do in those rooms.
One of the weirdest things is single occupancy bathrooms that are segregated. If you are a small establishment with two toilets, it makes more sense to have people use whatever one is available.
But there’s probably some sort of bylaw or something that makes this nonsense necessary.
@Tabby:
Obviously there could exist such bylaws in many small jurisdictions without my being aware, but in my experience cities like Vancouver, BC and the other cities of the lower mainland not only don’t have such laws, but in the case of Vancouver haven’t had such laws in at least 50 years. Below a certain occupancy, you can even have a single toilet, not even two toilets in two rooms, but one toilet total. It’s really quite the self-perpetuating thing that SOTs got gendered. You can blame laws for a lot of fails in the world, but AFAICT not that one.
@23 Crip Dyke
Hang on hang on, are you in Vancouver?
@abbey:
More or less.
You’re missing the real cost of this policy, Dr. Myers. Due to this repressive policy, Ham and his associates were run right off, and the conference was deprived of their potential scholarly contributions to museum science!
Their extremely hypothetical contributions … I mean, there could have been something they could add … OK, never mind, this was clearly a win-win.
Wait till they find out that people of different colors (as well as shapes) use the same bathrooms these days…
Wait until they see a disabled person with an opposite-sex caregiver. That’ll blow their tiny minds!