President Obama’s directive for schools to allow transgender individuals to use whichever bathroom corresponds to their gender identity doesn’t just have conservatives riled up. The impact of the directive on the safety and security of women and girls has some Democrats uneasy as well.
In fact, the head of Georgia’s ACLU chapter, Maya Dillard Smith, just quit her position at the civil rights organization over the issue.
Smith, a Democrat who was open minded to learning more about transgender issues, said there was no room for dialogue at the ACLU.
She told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly she tried to engage with the organization on the issue after she once entered a women’s public restroom with her young daughters and three transgender individuals entered, all over six feet tall, with deep voices, “all obviously men.”
The incident left her children “visibly frightened” and her feeling “very uncomfortable.”
But she found herself alone in wanting to start a dialogue at the ACLU exploring what the implications of transgender bathroom policies are on the rights of women, girls, and parents.
"It became very evident to me that the ACLU and myself were simply principally and philosophically unaligned on a number of issues," she said.
She also accused the ACLU in a statement of being “a special interest organization that promotes not all, but certain progressive rights … based on who is funding the organization’s lobbying activities.”