Virginia Senate Contender Thinks Gays Should Have Separate Bathrooms

“I’m against people of different genders sharing bathrooms,” he said. “I actually think that gay people should have their own restrooms.”

Preston elaborated, noting that a straight person might feel uncomfortable using the restroom if they knew the person next to them was gay or lesbian, just as he would feel uncomfortable if he walked into a men’s room and saw a female in there. For Preston, the issue is about what makes people comfortable.

First of all, sexual orientation and gender are two different things. Second of all, why does it matter if a heterosexual is uncomfortable with a gay person in the same bathroom? This, again, is a belief that functions under the assumption that all gay people want to have sex with straight people which is so untrue that it literally hurts me every time brings the old trope up. Not only does that belief rely on the assumption that we have no standards, but it also relies on the assumption that no one in the LGBT+ community can keep it in their pants, that just the thought of being in the same restroom as someone of the same sex (who is not of the same sexual orientation) turns gay people into unstoppable sex monsters. And for straight women, it’s even worse! It’s like Preston thinks that lesbians walk into public bathrooms, kick open the doors to stalls and demand that the terrified heterosexual woman shitting herself in horror immediately show them her genitals.You know what most people do when they go to a public bathroom? They go to the bathroom.

Preston goes on:

“I really think [gay people] ought to have their own restrooms,” Preston added. “I can’t speak for them, because I’m not part of that community. But I would think they would feel more comfortable.”

No, friend, you’re uncomfortable with gay men using the same bathroom as you so you mistakenly assume that it’s the same for gays and lesbians. It isn’t. No one thinks about straight peoples’ genitals as much as straight people and, as a gay man, I have never once tried to sneak a peek or talk to anyone in a restroom, not even when I was 18 and at peak horniness.

The only thing Preston gets right here is that he shouldn’t be speaking for any group that he isn’t a part of. And that’s probably the worst part: Preston didn’t say this to be malicious, he probably even thought he was being helpful and providing a good solution. That’s exactly why he doesn’t belong in a position of power (even though he claims that people of all sexual orientations should be treated the same).

“I am shocked at such backward thinking,” said Sen. Rosalyn Dance (D-Petersburg, Hopewell, Richmond City), Preston’s opponent in the 16th Senate District. “We are all striving together to ensure that LGBTQ individuals have the same opportunity, fairness and justice as the rest of us. Now, he wants to segregate them by bathrooms. This seems a horrible throwback to ‘separate, but equal.’”

History: doomed to repeat itself if anyone as bigoted as Joe Preston is elected for anything ever.