This isn’t a mushy romance story or a sexy rendezvous story or even an unrequited love story. I should think the alternate title (and the picture above) would have made that clear.

The love I refer to in the title of this post is something I feel for my friend Bill which transcends all those kinds of love. We formed a bond that began as one between brothers  (although unrelated) and is now one between friends. The love is not the physical sort, but the kind that allows me to connect with the fantastic mind of this great guy, whose brain is bursting with ideas and energy, richly refined, deep in useful knowledge as well as insightful and quite incredible in almost every way.

Almost.

The one way Bill’s brain is not at all in sync with the world I inhabit is in the difference of opinion on the debate raging in some quarters about who should use which bathroom. Former ace pitcher and, until this week, ESPN Baseball Analyst Curt Schilling, lost his job after sharing a particularly awful meme which you can see here but I’m not going to taint my blog with it. Here’s the comment he posted to accompany a truly transphobic image:

Despite this difference of opinion between Bill and myself, our friendship remains fully intact, because the way in which our love is deepest is in how we respect each other even when we disagree most forcefully. That’s a rare feat in this “take no prisoners,” “compromise is for losers” world in which Republicans hate Democrats, liberals hate conservatives, and the South hates the North.

Well, let’s put that last one aside for now since we’re talking hundreds of years of animosity passed from generation to generation and not without just cause in some cases and totally reprehensibly in cases of racism. But the South is where this guy named Bill lives, and I am from the North. And yet we are friends.

Friends who love each other… in a mutual admiration and respect kind of way.

Hey! Goodness, get your mind out of the gutter! Pulleeeze?

Tonight, I awoke to use the private bathroom in my home, utilized by both males and females, and upon returning to bed I noticed that my lovely friend posted something on Facebook about public bathrooms. After reading his thoughts, I felt he was honest, kind and authentic to his feelings, and that is not at all surprising.

I’m not going to post his words, as that would be presumptuous. But in sum, he offered his opinion of this political hot potato of the week: he said he favored the idea that transgender people use the public single use bathrooms that we used to refer to as the handicap or disabled or family bathroom, and that he championed privacy over everything else. He did not hesitate to voice his respect for LGBT folks and wrote that he expected to be hammered for his view.

That is not what I did, nor would I ever. I wrote a reply which follows, and in re-reading it I realize I did leave out one important point: too few public facilities offer single-stall bathrooms as an alternative, and they are not always safe as a trans woman learned last month, when she was raped at, of all places, The Stonewall Inn. All that needs to be taken into consideration.

But here, without further preamble, is my love letter to my friend Bill, as it relates to bathrooms.

“Sigh. I know you too long and too well to be offended by anything you say, think or feel, let alone post on Facebook. But if you will allow me, here are the major points in why the law as written in North Carolina is, in my humble opinion, wrongheaded and discriminatory.

“First: you’ve already shared a men’s room with someone transgender. If this law is to be enforced, which a respected sheriff says it cannot be, then trans men will be kicked out of men’s rooms and forced to use the ladies rooms.

How does that make any sense, that a person who was assigned female at birth but identifies as male must continue to use a ladies restroom even though he is burly, bearded, and — since as you say, no one is inspecting any other person’s genitals — doing his business behind a locked stall door? Above and at right are some of the memes posted to Twitter by my friend Michael Hughes and (below) by another friend, James Sheffield.

“Second: I don’t think there’s been a lot of research done by folks who put much of the emphasis, as Ted Cruz has, on the idea that grown men should not be using the same rest room as little girls. Always men and girls. Never men and women, because that wouldn’t be scary enough. The implication is, trans women are men who are sexual deviants pretending or dressing up as women so that they can prey upon innocent children.

So, here’s what is missing: trans women aren’t men. Many (not that you would know) have the anatomy of a female, and thus cannot use a urinal. If they do have that kind of “plumbing,” as you cleverly described it, the hormones legally prescribed to help someone achieve a gender transition render that plumbing ineffective for anything other than urination. In trying to avoid crude terms, the drawbridge no longer raises, for anyone or anything.

“Third: the reason this kind of person, or me, just for example, even attempts a gender transition is because we don’t identify with the gender we were assigned at birth. Gender is not what is between our legs, it’s what is between our ears. That’s a scientific fact. I have been prescribed female hormones since 2011, after five years of taking male hormones because the last thing in the world I wanted to be was transgender. I thought I could cure this. I thought, I’ll take testosterone and be a man. But it didn’t do anything for me except turn me into a very angry, unhappy woman who walked around looking like a bald guy. In fact, my body did something even worse: after some initial success, the T I was taking luteinized and my body converted that male hormone into estrogen, which was not helpful to someone who was trying to prove she was a man.

“Lastly, and to your final point: you are not wrong. There ought to be privacy. Women and girls should use the ladies room, men and boys should use the men’s room, and those single stall family or disabled bathrooms should be available everywhere for people who don’t feel comfortable in public restrooms, whether they fear trans people or are shy or they are transgender and worry that, if I were to walk into a men’s room, even if I were to use a stall since I don’t have the plumbing for a urinal, I risk my life because that has happened over and over again: trans women attacked in public bathrooms. What has never happened in the U.S., not once, is that someone trans has attacked a woman or child in a ladies room. There was one case in 2014 in Canada. One.

“Bill, I love you, too. And if you can find it in your heart to accept what my late spouse and my children and mother in law and lots of other folks believe, even though I myself was in denial the longest: I am a woman. That’s why I use the ladies room.

“You see, #wejustneedtopee (and maybe touch up my makeup, since I am a woman).

“Thanks for allowing me the space to explain. I won’t feel bad if those who support your view attack me or call me names. I’m a big girl, and as you well know, I can handle anything after what I’ve been through the last three years. God bless and good night!”

Your comments are welcome. And tell me: what do you think would happen if I wore this into the men’s room?