“There is NOW Peace in the Valley”
It wasn’t looking good for either side in the recent national “Bathroom War,” a very contentious issue that rattled the cages of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender people (LGBT) and their well-intentioned supporters and the cages holding the morality-driven Social/Religious Conservatives (SRC) folks. Many states viewed the Federal mandate, Answering Nature’s Call, in the Public Arena, which set off this incendiary issue, to be on a par with President Lincoln’s 1861 refusal recognize the secession of several southern states over the slavery issue. (This could be hyperbole, you think!)
Thank goodness, however, that this highly explosive issue has been resolved peacefully to the complete satisfaction of all parties who had skin in the game, so to speak. And it is the Bay’s own Horatio Smedley, who we all have to thank for his serendipitous intervention that brought all the complainants together for the successful resolution we now enjoy.
You ask “What did Smedley do to effect this stupendous outcome that had defied Congress, the White Throne (whoops, I meant the House), the Supreme Court, and – get this! – The Donald?” Smedley worked his charm and statesmanship through the auspices of his long time friend and cousin, Milo Smedley, the shifting-in-his chair of the Rodney King Social Reconciliation School at Berkeley, South. Out of Bounds was able to persuade the publicity-shy Smedleys to reveal the inside story that led to this unprecedented compact that some say is right up there with the Magna Carta. Read on and you can be the judge of where to place it.
Horatio, using some stationary borrowed from his cousin at the Institute, sent out invitations to every shopper, every student – both boys and girls, politician, store owner, school principals, locker room attendants, life guards, the President of Kohler Toilet Bowls, the CEO of Urinals R Us, the top salesman for Privacy Panels, Inc., the secretary of French Bidets Corp., all the members of every LGBT organization in the U.S., to all the Pee Shy People of America. In short, anybody and everybody that ever had to use, make, or service – a public bathroom – be they gay, straight, man, woman, and everything in between – was invited to give their input on how to accommodate both the inviolate Constitutional Right to Privacy and at the same time, that no one, citizen or not, be barred from using the bathroom of their choice – a major civil right afforded by the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
With the Rodney King Reconciliation Foundation covering all the costs for the invitees, thousands came from every corner of the U.S. to the Rodney King Reconciliation Center at Berkeley. Here, for five grueling days and nights, this mobocracy presented a tsunami of grievances ranging in kind from personal, political, religious, and economic. Every complaint was met with full weighting, compassion, and understanding; not one was deemed to be trivial or self-serving.
With all the documents and recordings in hand, the Rodney King Reconciliation Board met over the weekend and on Monday morning, they issued their recommendation, presenting it to the full body of the invitees for their acceptance or rejection. The Rodney King Board consisted of Chairman, Milo Smedley, his cousin and our own Horatio Smedley, and their Uncle, Phil Smedley, from Alpena, Arkansas.
The Rodney King Reconciliation Board’s recommendation as it was handed out to the vast assembly was first, met with gasps, then cries of unbelief, and then a huge chorus of Hallelujahs that lasted for twenty-five minutes! At first the crowd did not understand how such as simple, short statement as concocted by the Smedleys could achieve what was regarded as impossible because of the many conflicting and deadly passionate adherents in the audience.
Out of Bounds obtained a copy of the agreement that was unanimously accepted by the thousands of the attendees at the Rodney King Weekend Reconciliation Hullabaloo, this agreement serving to spare the U.S. from years of wrenching conflict over a very touchy subject.
“Be it resolved that there be only one type of PUBLIC BATHROOM and that this FACILITY will have no designation other than either VACANT or OCCUPIED!