I got called a hater and cursed at because I think one’s biological sex should determine what showers they use in places like gyms, schools and public facilities. Prior to having what some people call sex reassignment surgery I think that is the best option for everyone. Does that make me hateful?

I cannot relate to hating someone with whom I disagree, but I don’t put the blame directly upon the people.

I never hated my Dad.

My Father was an alcoholic; he went years without paying child support and he had other ills that haunted him more than they haunt me, even though they severely hurt me and people I love.

Still, I loved him deeply.

My Father was also a man of incredible patience; he was generous, devoted to wildlife, absolutely giving of himself to anyone in need and he lived with an obsessive determination to help young people who found themselves lost, abandoned and/or abused and that is the profession he chose and probably the profession that killed him. He was a father who showed love and a friend who showed friendship.

Still, I saw his faults.

My Father was complex. He was human. That’s our common gift and plight.

For too many political activists there are no fully rounded humans who do not agree with them. People who disagree are instantly one dimensional, cartoon posters of super evil doers: they are addressed with curses, they are haters, bigots, liars. Such are our times, but our times need not dictate our behavior or our feelings.

This negative dynamic seems to be getting worse. It is not entirely the fault of the activists.

As government has expanded, it has thrust itself into intimate areas of our lives. Intimate issues are heartfelt; they often do not contain obvious area for compromise. In that reality, there will be issues and principles on which we agree with people and issues with which we disagree; the more intimate the activities that pertain to these issues, the more thorny, difficult and potentially divisive they become. The more government expands, the more it has the potential to divide.

Recently, I was called a ******* and a bigot, hater and an entire slew of other terrific adjectives by people who don’t know me because we disagree on whether the government was right to force women and girls to shower with naked men they do not know, or to leave gyms, businesses and other places they have been frequenting for years. The specific grievance against me was, the critics claim, that I somehow hate people who think that was the correct action for Jay Inslee to take; the undertones of the objection is that I choose to not use the language of the people with whom I disagree. But, unlike some of my critics, I do my human best to not use rude, demeaning language or personal attacks, nor do I imagine the motives of the people who want this bureaucratic diktat to stay in place to be an intent to harm others.

I happen to believe that there are biological men and women, that each are, in a general sense, differently talented, gifted and sometimes burdened. Clearly I know there are people who feel deeply that those words do not encompass their life experience; I also admit that I do not understand—though I have with sincere curiosity sought to understand and come away grateful for the opportunity—what I imagine to be a plight associated with not feeling attached to one of two genders. This isn’t alcoholism, it isn’t a failure to pay child support, it isn’t a condition that has the capacity to harm me; it is something that people who harm others have used as trojan horse. It is also not a situation that makes me into a hate filled bigot if I still believe there are biological men and women.

I am not operating on pure emotion, I am curious enough about how people differently experience life to seek answers. In October of 2014, I had the opportunity to guest host, along with my friend and business partner, Chris Widener, the Jason Rantz show on KIRO Radio. I chose to use the show to examine something that had happened to me at a sporting event; a young kid had taken a very hard fall but had jumped up and gotten back into the game, I shouted encouragement: “Good job, young lady!” My friends looked toward me eyes full of warning. I learned that the child was being raised by their parents to be non-gender specific. Instantly I felt awful, but then I reconsidered: did I actually do anything wrong? Nick Jarin, our producer at KIRO, asked someone from the Gender Justice League to join us to talk about gender neutral kids, it is my recollection that we asked Danni Askini to join us; what both Nick and I know is that the Gender Justice League chose not be our guest. Instead, we had Aidan Key from GenderDiversity.org join us in the program.

Here is our entire discussion. I was deeply curious about this dynamic and truly wondered if I had done something wrong. Here are three people who do not agree but have a civil talk, we exchange ideas and beliefs and knowledge. My mind was left unchanged as to the nature of gender, but I felt a genuine and deep regard for Aidan’s thoughtful, passionate and informed opinion of this intimate issue. I grew to like Aiden quite a bit in the short time.

It possible for me to hold my opinion and still have great affection for people who do not identify themselves with the words “man” or “woman” or consider themselves to somehow be other than what their biology would indicate. In Seattle, it is a flat reality that there are people whom I have met who appear to not attach to the biological binary and I have never come away from meeting people with that view with any form of negative feeling, quite the opposite. Do I share my views on the topic with them? No, it’s not my place and their lives are theirs to live; I hope only for their happiness and that their happiness not come at the expense of the happiness of others and therein lay the controversy that lead to me discuss transgender politics in the first place.

This situation has come to a point of collision because of my show’s work on breaking the story that The YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap County’s decision to ignore the fully rounded, complex human beings who make up 99.7% of their customer base to focus on a single aspect—perhaps a defining one, but a single one—of .03% of their customer base: people who feel they do not belong in a file folder of one of two traditional gender labels. The YMCA decided that complex women and girls should all feel perfectly comfortable when confronted with the naked body of a biological male in a shower. A shy teen girl, a survivor of rape, a Christian or Muslim woman, a Mother of teen girls, a woman at the gym because she feels badly about how she looks and has found a safe place to change what she wants to change; these are the situations of women I’ve met whom have been run out of the YMCA by the management’s utter disregard for their reasonable concerns. All of these women and girls, in the eyes of the YMCA—and now in the eyes of our State Human Rights Commission—must be expected to immediately accept that a naked man is, in fact, a naked woman or that they are wrong to be alarmed that they are suddenly standing naked with a man they do not know. The YMCA blithely ignored these customers—that is not an opinion, it is a fact, the leadership there simply decided to not talk to non-transgender customers about their decision to expose them in this way.

Michelle LaRue, VP of Marketing & Communications of Pierce and Kitsap Counties refused to say whether a young girl should feel comfortable if a naked she didn’t know man entered the shower next to her.

In this entire affair I have never heard from anyone who considers people who feel they are transgendered to be dangerous; I have never heard anyone slur people who describe themselves as transgendered. I have never heard anyone suggest they be banished and I would not associate with people who would slur or call for the banishment of our neighbors who experience life in that way.

What I have heard is simply this: to protect people’s safety from someone pretending to be transgendered in order to rape someone-as has happened here and here and almost happened here and in many other incidents —or do other harm, that people who have not had what is called gender reassignment surgery to use the locker rooms that match their biological gender. People have also expressed the fact that they are not comfortable showering with, or having their kids shower with, naked people of the opposite sex. All of these concerns have been expressed to me by people who make clear that of course people who feel transgendered deserve the same respect we give any of our neighbors.

Transgender people are complex, just like the rest of us. I would hope they understand that good, loving, generous people who have no animus toward them should not be forced into the shock of seeing a naked person of the opposite sex showering next to them, that they should not have their kids forced into it and that 99.7% of people should not be moved into private locker rooms while there is a viable third way. The third way is the most fair: pre-operative people use the locker rooms of their biological gender, post-operative people their adopted gender. That would be the best possible way to screen out rapists or other sexual abusers who want to sneak in using the accommodation set up for people who feel transgendered. It would also allow people who have at least the physical appearance of being their adopted gender to attempt to blend in to that group. I would think fully rounded people on both sides would consider this option.