When Minneapolis-based retail chain Target announced its ridiculous policy permitting customers to use the bathroom and/or fitting room that matches the “gender they identify with,” it was clear to any rational person that there would eventually be hell to pay.
One of the problems posed by such prescriptions was the issue of whose rights trump whose: the privacy of modest heterosexuals vs. the “need” of the trans community.
But that was never the greatest concern. Rather, it was the implicit open invitation to predatory behavior by men pretending to be women. That shoe has finally dropped.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The Idaho Falls Post Register reports:
A transgender … woman was arrested Tuesday on one count of felony voyeurism for a report that she took pictures of another woman changing clothes in a dressing room at Target in Ammon.
Shauna Patricia Smith, 43, is in custody in the Bonneville County Jail under the name Sean Smith, according to the jail’s active inmate roster. A Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office news release said the suspect also is known as Sean P. Smith.
Sheriff’s deputies responded Monday to the store after a woman reported that someone was taking pictures of her while she was inside a dressing room trying on clothes, the release said. The victim noticed the subject reaching over the wall with a cellphone taking pictures. The victim confronted the suspect who then fled the store on foot, the release said.
Sheriff’s Office Spokesman Sgt. Bryan Lovell said he didn’t know whether the reported victim was wearing underwear when she was photographed.
Detectives reviewed witness information and security footage from Target that led them to come in contact with Smith, the release said. After interviewing Smith she was taken into custody by detectives and booked into the jail.
The article goes on to note that detectives are investigating to ascertain whether other women were victimized by Smith, but that’s almost irrelevant. The overarching point is that there will be others, just as there already are other “Shauna Patricia Smiths” out there. And the “peepers” among them are not the biggest threat to wives and mothers, daughters and sisters.
Target, the article reminds us, clarified at the time of its announced policy change in April that it was complying with the federal “Equality Act, which provides protections to LGBT individuals, and opposes action that enables discrimination.” Maybe that law, signed by Barack Obama last September, needs to be revisited.
In the meantime, Sean P. Smith is looking at a maximum sentence of five years in prison if he is found guilty. After that, he’ll be back — possibly with a vengeance.
