Today, we talk about tolerance, Target, bathrooms, and boycotts on.

If you've watched the news, read the paper, been on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, you can not have missed the fact that bathrooms have become a topic of conversation. Whether it's the Religious Liberty Bill that was passed in North Carolina or Target saying that its bathrooms can be used by people of either gender, either sex, this story and idea is everywhere. Our culture is talking about it, and so the question is: How, as Christians, should we respond from a consistent biblical worldview? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today.

I want to talk about three things. I want to talk about bathrooms and the specific concerns surrounding them (I never thought I would say that statement.) I also want to talk about tolerance in general, and boycotts in general, and specifically with Target.

So, bathrooms. What's the deal with different bathrooms? Why have we had, historically, a bathroom for men and a bathroom for women? Well, in a very real way, it comes down to biology. It comes down to men having certain parts that women do not have, and so those are enough of a distinction that we appropriately discriminate between men and women in saying which room they go into to relieve themselves. The anatomy of a man is such that it makes sense for them to be together, both from a privacy standpoint, also from a mechanic standpoint -- the type of toilet is different -- and also from a safety consideration.

All three of these things lead to us discriminating (and by that, I mean treating different things differently) between men and women. This is historically why marriage was a one man, one woman type of affair (and by affair, I don't mean affair.) It's because, for the purpose of that union, it made sense for it to be one man and one woman, because that union produces children. That's the only reason government has been involved, historically, in privileging the union. Childbearing and raising (providing for the next generation) is important and is the function of a man and a woman.

(Back to bathrooms.) Like I said, there's an anatomy component, a different type of facility, component, but the one that's most important from a public safety concern is that there are people out there who are sexual predators. There are men who would just love the opportunity to not have someone look at them twice when they go into the women's bathroom, and you might say, "No, no one's like that." Well, there are documented stories of this being the case.

In fact, in Toronto, just this week, [it was announced that a certain college is reducing the number of gender-neutral restrooms] after men had been videotaping women in the shower. Why are they even allowed in the same room? Why does no one look twice? Well, because it's a gender-neutral bathroom, and in the name of progress, we have sacrificed privacy and safety. Now, you might say, "Oh, people here aren't going to abuse this."

Well, consider, if you will, just this last week, in Tallahassee, I've seen reports on my Facebook feed of young women, young teenage girls, being harassed or stalked at gas stations in the public areas. The men have just sat there and creepily watched them and observed (no gas-pumping), and in response to this, other people have commented that their daughters have had their butts grabbed in public places, and the list goes on, and this is in public, in open stores.

I wonder, for men who act this way in public, what might they do behind closed doors? Behind a closed stall door? I think it's much more likely to be more than just looking, and that's the concern.

The concern is not, as the media has sometimes tried to portray, that it is the…