Keeping all those colored people as slaves simply makes sense. They're not equipped to deal with the responsibility of being free citizens. And then letting them vote on top of giving them their freedom? God no! It's Just Wrong.

Women are fine in their place, but it's the men folks who should be making important decisions. Give women the vote? God no! It's Just Wrong.

They have their schools, we have our schools, and it's working just fine. Integrate the schools? God no! It'll cause chaos. Everyone will suffer. It's Just Wrong.

Interracial marriage? Gay rights? Gay marriage? God no! Wrong, wrong, wrong. It'll destroy the fabric of society.

And so it goes. Now the issue is transgender people using the bathroom of their choice. Somehow we managed to survive all those other changes which granted rights where rights were previously denied—and we've become a better society for it—but this time, apparently, this change is a bridge too far. It's. Just. Wrong.

Arizona has joined with 10 other states to oppose the Obama administration's recent guidance on the way schools should treat their transgender students. It's Attorney General Mark Brnovich's ball game, but Superintendent of Public Instruction has picked up a bat and stepped to the plate as well.

They're both careful to say this isn't about the rights of transgender students. It's about that favorite old conservative catch-all used to excuse intolerance: states' rights. And they've added a more recent term of art to the mix, federal overreach, which conservatives are fond of attaching to the actions of the man in the White House who earlier in our history, due to the imposition of "states rights" in certain parts of our country, would have been someone's property, wouldn't have been able to go to school with white folks, wouldn't have been able to vote and certainly wouldn't have had the right to marry a white woman.

This too shall pass, but meanwhile, a brand new hot button issue has entered the political arena, and institutional discrimination against transgender people continues to make their lives more difficult physically and emotionally.