Janyce C. Katz was an assistant attorney general for almost 25 years and currently works at General Innovations and Goods, Inc.

Too tired to do much of anything and wanting to forget all world, political and personal events, I pulled out a DVD (yep, we still use them) and put the 1959 movie “Some Like It Hot” into the DVD player. Then I sat back to enjoy its humor.

Since its release years ago, this totally absurd, hysterically funny movie — considered to be one of the greatest movies of all times —was banned in Kansas and Tennessee. 

Why?

Jerry and Joe’s cross dressing implied support for transsexuals, and that, plus the implied homosexuality of Jerry and the yacht owner was offensive to Christians. 

Ohio House Bill 245 seems to be against any kind of children-oriented entertainment by a cross dressing or transsexual person.

Is the proposed law to protect children from harm by entertainers or a fear that just seeing these entertainers will entice a child to change sexual orientation or both? 

Whatever it is, it seems that banning something that has existed for centuries, perhaps just not acknowledged, is just pushing people back into the closet, so to say, or just interfering with how people dress. 

Where will the line be drawn?

When women put on pants, are they cross dressing? 

Would a Scottish man, carrying bagpipes and wearing what looks like a plaid skirt be arrested for cross dressing? What about an Arab man wearing something that looks like a long-sleeved white dress?

Would “Some Like It Hot" now be banned in Ohio? I first saw it as a child and multiple years later still love it.  It would be sad if today’s children or their parents can’t legally see this movie.

Its plot is absurd, mixing a bit of real history — think the Valentine Day Massacre and mobsters — with two down and out jazz players Joe and Jerry looking for work in Chicago in 1929 during the time when mobs ran the city. 

Joe and Jerry —Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon — find themselves in a garage when one group of mobsters murder a few others and are seen by the murderers. They decide to get out of town by disguising themselves as women, joining an all-woman jazz group headed for Florida.

Mob members come to the same hotel in Florida. Joe has taken up another entity, that of a wealthy yacht owner to woe Sugar Cane, a dull, but talented singer.  The real owner of the yacht has a crush on Jerry. Jerry decides to stay with him.

Would movies and plays with transsexuals be banned, or will just real-life transsexuals and cross dressers be banned because they are different? 

Irrational hate kills

Certainly, priests, Boy Scout leaders, wrestling coaches and multiple others have been documented as actually harming children, but there seems to be no pending ban on their ability to work with children. That is probably because a large percentage of these people don't harm children. 

Isn’t it possible that someone like Mary Martin, who played a young boy named Peter Pan for multiple years on TV and elsewhere, and has been followed in that role by other, short women have made children laugh and sing, but have not harmed them? 

People — good, talented men and women — have been punished or killed because of irrational hate of those who are different. 

Tchaikovsky was “encouraged” to commit suicide because he was a homosexual. Oscar Wilde was jailed.

Even with harsh punishments, homosexuals, lesbians and cross dressers continued to exist.

This isn't about children

Concerned about children being mistreated? Fork out money for school psychologists — and also better pay for teachers — in schools to help troubled children.

It might help a child better to like himself or herself as he or she is. Making someone like his or herself as is would prevent the alleged forced into another identity crises that so many especially in our state legislature think is happening.

Please don’t ban funny, wonderful entertainment just because someone cross dresses.