Maryland Democrats Want Tampons in Men’s Bathrooms While the State Budget Bleeds Red

There’s something almost poetic about watching a state government circle the drain financially while its lawmakers argue over tampon placement in men’s bathrooms. Maryland finds itself staring down a serious budget deficit, the kind that demands tough choices and actual leadership. Instead, Democrats in Annapolis are burning legislative oxygen on HB 941, a bill requiring tampons in every men’s restroom in every publicly owned building across the state.

Let that sink in for a moment. The state’s fiscal house is on fire, and they’re rearranging the bathroom supplies.

Republican Del. Kathy Szeliga from Baltimore County isn’t having it. She took to the House floor with questions that cut right through the absurdity. Which buildings exactly would fall under this mandate? Would M&T Bank Stadium, where the Ravens play, need tampons in the men’s rooms? What about Camden Yards? Both facilities are owned by the Maryland Stadium Authority, making them state property. The answer from Democratic Del. Ken Kerr was a masterclass in political hedging, refusing to give straight answers while essentially confirming yes, your local NFL stadium’s men’s rooms would indeed be stocked with feminine hygiene products.

But here’s where it gets really good. The bill specifies “appropriately sized tampons” must be provided. Szeliga asked the obvious question that anyone with functioning brain cells would ask. What on earth is an appropriately sized tampon in this context? The question drew laughter from parts of the chamber, which tells you everything about how seriously even some legislators take this nonsense. Kerr’s response was that the language just means tampons are offered with no specific size requirement. So why include the sizing language at all? If you can’t answer basic questions about your own bill’s language, maybe the bill isn’t ready for prime time.

This isn’t Maryland Democrats’ first rodeo with this particular hobby horse either. Szeliga points out they’ve pushed similar measures before, targeting colleges and universities. Republicans managed to amend that earlier effort down to something resembling sanity, limiting it to health centers at residential campuses where, surprise, such products were already available anyway. The whole exercise accomplished nothing except giving lawmakers something to pat themselves on back about.

You know what’s really happening here? This is ideology run amok, disconnected from reality and common sense. Szeliga suspects, probably correctly, that this push comes from some national movement rather than organic concern from Maryland constituents. Because when you’re facing tough budget decisions, when schools need funding and infrastructure is crumbling and taxpayers are getting squeezed, exactly nobody is calling their delegate demanding tampons in the men’s room at the stadium.

The free market already handles this beautifully, by the way. Women’s restrooms have tampon dispensers because there’s demand. Some are free, some cost a quarter, but they exist because they serve an actual need. Men’s rooms don’t have them for the rather obvious biological reason that men don’t menstruate. This isn’t discrimination or exclusion. It’s basic reality, the kind that used to be universally acknowledged before we entered this bizarre era where stating obvious truths gets you labeled a bigot.

Limited government means government focuses on what actually matters. It means not micromanaging bathroom supplies in every public building from courthouses to baseball stadiums. It means recognizing that private businesses and facility managers can stock restrooms based on actual usage and need without legislative mandates. When government oversteps into areas where it has no business, it’s not just wasteful. It’s a distraction from legitimate functions that only government can perform.

The fiscal irresponsibility here is staggering. Maryland taxpayers fund this circus. They send their hard-earned money to Annapolis expecting adults to make reasonable decisions about schools, roads, public safety, and yes, balancing the budget. Instead they get theater, performative nonsense designed to signal virtue to a narrow activist base while real problems fester.

Traditional principles aren’t complicated. Men and women are different. Bathrooms reflect those differences. Resources should be allocated based on need, not ideology. And when your state is broke, you focus on essential functions, not social engineering experiments that solve problems that don’t exist.

The laughter on the House floor when Szeliga asked about appropriate tampon sizing wasn’t just amusement. It was the sound of people recognizing absurdity even when they’re complicit in it. That nervous laughter happens when everyone knows something is ridiculous but political correctness demands they play along anyway. It’s the emperor’s new clothes, except the emperor is insisting on stocking Tampax in the men’s room.

Maryland deserves better than this. Its citizens deserve legislators focused on actual governance, not chasing every fashionable cause that blows through from coastal activists with too much time and too little sense. The state needs fiscal discipline, not tampon mandates. It needs leaders willing to say no to stupid ideas, regardless of which interest groups are pushing them. Most of all, it needs someone in Annapolis to remember that government exists to serve citizens, not to impose ideological fantasies on them.

Szeliga is doing her job by calling this out. Someone has to be the adult in the room, even if that room is about to get a tampon dispenser it doesn’t need.

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