Ruben Goldsbrough
North Carolina's anti-trans law is dangerous!
North Carolina's governor on Wednesday 23rd March 2016 signed a controversial bill blocking cities from allowing transgender individuals to use public bathrooms for the sex they identify as , as well as restricting cities from passing nondiscrimination laws more broadly.
House Bill 2, the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, puts in place a statewide policy that bans individuals from using public bathrooms that do not correspond to their biological sex. The bill also reserves the right to pass nondiscrimination legislation to the state government, saying state laws preempt any local ordinances.
Pat McCrory, a Republican, signed the bill Wednesday night and tweeted, "Ordinance defied common sense, allowing men to use women's bathroom/locker room for instance. That's why I signed bipartisan bill to stop it."
The General Assembly went into special session earlier in the day to push through the legislation, a response to a nondiscrimination ordinance that the city of Charlotte enacted that, among other things, made it possible for transgender individuals to use the public bathroom of the sex they identify as.
The move enraged civil liberties groups and Democrats in the state. The bill passed the state House 82-26 and the state Senate 32-0, with Senate Democrats walking out and not voting in protest.
"Rather than expand nondiscrimination laws to protect all North Carolinians, the General Assembly instead spent $42,000 to rush through an extreme bill that undoes all local nondiscrimination laws and specifically excludes gay and transgender people from legal protections," said Sarah Preston, acting executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.
ACLU and other groups criticized the General Assembly for spending the money on a special session to pass the legislation, which they called rushed through and undemocratic.
"Legislators have gone out of their way to stigmatize and marginalize transgender North Carolinians by pushing ugly and fundamentally untrue stereotypes that are based on fear and ignorance and not supported by the experiences of more than 200 cities with these protections," Preston said.
Chris Sgro, executive director of Equality NC, also decried the bill in a statement.
"Today's vote at the NCGA represents politics at its worst. Senator Berger and Speaker Moore should be ashamed of misleading their members to vote for the worst anti-LGBT legislation in the nation, which is sweeping beyond comprehension," Sgro said. "Protections for LGBT people against discrimination are common sense. This special session, where Berger and Moore rammed through hastily-crafted legislation was a farce of public policy."
The bill also got criticized by Caitlyn Jenner, the Olympian and celebrity who was born a man and recently transitioned publicly.
But North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore defended the bill.
"One of the biggest issues was about privacy," Moore said. "The way the ordinance was written by City Council in Charlotte, it would have allowed a man to go into a bathroom, locker or any changing facility, where women are -- even if he was a man. We were concerned. Obviously there is the security risk of a sexual predator, but there is the issue of privacy."
State Rep. Graig Meyer, a Democrat, said the "discriminatory law puts his health and safety at risk."
"When I arrived home tonight, my wife told me that one of her former students visited her at school today. The student told her that he now identifies as a transgender male," he posted on his Facebook page. "She loves this student. Today's discriminatory law puts his health and safety at risk. It's been a long time since I cried myself to sleep."
Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts, a Democrat, released a statement saying she was appalled by the bill's passage.
"This legislation is literally the most anti-LGBT legislation in the country," she said Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. David Price, D-North Carolina, also chastised the Legislature for prioritizing passing the bill over other issues.
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Like all other people, transgender people go to the bathroom to pee. Afterwards, they may even take a moment to comb their hair or just look in the mirror. Overall though, their habits in the restroom are just like yours.
But Wednesday night the North Carolina legislature passed – and Governor Pat McCrory signed – a bill that bans trans people from bathrooms that don’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. There are 40 similar bills being considered in at least 16 US states that echo this now-successful piece of legislation, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
This shocking win not only signals a red alert in the fight for full LGBT equality, but also something more disgusting: a clear message has been sent by North Carolina conservatives, sure to be emulated nationwide, that it doesn’t matter if trans people live or die.
I’m not jumping to conclusions here. An analysis of data compiled by the National Transgender Discrimination Survey last month shows that when young people are denied access to a restroom that aligns with their gender identity, their rates of suicide go up.
Translation: not allowing trans youth to use a bathroom only perpetuates feelings of isolation or depression that lead 41% of transgender people to attempt kill themselves at some point in their lives, compared to the 4.6% in the general population.
This finding should be at the forefront of everyone’s minds as this bill takes effect in North Carolina, and as other proposed legislation moves forward in states like Kansas, where officials have proposed a bill that would allow someone to sue a public school if they saw a transgender person in a bathroom that didn’t match their sex assigned at birth. (Who is going to be checking people’s genitals if this passes? And isn’t that assault?)
Beyond the research, suicide in North Carolina is a very personal topic for many activists and leaders I have spoken to over years reporting on LGBT violence in the state, where sources have told me that this is one of the biggest concerns they see in their community daily.
Since 2014, the city of Charlotte, which passed the original LGBT non-discrimination ordinance that sparked this new anti-trans bill, has had at least four trans youths take their own lives. One of them was a local homecoming king.
Rodney Tucker, executive director of the local LGBT center there, told me this one morning after Deonna Mason, a black transgender woman, was found dead on the highway after being accidentally hit by a state patrol car in the same city, and then misgendered in the media.
But high trans suicide attempt rates seem to consistently fail to be a concern for those whose only focus is “protecting” non-trans people in bathrooms, though studies have consistently shown that trans people using the restroom that aligns with their gender identity does not lead to violence or crime.
Before the North Carolina bill was passed in the house, Republican representative Dean Arp told the chamber that it was “common sense” to stop transgender people from using the restrooms they desired because “biological men should not be in women’s showers, locker rooms and bathrooms”.
His arguments, and others, were based on protecting their children from the “monsters” they made of transgender people – children he actually seems to not really care about completely, because passage of this latest bill puts $4.5bn in Title IX funding for schools in jeopardy, since blocking transgender youth from bathrooms has been consistently found to be a civil rights violation.
As he and his colleagues continued to use women and children as a misplaced reason for codifying bigotry, for the assault on the most marginalized sector of the LGBT community. North Carolina lawmakers failed to listen to the people who testified before them prior to the vote, saying that this was a terrible idea. That this would harm their lives.
That, for me, is the most frightening part of all this: the fact that, despite local and national outcry and increasing civil parity, these conservatives still cannot see LGBT people – like me – as humans, who deserve to use restrooms in comfort, and who deserve to live.