Perhaps President Obama is less shy when he’s overseas about telling American states what they should be doing. Not that he’s ever been all that shy about it stateside.
While in the UK this week, Obama told a British audience that proponents of the North Carolina law were “good people,” but they still needed to change the law, which prohibits transgender individuals from suing proprietors and institutions for access to opposite-sex bathrooms and locker rooms.
So now we know where the president stands, in case you were wondering.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Granted, Obama doesn’t seem to understand that treating everyone the same in this situation is actually the problem. Joe Newby quotes him:
Obama also emphasized that some of the laws’ proponents are “good people.”
“Although I respect their different viewpoints, I think it’s very important for us not to send signals that anybody is treated differently,” Obama said.
But, as clarified by a prominent LGBT activist when the North Carolina law was passed, that’s the whole point: the law won’t allow transgender persons to demand being treated differently. It prohibits them from suing, when they’re treated the same as everyone else with the same biological plumbing. Here’s the passage again from Michelangelo Signorile (see link above):
HB2 [North Carolina House Bill 2] is the most heinous, homophobic, transphobic law we have ever seen — just read it. …
How it overturns existing ordinances protecting LGBT people in localities — and seeks to get around the Supreme Court’s landmark Romer v. Evans decision — is by not singling LGBT people out…
I suppose cynics will say Obama understands this perfectly well, and is just engaging in demagoguery. I defer to your judgment on that matter.
Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount that there will be no shortage of male perverts seeking entrance to women’s facilities in order to prey on women. On 1 April, a California man was arrested for dressing as a woman, entering the women’s bathroom at a Macy’s store, and filming women inside it. In Pennsylvania, a man arrested for allegedly taking photos of a 10-year-old in a ladies’ room had his charge upped to felony possession of child pornography this week, after police searched his phone.
Joe Newby quotes North Carolina lawmaker Phil Berger, a Republican, on the purpose of the bathroom law:
Phil Berger, a Republican state senator in N.C. who strongly supports the law keeping men out of womens’ restrooms, responded by saying that “not every father has the luxury of Secret Service agents protecting his daughters’ right to privacy in the girls’ bathroom.”
“Berger has said the law protects women and girls from men using the false pretense of being transgender to enter women’s restrooms and locker rooms,” the Post added.
