Let’s Talk Restrooms…Or Not

I’m getting tired of hearing about and talking about public restrooms. I don’t particularly like having to use them, but I’m sure thankful they’re there sometimes. I suspect most folks feel the same.

But alas, the public restroom is under attack. Where once one could go for some semi-private release, it’s now a place where evil-doers and gender-obsessed perverts lurk. Public restrooms are now symbols of doom and perversion. And who are these evil-doers and perverts? Well, Republicans of course. I know you didn’t think I was going to say transgender people. That’s who Republicans think it is, and boy howdy, are they obsessed that a female might grab a look at their little pee-pees I guess, and I can understand how that would be an embarrassment to them.

Not to mention the fact that, statistically, you’re more apt to have a problem with a creepy Congressman pervert in the bathroom than with a transgendered person. Think about it.

So, what they want you to think is that just made some minor tweaks to what they call the Charlotte Bathroom Bill. House Speaker Tim Moore, the rightful face of this mess, put a post on his Facebook page last night trying to ‘splain it all away. He starts with:

1. We blocked Charlotte’s actions that would have allowed people of the opposite sex to use restrooms, locker rooms and changing areas in our public schools and agencies which would violate the privacy and potential safety of others.. It is simple, we don’t believe grown men should be allowed to go to the bathroom or take off their clothes in the presence of little girls. This was wrong and we stopped it.

Because this has never resulted in an issue anywhere in the country, where transgendered people have pretty much always used the restroom of the gender identity.

Number 2 gets even more weird:

2. This law clarifies that cities and counties cannot exceed the authority given to them under state law. If Charlotte had not exceeded its authority we would not have had to do anything at the state level.

Why is this weird? Well first off, it goes to one of the most important rights enshrined in the Constitution, the right of the people to petition their government, and the Constitution assumes that to be at any level. The whole idea is, if you can’t get your national leaders to respond, you can petition your local leaders. In fact, the Republicans are always trying to say government should be smaller and more local, and in fact, in a News & Observer article from November last year, Governor McCrory is calling on the A.G. Roy Cooper to file a friend-of-the-court brief in support Virginia’s attempt to prevent a transgendered high schooler from using the appropriate restroom. “It must be stopped before our state’s schools are impacted,” McCrory wrote. “North Carolina schools are already capable of working with students struggling with their gender identity in a compassionate manner to accommodate their needs while preserving the rights of students and parents.”

But here’s where it gets really weird, McCrory spokesman Graham Wilson said in an email Monday afternoon that the governor is “not opposed to transgender bathrooms” but “supports leaving that and other decisions to the local officials.” Notice that thing about leaving it to local officials…unless of course, the local officials don’t pander to the politics of fear and division.

3. This law applies to public facilities. Contrary to what others are saying, private companies can have any kind of employment and workplace policies they want to have.

So this one just means that they took away protections from transgendered people at work. They’ll have to hold it all day if they don’t work for a progressive company.

5. For the first time in North Carolina we now have a statewide non-discrimination policy that defends the federally recognized protected classes: race, religion, color, national origin and biological sex.

Just for the sake of clarity, this is statement exposes its own bullshit quotient. There was always a “statewide non-discrimination policy” precisely because, as the statement notes, there was already a federal one. I guess the Constitution is a hard thing for Tim to understand, being a lawyer and all, but the there is this little thing called a supremacy clause, and it says that federal laws apply to that states as well. Maybe Tim needs a School House Rocks video or something to help him understand the Constitution.