On March 23, 2016, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed a controversial bill banning transgender people from using public bathrooms that do not identify with their biological sex, while also preventing local cities from passing their own nondiscrimination laws. Even though Senate Democrats refused to vote for this bill, it passed the state House 82-26, as Senate Republicans voted unanimously in favor of the bill. While McCrory claims the passage of this bill is “common sense” and ensures an end to a “breach of basic privacy and etiquette,” this approval marginalizes North Carolinian transgender individuals and allows for an intense retrogression in social thought and action.
Republicans believe strongly that this intervention explicitly protects women and children. Pat McCrory contends that the previous ordinance “defied common sense, allowing men to use women’s bathroom/locker room for instance.” Despite his claims, McCrory fails to produce any such evidence of heterosexual males acting inappropriately in a women’s bathroom. I am also not quite sure how the passage of this bill, a bill that clearly targets a specific group of people, can be seen as an action invoked out of “common sense.” Sarah Preston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, speaks to McCrory’s reason for signing this bill in the same light, saying, “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 experience of more than 200 cities with these protections.” McCrory and his allies do not have the evidence to make such a claim in support of banning transgender individuals from using bathrooms that do not match their biological sex. This bill acts as a rather direct insult to the LGBTQ community in North Carolina, as it “will deny lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people essential protections.” Most of us take having access to a restroom and its facilities for granted, but the transgender community faces a constant struggle when members of this community are questioned about their gender. This struggle should by no means exist when we have the means to abolish it, through laws like the city ordinance.
With this bill, local governments are stripped of their ability to pass their own anti-discrimination rules. The effect of this bill reaches local governments in other ways as well, including the fact that businesses are no longer required to pay their employees more than the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper refused to defend the state, deeming the bill a “national embarrassment,” as well as a means to “set North Carolina’s economy back.”
Over the years, the United States has experienced a rather upward progressive trend in social views, but, as Preston explains, these politicians in North Carolina “crafted a bill that was more extreme than others. They specifically left gays, lesbians and the transgender community out of the antidiscrimination policy. They want to make it plain that they think that kind of discrimination is O.K.” This attempt to preserve a fabricated sense of privacy has transformed into a declaration on behalf of these politicians and the state of North Carolina that discrimination is in fact reasonable, espousing a retrogression in social thought and action that goes against the tide of time. Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts agrees that “the General Assembly is on the wrong side of progress,” as this bill truly goes against efforts to improve the current human condition and strengthen social organization and thought.
This bill fails to treat the transgender community with dignity and respect, basic tenets that hold a country characterized by differences and challenges together. Student writers for the University of North Carolina’s paper wrote, “This law is a chapter in America’s horror story.” The students of this generation clearly do not support such a bill, so why has the legislature chosen to represent the voice of yesterday, not today? It serves as the foundation for far-reaching implications, legal challenges ahead, and a template for other conservative laws to launch from. Moving forward, legislation should work together to talk through viable solutions concerning the passage of this bill, for this solution to a controversial topic is in fact no solution at all.
Lucy Siegel is a Viewpoint writer.
Read More
KURTZWEIL: True financial aid must be transparent
By Paul Kurtzweil | 3 days agoThe implications and revelations of the lawsuit should inspire greater transparency at the University in order to ensure that financial aid is properly and equitably distributed.
SULLIVAN: Ramp up physical accessibility on Grounds
By Scarlett Sullivan | 5 days agoThe University must take responsibility for the inaccessibility of Grounds and work to promote accessibility for all students despite misguided laws.
EDITORIAL: Scapegoating students will not stop hazing
By Editorial Board | April 25, 2024Instead of retroactively responding to extreme hazing allegations, we, and especially the University, must begin asking more probing questions about the role of fraternal organizations on Grounds.
