Letter writer: HB2 based on false Internet meme

Graphic by Lori Deaton

It would be laughable, a skit on “Saturday Night Live” if it weren’t so insane; this HB2 — like so many other ALEC-inspired legislations — seeks to develop an answer for a nonexistent question, and while it’s at it, risks the North Carolina economy, all for nothing that is real or a problem.

Like so many other regressive social engineering laws, this one is built on a complete fabrication, a lie. I teach 10th-12th-grade religious education, and we had a student present the transgendered bathroom access as a concern. And rather than just spout some false meme from the Internet, we researched the issue throughly.

I called the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office and spoke with an assistant attorney general. I asked her what were the crime statistics on assaults by: 1. Men dressing as women, passing as transgendered, in order to assault someone in a public bathroom and 2. by transgendered people entering restrooms and assaulting people.

She stated that she had never heard of a real event of either scenario, that the state didn’t have any data on these types of assaults. She did, however, have hate-crime data on transexual folks being assaulted when using restrooms of their birth sex and assaults in bars and other public places in general. In my own research, I was unable to find any creditable reports of assaults by transgendered folks in bathrooms.

I was, however, able to find reports of Speakers of the House, clergy, “Christian” camp counselors, priests and Penn State coaches assaulting children in bathrooms and beyond. How about passing and enforcing a law against them before we try to impose bigoted laws on others.

People accept Internet postings as fact without ever researching and debunking. This law is blatantly based on a lie, a false Internet meme and should be repealed immediately. Let’s not make North Carolina another Mississippi or a theocracy, or impose this kind of Sharia law on our people.

— Michael E. Beech
Asheville

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50 thoughts on “Letter writer: HB2 based on false Internet meme

  1. bsummers

    Well said. But sadly, the attraction for the NCGOP of passing HB2 isn’t in the truth of whether it actually protects people from a real threat, it’s in provoking unfounded fear and bigotry for political gain.

    • Hauntedheadnc

      Is a Christian boot on your throat somehow preferable to a Muslim one?

    • James

      I suggested a few weeks ago that some of these whiners book a trip to Saudi Arabia (Mecca specifically and during the haij to be even more specific) to protest the fact that public restrooms over there aren’t gender neutral. Why with their persuasive arguments here they should have no problem convincing the Shariah police in the Kingdom to be more tolerant towards transgenders going to Mecca for pilgrimage. I’m still awaiting for one of those brave souls to announce his forthcoming civil rights mission to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

      • Hauntedheadnc

        Is there a particular reason that you do not hold the United States to higher standards than a Muslim theocracy? Is there any reason that Christian oppression is better than Muslim oppression?

        • James

          Until you can find some evidence of Christians beheading LGBT people, burning them alive, throwing them from high-rises to their death, etc. I may engage in further dialog. Until then, I’ll take Christianity any day over a sick and evil false religion that not only does those things to LGBT people I just mentioned but to others who choose not to believe their false religion. Oh and yes, I’m talking about islam and that lower case i was intentional.

          • Hauntedheadnc

            Okay, so what you’re saying is that I should be grateful I’m merely being beaten rather than killed outright?

          • James

            You’re not being beaten. Get real. Even the most vocal defenders of Christianity are like doves compared to your everyday koran-believing muslim with a machete. Go stage a pride rally in front of the great mosque in Mecca and see how loving and tolerant the people are compared to them pesky Catholics and Baptists.

          • Hauntedheadnc

            Here’s the thing: I really don’t care how they do things in Saudi Arabia. What I care about is that things are not good enough here.

            And you tell me that LGBT people are not being beaten? You’re going to sit there and honestly tell me that hate crimes are not occurring against LGBT people in America? You’re going to tell me that LGBT people are not being beaten, and sometimes killed in America? You’re going to tell me that LGBT children and youth, and adults, are not being driven to suicide? You’re going to tell me that 40% of homeless youth are LGBT, and are homeless after having been driven out, or having to flee, their homes? You’re going to tell me that in most of this country it’s not legal to fire someone for being LGBT, or throw them out of their homes, and that state after state after state is not now trying to pass laws that allow anyone to deny us any sort of business or service up to and including, in Mississippi, lifesaving measures?

            You’re seriously going to try to spout that kind of b.s.?

            Seriously? Again, I don’t give a copper-plated damn how they do things in Saudi Arabia. I care about the fact that things in America still suck. To tell me to suck it up here because things are worse there is like telling a raped child in America to stop crying because of the child sex slavery industry in Asia.

    • boatrocker

      Y’all Queda allows for shoving religion down people’s throats, last I heard for New Testament jesus running for office.

  2. House Bill 2 is good law and I am pleased to hear that Senator Berger has no intention of changing it in response to the hysterical and bullying left.

    • Huhsure

      Those poor, misunderstood bigots! If only people would listen to their post factum reasoning, instead of all their anti-transgender bigotry!

      So, Tim, from which state are you posting? We’re curious to know your continued interest in NC politics, given that you don’t live here any longer.

        • Peter Robbins

          Being asked what state you live in is not an insult. Unless it’s South Carolina.

          • Hauntedheadnc

            As near as I can tell, he’s in Fort Worth, which seems an odd choice. You just never hear of anyone heading to Fort Worth, do you? Usually it’s Dallas.

          • Are you directing you argument toward me personally instead of the points made? I know there’s a name for that.

            I found it: INVALID.

        • Who put the “T” in LGBT?

          Transgender people have high rates of psychological problems that contribute to their identity expression and victimization. The rest of the LGBT crowd should consider how that reflects on them.

          The post-marriage culture war is asymmetrical in the group known as LGBT. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual activists have carried the rainbow banner for transgenders for issues that truly matter, such as employment and housing. Now the time has come for a genuine sanity check for them to stop enabling kookier parts of the trans agenda.

          The current bathroom policy debate illuminates the growing gap between the concerns of the transgender community and of the LGB community. Perhaps those who favor gay marriage do not want any part of enabling pedophiles in wigs having easier access to kids in bathrooms.
          http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/21/drop-the-t-from-lgbt/

          • Hauntedheadnc

            “T” folks aside, tell me… How supportive was the audience for The Federalist when LGB people were fighting for those “issues that truly matter,” such as housing and employment and marriage, and what does The Federalist have to say about the fact that HB2 removes any protections against discrimination in housing or employment for LGB people? I don’t seem to recall conservatives being terribly supportive of equal marriage or equal rights, and I seem to see a lot of conservatives downright gleeful that no city or county in the state may protect its LGB citizens against discrimination.

          • Hauntedheadnc

            There is no substance to the argument. It’s nothing more than a cynical attempt to divide and conquer by a conservative media outlet that knows the conservative cause is losing the war battle by battle. Conservatives know that things are getting to the point that they can’t openly hate the LGB faction, but they’re determined to hate someone by God, and so they’ll settle for the T part of the equation. To help that along, hence the effort to divide and conquer.

            So with that being the case, why would I listen to an outlet and a cause that hated me first before it settled for hating transgendered people? Especially, why would I pay them any attention when they’re so pitifully transparent?

          • It sounds pretty interesting to me. Besides, the fact that the usual Mountain Xpress peanut gallery yayhoos sound a uniform out-of-hand dismissal without reference to any particular points makes the article required reading. Look at this:

            T and LGB Are Distinct Populations

            Reading these studies brings me to the conclusion that “T” is very different from LGB. The scientific community doesn’t comingle LGB with T in research studies because they know the obvious truth: people who are transgender are different from those who are homosexual.

            Time to pull the “T” from LGBT. No good reason remains to co-mingle people with mental disorders with people who are homosexual. Nor is it necessary to continue to give social credibility to this tiny group of delusional people who need psychiatric or psychotherapy first and foremost, not pronoun protection or gender reassignment.

            Speaking for the non-transgendered or recovered transgendered among us, I am through with the political correctness traps of preferred pronouns and allowing men access to women’s facilities and activities. It’s time to express our compassion for this group and stop participating in their denial. True compassion is acknowledging that serious mental disorders are found in this population and insisting that the medical community stop treating all gender-dysphoric people with hormones and gender reassignment before caring for their mental health.
            http://bit.ly/1MLG5kj

          • Peter Robbins

            If you want to dismiss the position of the American Medical Association in favor of some guy whose opinions may be colored by his having had two sex-change operations, that is your privilege. Just as it is your privilege to dismiss mainstream legal scholarship, climate science and whatever else conflicts with your prejudices. But please have the common decency, Mr. Peck, to spell the word “yahoo” correctly. It’s demeaning to be incompetently insulted when I know from experience that you’re capable of doing so much better. Unless, of course, you were using a Southwestern regional variation. Were you?

          • boatrocker

            Please remember that most thrift stores have cameras nowadays when one purchases female clothing.

          • “If you want to dismiss the position of the American Medical Association in favor of some guy whose opinions may be colored by his having had two sex-change operations, that is your privilege.”

            Yes, I’m aware that it’s my privilege to decide which arguments to favor. I favor Mr. Heyer’s arguments. I prefer someone who’s made a career of dealing with his subject matter and I find his story and arguments very compelling. And as it stated his bio: Walt Heyer is an accomplished author and public speaker with a passion for mentoring individuals whose lives have been torn apart by unnecessary gender-change surgery.

            Even if he were a yay-hoo like the progressives that show up on the Mountain Xpress safe space, I would still considered his points on the merits. As I alone have done.

          • Peter Robbins

            But you haven’t considered the merits. You’ve just repeated the text. You don’t know anything about the topic, as far as I can tell. You just have another of your prodigious and absurdly self-confident opinions on a subject about which you possess no expertise because you are unwilling to do the hard work to acquire it and have no respect for those who have.

          • It is interesting in this connection to note that Dr. McHugh of Johns Hopkins echoes Mr. Heyer’s points.

            This assumption, that one’s gender is only in the mind regardless of anatomical reality, has led some transgendered people to push for social acceptance and affirmation of their own subjective “personal truth,” so saith Dr. McHugh.

            Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, and author of six books and at least 125 peer-reviewed medical articles, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder…
            http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change

            It’s a good read.

            Dr. McHugh reports on a new study showing that the suicide rate among transgendered people who had reassignment surgery is 20 times higher than the suicide rate among non-transgender people. Dr. McHugh further noted studies from Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic of children who had expressed transgender feelings but for whom, over time, 70%-80% “spontaneously lost those feelings.”

            While the Obama administration, Hollywood, and major media such as Time magazine promote transgenderism as normal, said Dr. McHugh, these “policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention.”

          • Peter Robbins

            Now think about that for a second, Mr. Peck. Assume, arguendo, that that transsexual surgery correlates (for whatever complicated reasons) with higher rates of suicide. Why on earth would you want to force people to have the surgery in order to use the restroom that corresponds to their identity? That’s one of the constitutional arguments that the ACLU is making right now against HB2. But, more importantly, proponents of HB2 have been insisting that concern about the behavior of transgender people isn’t what is motivating them in the first place. They claim to be concerned that people who identify completely as male would have been allowed to use the Charlotte ordinance as a pretext to invade the ladies room for perverse and possibly criminal reasons. As my little hypothetical established below (and your witless evasions confirmed), that’s nonsense. And you have made no argument — because you can’t — that transgendered people should not be in the classes protected statewide by HB2. In fact, the very article you cited openly states that gays and lesbians should be included amongst the protected civil-rights classes. So why aren’t they?

            With friends like you, the Republicans don’t need enemies.

    • Hauntedheadnc

      How can the law be good when it’s bad for business? Go on and tell us how the loss of hundreds of jobs and tens of millions of dollars in lost convention and event business is good for business. Please also explain how having a travel advisory issued against the state by nothing less an entity than the United Kingdom is not a job-and-reputation-killing international humiliation. A good reputation, once lost, is nigh impossible to get back.

      Seems to me that HB2 stands to impede profits… and for shame. How downright un-Randian! Remember, the first question any acolyte of the Gospel of St. Ayn must ask himself in any situation is: WWARD? Would She stand for the loss of so much profit? Would She allow a reputation as a good place to do business be sullied by international travel advisories and domestic travel bans?

      No! WWARD, friend? WWARD!

        • Hauntedheadnc

          If it’s going to be good for business and jobs, it had better get a move on. We’re up to — what? — about 900 lost jobs and counting, $50 million in threatened investment from companies waiting to see if the law is repealed before they go ahead with planned expansions, the threat of the furniture market decamping for Las Vegas altogether, and about $20 million in lost hotel revenue in Charlotte and Raleigh alone? Then there are the cancelled concerts and the fact that unless and until the law is repealed, you pretty much can’t watch a Broadway show in this state anymore… which starts the cycle of lost revenue to theaters, venues, restaurants, and hotels up all over again.

          That’s a lot of damage to undo, and that doesn’t even start to cover the fact that — how many? — cities and states won’t pay for travel here anymore, and to say nothing of the travel advisory from the UK.

          Yes indeed… if HB2 is going to be good for business and jobs, it had better hurry up.

          • Peter Robbins

            You left out the Title IX money for education. Businesses like good schools.

  3. Mike Smith
    12 hrs · Asheville, NC
    Thank you to Frank Fraboni of WLOS ABC 13 for his balanced report tonight on HB2. Finally, a voice of reason.

    One thing you left out though regarding the Charlotte ordinance — it not only extended the list of “protected classes” (sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression) — it specifically eliminated the long-standing privacy exceptions in the ordinance (shower and locker rooms, dormitories, etc.)

    That’s why the NCGA had to act. It wasn’t because of the extension of protected classes, it was the loophole that was opened because the exceptions were eliminated. The action by the Charlotte City Council would have meant that it was ILLEGAL (under penalty of law) to segregate the formerly excepted circumstances (shower and locker rooms, dormitories, etc.) based on sex.

    What that means is that the broad language of the Charlotte ordinance would have affirmatively permitted grown men (regardless of gender identification, that in fact is irrelevant) to access girl’s bathrooms, changing rooms, etc.

    That’s why the NCGA freaked out. This has nothing to do with transgenders.

    This is NOT an anti-LGBTQ bill. This is a privacy bill. This bill protects innocent women and children from creeps who would otherwise gain free access to their most private places.

    Make no mistake: we’re all being manipulated here by the Gay Mafia (who needs yet another cause), the Media (who wants to stir up controversy to get clicks and sell ads) and the Left (who wants to defeat Republican Governor Pat McCrory at all costs. And by the way, the HRC North Carolina and Equality NC are laughing all the way to the bank.

    I am a proud, unapologetic Gay man so I speak with some authority on this issue. The public has been had, and the mainstream media — eager to serve up any damaging news to Pat McCrory and the GOP majority — has lapped it up like a fat girl at Krispy Kreme Asheville.
    https://www.facebook.com/footync/posts/988629884549478

    • boatrocker

      Is that a woman’s cap you’re wearing in your pic?
      Step back, Dennis Hastert.

    • Peter Robbins

      Okay, here’s a little moot court problem for you, Mr. Peck: Assume that the Charlotte ordinance is still in place. You enter the ladies room, pull off your shirt, and show ‘em all how Charles Atlas shrugged. You get arrested for disorderly conduct and desecration of an icon. You’re brought before Judge Judy. You play your youtube video for her. Familiar with the canons of legal construction, she draws an analogy between precipitation and urination. What’s your response? (Hint: “Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck” is not your wisest choice.)

  4. Hauntedheadnc

    The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence against women, representing 250 agencies who work with victims of sexual assault, calls horseshit on claims that HB2 protects anyone from anything:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sexual-assault-bathroom-law_us_57190d25e4b0d912d5fdda6b?ir=Queer+Voices&section=us_queer-voices&utm_hp_ref=queer-voices

    …And correct me if I’m wrong here, but I think they’d know a hell of a lot more about the subject than anyone here, although they definitely know more than our resident rent-a-sociopath.

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