The latest salvos in the struggle over whether a law passed during March in North Carolina forces transgender people to use public restrooms that don't correspond with their “gender identity” came on Monday, when Dan Savage tweeted that those who disagree with House Bill 2 should leave jars filled with their urine at Republican Governor Pat McCrory's office.
The strategy promoted by the gay activist and columnist drew the immediate attention of Noah Michelson, an editorial director on the liberal Huffington Post website, who called Savage's idea a “brilliantly gross” method of protesting the state's “Anti-LGBT Law.”
“If Dan Savage gets his way, Pat McCrory’s office will soon be filled with urine,” Michelson began before noting that people responding to Savage's idea would leave the bodily waste there “so his staff can oversee its safe disposal.”
According to Michelson's article, “Savage's tweet came just hours after” the governor announced that he and the state’s secretary of public safety would sue the U.S. Justice Department over its “radical reinterpretation” of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the department's order to abandon the state's law by Monday.
In an interesting twist, this isn't the first time Savage has attempted to use this strategy against states that have passed similar “bathroom bills.”
During mid-February, South Dakota became the first state to pass a law stating “every restroom, locker room and shower room located in a public elementary or secondary school that is designated for student use and is accessible by multiple students at the same time shall be designated for and used only by students of the same biological sex.”
In response, Savage tweeted: “Trans people should mail bottles of their urine -- no return addresses -- to lawmakers in South Dakota for safe disposal.”
Later that month, Texas Representative Debbie Riddle filed a bill in the state House that indicated “anyone over the age of 13 in a public facility of 'a gender that is not the same gender as the individual’s gender' should be convicted of a class-A misdemeanor.”
Riddle’s proposed law included exemptions for custodians, those helping children or those responding to a medical emergency.
Nevertheless, Savage still came out swinging: “Maybe trans folks should mail their urine to state reps like Debbie Riddle -- you know, so she can dispose of it safely.”
But also on Monday, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch asserted that North Carolina's law restricting restroom access for transgender people amounts to "state-sponsored discrimination."
The suit, filed in the Middle District of North Carolina, names McCrory, the N.C. Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina as defendants and charges that the law constitutes “a pattern or practice of employment discrimination on the basis of sex” in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
“This action is about a great deal more than just bathrooms,” Lynch told reporters Monday afternoon. “This is about the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we, as a people and as a country, have enacted to protect them.”
She said that while the department is seeking a court order to block the legislation, the government reserves the option of withholding federal funding from the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and UNC.
In a statement issued Monday following the filing of his lawsuit, McCrory accused the administration of President Barack Obama of making up federal law in finding the law discriminatory.
The governor has said the legislation is a “common-sense law” that makes bathrooms safer for women and children, and he and other Republican leaders described the Justice Department’s ultimatum last week as an example of punitive federal overreach.
As NewsBusters previously reported, people in the “mainstream media” have regularly sided with the liberal gay activists.
On Monday, the Cable News Network not only continued to misinform its viewers about the contents of the law, it also used a misleading poll to dubiously claim that most Americans oppose it.
New Day, CNN Newsroom and Legal View With Ashleigh Banfield cited the poll claiming that 57 percent of Americans oppose the bathroom law.
However, the wording of the poll gives the false impression that transgenders are required to use the public restroom of their gender at birth when, as clarified by the North Carolina governor's office, the law still allows transgenders to legally change their birth certificates with their updated gender and use the restroom of that gender.
At least we know how Savage will react the next time gays feel downtrodden by the government, but the bad part of this strategy is that sooner or later, they're going to start running out of bottles. We can only wonder what they'll do then.
