RALEIGH, N.C. — This is a statement from Progress NC Action on HB2:
As Gov. Pat McCrory doubles down on his reckless attempt to thumb his nose at the federal government — putting $4.5 billion in education and highway funding at risk — the governor was once again forced to admit on Sunday that the main Republican argument in favor of HB2 is based on a myth.
After Gov. McCrory tried to claim on Fox News Sunday that the federal government is “telling every university that accepts federal funding that boys who may think they’re a girl can go into a girls’ locker room or restroom or shower facility,” host Chris Wallace pressed McCrory on his party’s repeated attempts to portray transgender people as perverts and pedophiles:
CHRIS WALLACE: How many cases have you had in North Carolina in the last year where people have been convicted of using transgender protections to commit crimes in bathrooms?
GOV. MCCRORY: This wasn’t a problem. That’s the point I’m making. This is the Democratic Party and the left wing of the Democratic Party —
WALLACE: But have there been any cases of this?
MCCRORY: Not that I’m aware of.
WALLACE: Have there been any cases in the last five years?
MCCRORY: Why did the Democratic Party in Houston, Texas —
WALLACE: But I guess the question is, forgive me, if I may, sir, why not just then let it go? If there’s not a case of transgender people going in and molesting little girls?
MCCRORY: I haven’t used that at all. This is an issue of expectation —
WALLACE : Well, you did say a boy who thinks he’s a girl going into a girls bathroom.
MCCRORY: And that’s where there’s an expectation of privacy. When you go into a restroom, or your wife goes into a restroom you assume the only other people going into that restroom or shower facility is going to be a person of the same gender. That’s been an expectation of privacy that all of us have for years.
WALLACE: But if there’s no problem, then why pass the law in the first place?
MCCRORY: There can be a problem, because the liberal Democrats are the ones pushing for bathroom laws. And now President Obama and one of my successors as mayor of Charlotte wants government to have bathroom rules. I’m not interested in that. We did not start this on the right. Who started it was the political left. In Houston, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina. And now, frankly, in Washington, D.C.
Last week, when Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked the governor on Thursday night why Republicans have tried to incite fear of transgender people by portraying them as child molesters and sexual deviants, McCrory replied, “Mine is not a fear. I don’t like the rhetoric that’s often used on the right saying what the fear is.”
However, Gov. McCrory and his campaign have repeatedly used the same bigoted rhetoric he claimed to reject on Fox News:
-
February 21: Gov. McCrory claimed the Charlotte ordinance “could also create major public safety issues by putting citizens in possible danger from deviant actions.”
-
March 23: A NCGOP video featuring McCrory linked transgender people in bathrooms to sexual predators.
-
March 23: The McCrory campaign claimedAttorney General Roy Cooper “supports forcing women and young girls to use the same restrooms and locker rooms as grown men.”
-
March 24: Gov. McCrory again cited “major public safety issues by putting citizens in possible danger from deviant actions,” and explicitly linked these so-called ‘deviant actions’ with “allowing a person with male anatomy … to use a female restroom or locker room.”
-
March 29: Gov. McCrory claimed in a video that HB2 “was passed to protect men women and children when they use a public restroom, shower or locker room.”
-
March 30: Gov. McCrory shared a Facebook post claiming that HB2 “keeps grown men out of the same bathroom or locker room as little girls,” and promoted Sen. Phil Berger’s fundraising website features a picture of McCrory standing in front of a man entering a women’s bathroom.
“Gov. McCrory had no problem trying to portray transgender people as perverts and pedophiles when he rushed to approve HB2, but now that the business community has overwhelmingly rejected McCrory’s bigoted law, suddenly the governor is trying to sound reasonable,” said Gerrick Brenner, executive director of Progress NC Action. “If further victimizing an already-vulnerable minority is the only way Gov. McCrory thinks he can win re-election, maybe he should save everyone the trouble and just resign now.”
