Critics: N.C. Democrats, Transgender Groups Ask Judge to Create ‘Harvey Weinstein Bathroom Law’

North Carolina’s Democratic governor is asking a judge to cancel the state’s much-debated “bathroom law” and to adopt instead an ACLU-approved pro-transgender policy which bars women and girls from keeping aggressive men out of their public bathrooms.

Jim Quick, a spokesman for the North Caroline Values Coalition slammed the pro-transgender deal as a “Harvey Weinstein Bathroom Law,” because it was announced as women across the nation react to the revelation that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein — a Democrat — pressured women to watch him as he took showers. The targets of Weinstein’s pressure included actor Ashley Judd and model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez.

The “consent decree” deal was drafted by the ACLU, Democratic governor, and the state’s Attorney General to end a lawsuit against the state’s March 2017 sexual-privacy law, titled HB 142. The lawsuit was filed by well-funded transgender activists who say that men should be allowed to use women’s bathrooms and showers if they claim to have a female “gender identity.”

However, the HB 142 law exists because pro-transgender activists were defeated in two years of intensive public debates, polls, multiple legislative votes, state elections and by the formal passage of the 2016 HB 2 and the 2017 HB 142 law. Both laws allow women to keep men out of the taxpayer-owned showers and bathrooms reserved for women. HB 142 was signed by Cooper in March, and it modestly changed the prior 2016 HB 2 sexual-privacy law.

“What Cooper did is just despicable,” said Quick. “He negotiated the [March 2017] deal to get the state out of HB 2 … now he’s blocking the state out of the deal he negotiated.”

Critics, including Quick, say the elimination of sexual privacy in single-sex facilities would allow men who merely say they are “transgender” women to watch and humiliate women and girls as they use public facilities.

The state already has a law allowing people to change their legal sex after undergoing surgery. But Cooper’s proposed deal would ban “discrimination” against people who say they have the “gender identity” of the opposite sex, but it does not limit or describe “gender identity.” That lack of any definition ensures that women cannot exclude any man — no matter his history, appearance or dress — from their facilities if the man says he has a female “gender identity.” That hostility to any definition is a key part of the transgender ideology, which demands that government enforce laws saying that biology has no connection to a person’s legal sex and that a person’s legal sex is instead determined only by each person’s unmeasurable and flexible “gender identity.”

Polls show that roughly one-quarter of Americans support the progressive claim that biological sex is less important that chosen “gender identity,” despite intense media pressure in favor of the pro-transgender, anti-sexes campaign. Transgender advocates say 1-in-160 Americans are transgender. A study of the 2010 Census shows that 1-in-2,400 adults have changed their name from one sex to the other sex.

Critics also say the North Carolina deal will allow predators to get close to their targets, regardless of any claimed “transgender” status.  In Wyoming, for example, a man who says he is a woman is facing charges for sexually assaulting a 1o-year-old girl in a bathroom. According to the Casper Star Tribune:

GOP Sen. Dan Bishop immediately protested Cooper’s back-room deal as a “collusive settlement.”

Conservatives slammed the proposed deal.

“The Governor’s and Attorney General’s actions today constitute a massive power grab, with sweeping changes that only the Legislative Branch has the authority to enact,” said a statement from Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the NC Values Coalition. She continued:

After signing into law earlier this year HB 142, which kept in place longstanding laws that required that showers and bathrooms be used in accordance with one’s sex on their birth certificate, Governor Cooper has betrayed the people of North Carolina with an Executive Order that not only allows boys and men into girls’ and women’s showers and bathrooms, but also forces private businesses to adopt sweeping LGBT special rights. [AG] Josh Stein has betrayed the people of NC by failing to defend the laws of the state and, instead, elevating LGBT privileges above the rights of common everyday people to privacy and safety in Bathrooms and showers.  It is despicable, and the voters of NC will hold these two accountable.

Conservatives oppose the transgender ideology as a threat to civic and government recogniti0n that the two sexes — men and women — are different, equal and complementary. This long-standing civic recognition allows people to create single-sex institutions — such as single-sex sports teams, education courses or shelters for battered women. It also allows parents and citizens to preserve the social expectations about each person’s duties, accomplishments, efforts, and ideals — such as beauty or strength, aggressiveness or caring –which complement the different bodies, capabilities, and bodies of growing girls and boys, and adult women and men.

Critics also say there is no evidence that a person’s feelings of “gender” are independent of their sex, and Americans see no problem when some boys act like most girls, and girls can act like most boys.

The long-standing social expectations for male and female people are opposed by feminists and progressives.

The two-sex society, say feminists, unfairly inhibits some people, such as university-educated women who wish to compete against men for professional status and pay. Also, people who want to live as members of the other sex say those two-sex expectations stigmatize their cross-sex desires. Together, the two groups are working with gay advocacy groups to demand a “gender-free” society where the government would forbid any recognition of the distinctions between male and female.

For example, the two groups are pushing hard against President Donald Trump’s decision to exclude “transgender” men and women from the military because it weakens their ability to persuade politicians and judges to impose the “gender-free” society on Americans.

Pro-transgender groups welcomed the proposed North Carolina deal, and immediately demanded more changes and recognition, or status, for people who say their “gender identity” makes them a member of the opposite sex.

“This EO brings North Carolina a little bit closer back to where many states have been for years,” claimed Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. Keisling continued:

And that has some meaningful consequences for many LGBTQ North Carolinians—it means, for example, that they have a bit of extra protection against being turned away from government services like the DMV and fired from a state government job simply because of their gender identity or sexual orientation … But it’s not nearly enough, especially when the state of North Carolina continues to sanction and promote anti-transgender discrimination under HB 142.

The ACLU and other pro-transgender groups strongly opposed the HB 2 and the HB 142 privacy laws.

“While this executive order may represent some narrow improvements for LGBTQ North Carolinians, by no means does it offer full protections or rectify the tremendous harm caused by HB 2 and continued harm from HB 142,” said JoDee Winterhof, a congressional staffer and the vice-president for policy and political affairs at the pro-transgender Human Rights Campaign political group. “Governor Cooper and state lawmakers must show leadership on the real solution for North Carolina — statewide, LGBTQ non-discrimination protections.”

Cooper defended his refusal to enforce the HB 142 law, saying in a statement:

My administration has taken another step today to move forward from HB 2. We joined a settlement with a group of people who are suing the state and we have submitted to the court a consent decree to resolve that case. For many reasons, it is not in North Carolina’s best interest to remain in drawn-out court battles that linger because of HB 2. As a state, we need to work together to make North Carolina more welcoming, and I am glad that we could come together in this case to show that we agree.

Cooper also announced he signed a non-discrimination law that forces state agencies to ignore the state’s civic practice and its sex-change law, and to treat men as women if they merely say they are women, and to accept claims by women who say they are men.

When I signed HB 142, I said it wasn’t a perfect solution. But I believe it was an important step forward for our state. And when I signed it I was clear — our work to make North Carolina better for everyone was not finished.

Today, we take the next steps as I put into place the most comprehensive anti-discrimination provisions North Carolina has ever had …

It’s not enough to just say we won’t discriminate, we must show it. And today, after working with the business community and the LGBT advocacy community, I’m proud to act on our shared belief that people should not face discrimination or harassment because of who they are …

With divisiveness, harsh language and extreme partisanship plaguing the country right now, it is important for both businesses and government to send a strong, forceful message — discrimination is wrong …

Some may ask, how much of a difference can this executive order make? Consider this: North Carolina executive agencies employ 55,000 people and contract with more than 3,000 vendors with thousands of employees. This executive order could impact up to $1.5 billion worth of executive agency contracts.

Put another way, this executive order means that North Carolina should not do business with companies that won’t protect their workers from discrimination and harassment.

That use of state dollars, said Quick, will likely pressure state non-profits, such as schools and charities, to ignore the obvious sexual distinctions between their male and female customers and clients.

The progressive push to bend Americans’ attitudes and their two-sex civic society around the idea of “gender” has already attacked and cracked popular social rules for how Americans handle the many social preferences of equal, different and complementary men and women, boys and girls. For example, the gender claims have shifted rules or practices about different-sex bathrooms, shelters for battered women, sports leagues for girls, hiking groups for boys, K-12 curricula, university speech codes, religious freedoms, free speech, the social status of women, parents’ rights in childrearing, practices to help teenagers, women’s expectations of beauty, culture and civic society, scientific research, prison safety, civic ceremonies, school rules, men’s sense of masculinity, law enforcement, and children’s sexual privacy.

To read more about the transgender ideology, click here.