Currently, United States legislators and voting bodies alike are debating back and forth on the issues of House Bill 2, or more fully titled, “an act to provide for single-sex multiple occupancy bathroom and changing facilities in schools and public agencies and to create statewide consistency in regulation of employment and public accommodations”.

In recent events, the bill was presented to Congress and denied. So in response, the state of North Carolina filed a lawsuit on the Department of Justice in order to repropose their legislation to Congress in a last-ditch effort to continue the battle against Civil Rights and the 2016 same-sex marriage bill.

In short, the bill will allow the state of North Carolina to regulate different discrimination laws on public spaces according to the needs of different areas. This provides North Carolina lawyers and future policy-makers the ability to continue transphobic discrimination on its citizens. On top of that, the bill also blocks more attempts at creating pro-LGBT+ protections for the State.

The bill, of course, has received negative backlash from many sources such as ABC News.

Here is the framework of mind that people are forgetting: the con arguments are not only inaccurate but extremely harmful and often discriminatory towards several subgroups within the LGBT+ community. What’s the point of pretending to fight discrimination when you still use discriminatory arguments anyway?

Now there is one issue that pops into the minds of many a con voter, and that is sexual harassment and/or pedophilia. This argument has several holes in it. Rather than veil our transphobia by protecting children, shouldn’t we be criminalizing the actual perpetrators of sexual violence? How would you regulate whether or not someone is allowed to use a specific restroom?

North Carolina’s House Bill 2 attempts to address this by simply stating “public agencies shall require every multiple occupancy bathroom or changing facility to be designated for and only used by persons based on their biological sex”. OK great, but how do you know?

People in transition to their gender identity all fall in different phases, both mentally and physically. Some people identify as female but still have the physical characteristics of being male and vice-versa. Unfortunately, North Carolina has failed to consider this side of the argument, which is why the bill is also problematic as it’s not based on accurate information.

What about people who transition from male to female and they look female? Will local authorities question them? If the answer is yes, then how? I don’t think North Carolina is going to take the liberty of enquiring on the gender identity of every citizen, and then fact-checking those statements.

Moving onward, this debate does not really relate to family values. Allowing someone in transition to use the bathroom according to the gender they identify with will not bring your family to ruin.

The issue is not about you trying to protect children from sex offenders. If that was the case, something would have been done to fix it long ago. The issue is that people (especially the North Carolina government) have some seriously deep rooted transphobia that they are inflicting on the harmless general public.
It is important that we, the public, do not get too comfortable avoiding the issue by creating superfluous legislation when we could use this opportunity to address the fears and ultimately the questions we may have.