Watch: Lawmaker Threatens Trans People With Physical Violence

Richard Floyd, a Tennessee Republican state lawmaker has threatened physical violence against transgender men and women, saying he would “stomp” them if he saw one in a store dressing room.

“I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry,” the Times Free Press reports:

“Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk,” he said. “We cannot continue to let these people dominate how society acts and reacts. Now if somebody thinks he’s a woman and he’s a man and wants to try on women’s clothes, let them him take them into the men’s bathroom or dressing room.”

Not backing down, Rep. Floyd repeated his threat to local Nashville news station NewsChannel5, stating:

“I know how I would respond and react, if I was standing by a dressing room where my wife, one of my daughters or my granddaughters was in there and some man started in there to try on clothes. It’d be a bad career day for him. And probably for me.”

Floyd added, as you can hear in the video (courtesy of Towleroad) below:

“I don’t care for what reason, how depraved their mind is, how perverted their mind is, or for what reason they think a man has a right to go into a women’s bathroom, or dressing room to try on clothes…I’m just sick and tired of society having to adjust to every little alternate life style, or little whim or someone who thinks they’re different…If things go in the future like Washington wants them to go, people will be marrying their dogs, their cats, and their horses. We can’t continue to let society go down a slippery slope of depravity and survive as a society.”

(Emphasis mine)

Floyd’s transphobic comments are in response to his support of a so-called “bathroom bill” that would prohibit transgender people from using a public restroom or dressing room that was not labeled the same as their birth certificate. Tennessee law does not allow transgender people to change the gender designation on their birth certificates.

Floyd claims, in the video, he’s filed a bill and is “trying to get the bill passed, where we protect our citizens here in the state of Tennessee, our sales associates, or people who try to keep people out of those dressing rooms, from maybe losing their jobs.” He claims his bill will “make Tennessee a more friendly state to society.”

But Rep. Richard Floyd’s counterpart in the Tennessee Senate, Bo Watson, has now dropped his support off the bill after Floyd’s remarks, saying “we have more pressing issues before us that we need to focus our attention on and we don’t need to get sidetracked.”