18 Absurdly False Claims North Carolina Just Made to Defend HB2

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory’s Newest Brief Filed in Federal Court Is as Abhorrent as You’d Expect

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory and his band of merry men submitted a brief in opposition to the United States’ motion for preliminary injunction against his state’s discriminatory and anti-trans law, HB2, and it’s even more disgusting and abhorrent than you’d think it would be. 

Opening up with a tired statement about safety that’s been proven false time and time again, the argument begins, “As the Act’s text and legislative history make clear, the General Assembly was focused—not on disparaging transgender individuals—but rather on a commonsense concern for preserving everyone’s privacy and safety.” Ironically, while the brief opens up with a promise that the argument isn’t against transgender people, the authors spend the next 80-something pages denying the mere existence of trans folks and the United States’ desire to treat them with respect. 

The brief spends a surprisingly large amount of time trying to push the incorrect notion that “biological sex” is a concrete concept and can be defined solely on the basis of external genitalia, even going so far as to call on Congress to define the concept of “biological sex” while also saying that the testimony of scientific experts (who disagree with them) is useless and inadmissible.  

If you can stomach it, McCrory’s men spend nearly ten pages outlining bogus “medical” theories as to why transgender people are mentally ill, hormone therapy is dangerous, and adults who choose to have some form of surgical intervention are never, ever happy. None of this is true, of course, and though the State goes to great lengths to portray legitimacy, though their sources cited aren’t exactly experts. (The American College of Pediatricians is a hate group designed to look like a medical association, for example.)

The brief contains more than a few absurd statements. Here are some highlights of the most abhorrent. It’s worth noting that none of these are true:

• “Intersex” isn’t a real thing. (p9)
• Pretty much every man everywhere is just dying to dress like a woman and sneak into bathrooms to molest your daughters. (p22)
• Law enforcement officials won’t be able to arrest anyone for doing anything wrong because of non-discrimination laws. (p23)
• The NCAA has a standard of acceptance for trans people in sports teams, which justifies NC’s discrimination. (p26)
• People who have different types of genitalia are scary. (p28)
• Gender identity is nothing more than a “feeling” that people use to trick others. (p30)
• An injunction would prohibit the people of NC from governing themselves (even though HB2 prohibits local municipalities from governing themselves). (p31)
• The reality of verbal and physical attacks trans people suffer isn’t worth writing a law against because it’s abuse from citizens, not the State. (p34)
• Because trans people don’t go to the police to report safety concerns, their concerns aren’t valid. (p34)
• Non-discrimination laws would mean “any male” could use a women’s restroom legally. (p34)
• Trans people claim they won’t use the bathroom because of safety concerns but that’s not true nor a good reason for a safety law. (p35) (Yes, it’s true that trans folks avoid the bathroom for safety, here’s a study.)
• Treating trans people with respect and letting them use the proper bathroom isn’t a good treatment for gender dysphoria. (p35)
• Gender dysphoria goes away once puberty starts. (p36)
• Any harms to trans people are outweighed by harms to non-trans people. (p37)
• Even if a trans person is harmed by anti-trans policies, just being trans is harm enough and they’re already suffering, so harming them more is ok. (p37)
• Since “gender identity” isn’t real and only “biological sex” is, HB2 doesn’t discriminate against transgender people. (p44)
• Since non-discrimination laws that mention gender identity have never passed Congress, we don’t need to worry about it. (p46)
• None of this applies to Title IX since external genitalia is the only thing that matters in determining sex. (everywhere)

North Carolina’s brief goes from bad to worse to absolutely disgusting and can be summed up in one sentence: The idea of transgender people messes with what we think our world is and that scares the crap out of us, so it’s bad and wrong.

If you’ve got the energy and are looking for a good way to make yourself blindingly angry, you can read the entire brief here courtesy of the fabulous folks at Equality Case Files.

 

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr and a CC license