The N.C. General Assembly wants to flush more of your money down the toilet to spell out where you can and can’t use the bathroom.
House Speaker Tim Moore called for a special session Thursday, saying more than three-fifths of his chamber’s members will eagerly rush to Raleigh to slap down a Charlotte city ordinance allowing transgender people to choose the restroom that matches their gender identity.
Moore acknowledged that reconvening the legislature less than two months ahead of the short session beginning April 25 is expensive. To justify the cost, he alluded to the fallacy that open-access bathrooms create a public danger.
“The vast majority of my fellow colleagues in the House and I believe the ordinance passed by the Charlotte City Council poses an imminent threat to public safety,” Moore said in a written statement. “…We understand that special sessions have a cost, but the North Carolina House is unwilling to put a price tag on public safety.”
Opponents of transgender bathroom choice are quick to cry wolf, predicting a plague of peeping Toms and a spike in sexual assaults when people with male anatomy and female anatomy are allowed to use the same restrooms. It’s a speculative, specious and irresponsible argument rooted in fear rather than fact.
A 2015 survey of 10 states with laws allowing transgender individuals to use the restroom of their choice showed no increase in harassment, sexual assault or any other crime committed in or near lavatories. There is zero evidence to support Moore’s Chicken Little claims.
Comedian John Oliver of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” called assaults by sexual predators disguised as transgender bathroom patrons “a borderline imaginary crime.” The funnyman seems to have more common sense than many North Carolina legislators.
Republican leaders are playing to residents who value modesty, tradition and comfort, but they stretch the truth beyond the breaking point when they invoke public safety. They also betray two deeply rooted conservative principles: Individual liberty and local self-rule.
The right of the transgender citizen to move freely in a public space should outweigh the unease of the person in the next bathroom stall. The Constitution prizes personal freedom even when its exercise is at odds with the majority’s wishes. There is no such thing as a constitutional right to collective comfort.
A government big enough to tell citizens which restroom to use must also be big enough to enforce its petty potty edicts, lest those laws be seen as toothless. That’s a government far too big for our liking.
Finally, local decisions rest with local leaders and should not be countermanded by a more distant and less responsive state bureaucracy. If Charlotte residents disapprove of the council’s equal-access rule, they have recourse at the ballot box. Raleigh should not intervene.
We call on Richmond County’s legislative delegation to protest this unnecessary special session by staying home. If our lawmakers choose to attend, they ought to at least decline the $104 per diem payment legislators receive for each day they’re in session.
Taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for this sad partisan ploy. Talk toilets on your own dime.