N.C. Law Restricts Liberties

N.C.+Law+Restricts+Liberties

North Carolina governor Pat McCrory recently signed House Bill 2, the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act (HB2) into law. As can be expected, enacting this law has spawned a lot of controversy and outrage throughout different communities.

The gist of the HB2 law is that it requires North Carolina citizens to use the public bathroom or similar facility of the gender as identified on their birth certificate. However, this creates a detrimental discriminatory act against the transgender community.

By forcing transgender citizens to use the bathroom as the gender identity that they are only affiliated with through a piece of paper, not their true identity, the government of North Carolina is pushing the transgender community down in their fight for equality.

While the bill’s supporters argue that the safety of themselves and their children could be in peril by allowing transgender persons into the bathroom of their choice, this argument unfairly criminalizes those who have done nothing wrong.

Children are no less safe than then the transgender person who is forced to make public the status of their original gender, leaving them subject to bullying and harassment for their appearances.

This law rests on the laurels that one does not expect to be violated in a public restroom of the same sex. However, how does someone whose true self is the opposite sex change anything? After all, believing that sexual harassment does not take place between members of the same sex is utterly ignorant and naive to the realities of the world.

Allowing a transgender person to use the bathroom of their true identity and not their birth certificate is a basic human liberty. Transgender people should not and cannot be treated like second class citizens because they were not born the same gender as that they are on the inside.