The same Obama administration that insists on giving billions to Pakistan after the country harbored the architect of 9/11 seeks to defund North Carolina after its government excluded males from its ladies’ rooms. Some evils demand immediate, unforgiving eradication, and not allowing the sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania, to use the stall next to your pre-teen daughter ranks as just such an offense.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in comparing North Carolina’s law codifying common sense to Jim Crow, noted of her lawsuit against the Tar Heel State that “we retain the option of curtailing federal funding to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina as this case proceeds.”
If only Donald Trump couched his plan to reduce foreign aid in the context of recipient nations promoting restroom apartheid, then he might win plaudits instead of jeers. That itty, bitty change, like Vanilla Ice altering the ding-ding-ding-diggy-ding-ding base line of “Under Pressure” to the ding-ding-ding-diggy-ding-ding-cha of “Ice Ice Baby,” makes all the difference — between xenophobic and enlightened in this case.
The 14-page lawsuit filed by the feds quotes a half-dozen North Carolina officials to advance its claims of discrimination but, conspicuously, refrains from quoting from a single federal law buttressing the novel notion that Congress ever passed any statute giving males the right to use women’s public restrooms. Lynch asserts this as settled law without citing a single law.
Sometimes saying so little says so much.
Bizarrely, the attorney general cites the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in demanding that states permit males in their ladies’ room. This makes about as much sense as screaming “civil rights” in an effort to take away arguably the most basic civil right, the right to vote.
The elected state senators of North Carolina unanimously passed the bill in the upper chamber and 11 Democrats joined with a united Republican Party in the house to support it. No collection of federal legislators gave even a simple majority to any bill dictating (unconstitutionally) that states open the restroom doors based on gender identity rather than biological sex. But since pretend opts as the order of the day, Lynch demands we identify the Civil Rights Act of 1964, VAWA, and other federal laws in a manner at odds with reality. The same political leaders who believe people capable of transitioning into the opposite sex imagine that laws can morph into distinctly different entities, too (and without any legislative surgery required).
And since when does the attorney general’s whim dictate the spending policies of the federal government?
Even if a state law conflicted with a real federal law on this question, the Constitution remains silent on public bathrooms. The Ninth Amendment loudly addresses such conflicts: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” As if to maintain a safeguard against skimmers missing the point, the Framers almost redundantly added a Tenth Amendment, too: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The sensible North Carolina law does not dictate to private businesses that they must ban transgenders from using the bathroom of the sex they imitate. It pertains solely to bathrooms on state government property. Bank of America, Lowe’s, BB&T, and other businesses based in North Carolina remain free to set their own bathroom policies. The modest goal of the law pertains to North Carolina retaining the power to set the policies for the restrooms it funds. The expansive position of the feds seeks a one-size-fits-all solution on the question.
Beyond this, Lynch demands North Carolina discriminate in favor of transgenders. “North Carolina does not treat transgender employees differently from non-transgender employees,” the state points out in its suit against the feds. “All state employees are required to use the bathroom and changing facilities assigned to persons of their same biological sex, regardless of gender identity, or transgendered status.”
Ironically, in the same week that Lynch lamented the supposed conservative war on science, floating the idea of investigating global-warming “deniers,” she denied basic biology by characterizing “sex” as a social construct and “gender identity” as real. “External genitalia are, therefore, but one component of sex,” the Justice Department’s lawsuit against North Carolina strangely claims, “and not always determinative of a person’s sex.”
Sure, and the 31-year-old man who identifies as 12 denied entry to the sixth-grade dance experienced bigotry of the worst sort.
She flunks Con Law 101. She flunks seventh-grade biology.
Every day, Loretta Lynch’s Justice Department discriminates by seeking to send defendants to sex-segregated prisons. The Violence Against Women Act she cites imposes stiffer penalties against malefactors who victimize women and provides additional funding to pursue prosecution of such crimes. Even the restrooms in the Robert F. Kennedy Justice Building corral men into one restroom and women into another one.
Calling all this discrimination risks giving discrimination a good name.
