As ‘Bathroom Bill’ Debates Heat Up, Transgender People Die | Southern Poverty Law Center

9.8.16

As ‘Bathroom Bill’ Debates Heat Up, Transgender People Die | Southern Poverty Law Center: The latest round of attention paid to trans people — much of it negative and some of it violently antagonistic — has come as battles developed in state after state over the use of bathrooms. When President Obama issued a directive to public schools across the nation mandating that officials allow trans students to use the bathroom matching their gender identity, many conservatives erupted.

In March, North Carolina passed a “bathroom bill” that required people to use public bathrooms matching their birth sex. A few weeks later, Mississippi followed with a copycat bill. Similar bills have been filed in at least 10 other states, and on May 25, 11 states sued the Obama administration over its directive.

Opponents argue that men will claim to be transgender, enter women’s rest rooms, and sexually attack women and girls there. Virtually no such attack has been recorded, but that hasn’t stopped anti-LGBT groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom from issuing high-pitched warnings of a sex crime epidemic. The Klan, too, has joined in, distributing threatening anti-trans fliers around the country that suggested, without directly saying so, that trans people should be lynched.