Anti-LGBT activists are taking the newfound role of “potty police” to the next level, pledging to carry weapons into public restrooms to “protect” against trans people using the bathroom that matches their gender identity.
The threats came after retailer Target announced Wednesday it would allow transgender patrons to use the restroom of their choice. The policy is a slap at North Carolina’s anti-LGBT House Bill 2, which, among other things, bars transgender people from using facilities that correspond with their gender identity, if those are in government buildings; it does let private-sector companies set their own policies. In response to Target's action, at least two right-wing leaders promised to meet trans people in the bathroom — with firearms.
The preliminary warning shot came from Anita Staver, president of the right-wing, anti-LGBT Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit conservative legal group — best known for representing defiant antigay Kentucky clerk Kim Davis — that recently told CBS News it is proudly pushing transphobic “bathroom bills” nationwide.
On Friday, Staver — who is married to Liberty Counsel’s chairman and cofounder, Mat Staver — sent out a tweet blasting Target’s trans-inclusive policy. “I’m taking a Glock .45 to the ladies room,” she wrote, before adding what appears to be a dig at the concept that someone could identify as a gender other than that they were assigned at birth.
Staver is an attorney who is licensed to practice law in Florida and the District of Columbia, and who not only serves as president of Liberty Counsel, but also as the director of Liberty Counsel Action, the right-wing group’s political action committee, according to her bio on Liberty Counsel’s website.
The same day that Staver posted her threat about carrying firearms into Target bathrooms, a Republican candidate for sheriff in Texas promised he would “beat the hell out of a transgender person who tried to piss in a bathroom where [his] daughter was peeing,” according to the Dallas Observer.
snip----------------------
http://www.advocate.com/transgender/2016/4/25/right-wingers-pledge-carry-guns-bathroom-fend-trans-folks
= new reply since forum marked as read
