ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos hosted Kristen Waggoner, senior counsel for the extreme anti-LGBT group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), who hyped the debunked “bathroom predator” myth to defend a discriminatory law recently passed in North Carolina.
ADF is an multimillion dollar anti-gay Christian legal organization known for its work defending discriminatory “religious freedom” laws, which allow discrimination against LGBT individuals and others based on religious beliefs. In addition, ADF actively works to promote and defend anti-sodomy laws that effectively criminalize homosexuality.
This Week hosted Waggoner on April 10 to discuss mounting boycotts against North Carolina for its passage of the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act in March, which bans transgender people from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity and excludes LGBT residents from legal protection from discrimination. The law relied heavily on the “bathroom predator” myth that sexual predators will exploit transgender nondiscrimination laws to sneak into women’s restrooms. Experts in multiple states -- including law enforcement officials, government employees, and advocates for victims of sexual assault -- have categorically debunked that myth. Waggoner pushed this myth on This Week, characterizing the North Carolina bill as having “a common sense provision that would restrict men from accessing girls' locker rooms”:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (HOST): Kristen, I saw you shaking your head. I want to give you a chance to respond. But there's also a provision in the North Carolina bill that strips the ability of people to sue under the state discrimination law. And opponents of the law said if you're fired because of your race or gender or religion, you no longer have a basic remedy.
KRISTEN WAGGONER: Well, that's absolutely not true. That's not the case. And first of all, if we want to talk about what these laws actually do, North Carolina specifically, there are two components to the North Carolina law. The first is a common sense provision that would restrict men from accessing girls' locker rooms. It's for the safety and security, for privacy of not only our women and children but our men. We don't want to have to undress in front of someone who is of the opposite biological sex.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well you brought that up. How is that going to be enforced. You have to go back to -- you can only use the restroom that is the restroom that’s on your birth certificate. How is the state going to enforce that?
WAGGONER: The same way that they’re enforcing it and have enforced it the last 200 years. You simply respond to complaints that are received. But what we have seen, when these types of laws have been passed in other states that allow men to access the women's restroom, those laws are misused. And they violate the safety and security of people. We should have a reasonable expectation of privacy to go into a locker room and not have to undress in front of someone of the opposite biological sex. It's common sense.
STEPHANOPOULOS: What's the answer to that, John?
JOHN CORVINO: The idea that this is about safety and security, it's kind of like when somebody says that they ate all the ice cream in order to make room in the freezer. I mean it's just obvious that that's not the real reason. This is about discrimination, particularly against transgender people. And one of the reasons that's really sad is that our nation's history of protecting religious liberty has traditionally been about protecting marginalized groups, protecting people of minority faiths against the majority who try to marginalize them. Instead, we have a perversion of the notion of religious liberty to further marginalize people who are already vulnerable. There are absolutely no cases of transgender people trying to use these laws in order to commit assault or to threaten people's safety in bathrooms. Whereas there are many cases of transgender people suffering bullying and assault and violence because they can't have a safe and comfortable bathroom to use.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Kristen?
WAGGONER: That is absolutely not true. There are multiple cases of those who may not be transgender but those men who are using these laws to gain access to women and children in restrooms. These cases are documented --
CORVINO: How are they using these laws? How are they, if a man goes into a restroom to assault somebody, that's against the law. That has nothing to do with prohibiting transgender people, who just want a safe and comfortable place to use the bathroom, from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity.
WAGGONER: Then they can use the bathroom in a private facility, just as everyone can. These laws are gender neutral in terms of, they're not discriminating on the basis of how one identifies. They're simply saying that you go to a restroom or a private facility and you have a reasonable expectation of privacy there. But I want to get to the real victims--
STEPHANOPOULOS: I wish we could, but I’m afraid we are out of time. We're going to have to come back to this issue. Thank you both very much for your time.