We’ve seen some pretty outrageous legal briefs filed in defense of anti-LGBT laws. But last week, my state of North Carolina may have made one of the most outrageously homophobic and transphobic filings ever seen in an American courtroom. As far as Governor Pat McCrory is concerned, transgender people don’t deserve any legal protection because they’re merely deluding themselves into thinking they’re transgender.
The brief was filed Wednesday in response to the Obama administration’s motion to stop the enforcement of North Carolina’s outrageously discriminatory House Bill 2. Read it here, courtesy of Equality Case Files. North Carolina contends that by trying to stop this bill, the federal government is running counter to “standard medical science” that recognizes sex as “a ‘binary,’ or either-or proposition.” Translation: you’re either male or female, and it is foolish to suggest otherwise.
But what about intersex kids? Well, McCrory dismisses their ordeal as “extremely rare.” I wonder if McCrory would be willing to say that to the faces of the intersex kids who were arbitrarily turned into boys or girls, and have suffered for years as a result.
But this pales in comparison to what this brief has to say about North Carolina’s transgender community. It notes that some people “experience incongruence between their gender identity…and their sex,” or gender dysphoria. However, as McCrory sees it, since gender identity is not “determined at birth and fixed,” since it is almost always triggered by problems at home–especially abuse.
For that reason, the best way to deal with kids who believe they are transgender is to send them to therapists who will not accept their gender identity, and force them to accept their “biological sex.” This will allow “nature to do its work in puberty,” since the great majority of kids who question their gender gradually outgrow them. In other words–conversion therapy, which has been utterly discredited by every legitimate medical association.
Cliff Notes version: there is really no such thing as a transgender person, and anyone who thinks they are transgender is living in a fantasy world. Any transgender North Carolinians reading this, take note. Your governor has effectively called you crazy. He has effectively said that you really don’t exist. And apparently he doesn’t have the guts to do so to your faces.
I wonder if McCrory is willing to tell Andreas Krieger that he is living under a delusion. Krieger was formerly Heidi Krieger, one of East Germany’s greatest female shot putters. Trans World Sport told his story in 2005; watch it here.
Heidi began questioning her sexual identity in her teen years. However, she was denied a chance to find out for herself when officials at her secret police-affiliated sports club began pumping her with massive doses of steroids. At one point, she took more steroids than Ben Johnson took before his now-infamous run in the 1988 Olympics.
As a result, by age 18 she was already developing male characteristics. Eventually, she felt her only option was to undergo sex-change surgery in 1997 and become a man, Andreas. He feels it was the most important thing he has ever done. Riddle me this, Pat. Are you willing to tell Krieger to his face that he’s under a delusion?
But then again, that’s to be expected from McCrory. When the Republican-dominated General Assembly convened a special session to pass HB2, McCrory initially expressed doubt that such a law was needed. But in a craven failure of leadership, McCrory signed the bill into law a mere 12 hours after it was introduced.
It’s rather interesting that North Carolina questions the scientific basis for the federal government’s claims, because the state’s case is built on junk science. The great majority of the citations in the brief are from works published by the American College of Pediatricians, a Christianist “medical association” that has been identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
It has also been called out for twisting and misinterpreting others’ work and putting a hard-right slant on it. For instance, Warren Throckmorton, best known as one of David Barton’s loudest critics on the evangelical side, was one of many researchers who condemned ACPeds for cherry-picking his work for a pamphlet that argued in favor of conversion therapy. Now that’s pretty telling–a guy who should be on ACPeds’ side on paper has called them out for scientific misconduct.
It’s bad enough that McCrory has spent North Carolinians’ tax dollars defending a blatantly unconstitutional law. But now he has insulted thousands of his own people by saying they are living under a delusion, and has backed that up with “research” from a gang of quacks and frauds. If this doesn’t prove that we need to fire McCrory in November and elect Roy Cooper as his successor, I don’t know what does.
