North Carolina Lt. Gov.: The real discrimination is having to share bathrooms with transgender people

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest made an over-the-top assertion about North Carolina's new laws wiping out local protections for the LGBT community and regulating public bathrooms usage by transgender people, which was passed quickly by the Republican legislature and governor after the city of Charlotte had enacted an ordinance to allow transgender people to use public bathrooms matching their gender identities.

The real victims of discrimination, he said, were the people under Charlotte's ordinance in the first place.

In an appearance last week on the radio show of Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, as reported by Right Wing Watch, Forest asserted that Charlotte's ordinance was in fact unconstitutional on the grounds that the state government has exclusive responsibility for public accommodations laws, and not the municipalities. And then Perkins asked a question about the business community's objections to the law: Essentially, are they just saying this for show?

"In your discussion with some of these — you don't have to use any company names or executive names," Perkins said, "is a part of this their public posture to appease elements within their corporations that are clamoring for this, and are very vocal? And it's more of just trying to appease them, than it is the business actually taking a position?"

"Yeah, absolutely it is," Forest responded. "I mean, listen, obviously, nobody likes discrimination. We don’t like discrimination, and that’s why we passed an anti-discrimination law — that’s what HB2 was. Nobody likes discrimination, so it’s easy to stand up and say, ‘We don’t like anybody being discriminated against.’ Well, our bill does not discriminate against anyone.

"In fact, the Charlotte ordinance was amazingly discriminatory against — especially women and girls, who no longer basically had the freedom to walk into a restroom and know that they were gonna be safe and secure in that restroom, without a man walking in or a pedophile or a predator walking into that bathroom. That’s really discriminatory if you want to talk about discrimination there.

"But I think that is their take," Forest said, circling back to the questions about businesses. "And one in particular said, 'Well you know, they [LGBT groups] have a really strong lobby.' And so, I think we're at a place — as you just said, certainly for them truth is all relative — there is no absolute truth anymore, so they can bend the rules and twist it however they want to, to push their agenda."