This Texas Activist Shut Down Transphobic “Bathroom Myths” With One Sentence
The Texas Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Houston's Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO)—which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race, sexual orientation, gender identity and other factors— must be put on the ballot in November.
Anti-LGBT gadflies have been attacking HERO, claiming it’ll allow sexual predators to swarm ladies rest rooms pretending to be trans.
But LGBT activist Noel Freeman put all these folks in their place, telling Houston's ABC 13’s Eyewitness News "It's never happened."
"Non-discrimination ordinances that are LGBT-inclusive have existed in the United States for more than 40 years—and in those 40 years, across the entire country, zero times has somebody committed an act in a bathroom and claimed a non-discrimination law as a defense.”
As Freeman points out, there are already laws in place to prevent someone—regardless of their gender—from harassing or attacking someone in a bathroom. “The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance isn't anything about this' bathroom myth' that's being presented,” he says.
The fact that no one has ever been caught pretending to be trans to gain bathroom access hasn’t stopped media outlets from repeating the libel in their coverage of the ordinance, reports Media Matters.
Around the country, transphobic legislators have proposed so-called “bathroom bills,” making it a crime to use a rest room that doesn’t correlate to your birth gender.
How many times does a lie need to be disproven before people stop believing it?