Readers React: ‘Bathroom panic’ in North Carolina: What about the rights of transgender people?

To the editor: North Carolina’s House Bill 2 is intended to make bathrooms safe. The possibility of a male predator dressed as a woman molesting a girl in a bathroom is certainly a worry, but the incident is in no way enabled by transgender bathroom usage. (“How to stamp out the transgender ‘bathroom panic,’” Opinion, April 15)

A predator can do that now. Just walk right in — no costume, no deception. If and when he is arrested and prosecuted, it won’t be for pretending to be transgender; it will be for a sex crime.

The fear that this will happen over and over again is just ludicrous. And it belittles the trauma that a transgender man or woman feels every day on entering a place where too often, bullying and intimidation make it unsafe.

North Carolinians should think of what other people go through before denying them their freedoms.

James Severtson, Reseda

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To the editor: Just as the drinking fountains weren’t the real issue for African Americans in the south, the bathroom is not the real issue for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. The real issue, as it was for the black people in their fight for civil rights, is hate, ignorance and fear.

Isn’t that what all discrimination is about?

Gerald Baker, Los Angeles

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