Republican Wants Trans People to Use Streets for Bathroom
North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson said transgender people should not be given special accommodations regarding bathrooms.
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, one of three candidates seeking the Republican nomination for governor this year, said that transgender people who refuse to use the bathroom matching their assigned sex at birth should be forced to urinate or defecate on public street corners.
Robinson, known for his anti-gay diatribes and outspoken opposition to LGBTQ visibility and civil rights, made the comments during a recent speech at a campaign event in Cary, North Carolina.
Like many other Republican candidates for office, Robinson has focused intently on culture-war issues, including transgender rights, to rally social conservatives around his campaign.
“We’re going to defend women in this state,” Robinson said, echoing an oft-repeated rationalization for pursuing anti-transgender legislation.
“That means if you’re a man on Friday night, and all the sudden on Saturday, you feel like a woman, and you want to go in the women’s bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested — or whatever we got to do to you.”
At a rally in Greenville, Robinson went on a similar riff about transgender people who refuse to use public bathrooms matching their assigned sex at birth, adding that “if you are confused, find a corner outside somewhere to go. We’re not tearing society down because of this.”
A spokesperson for Robinson’s campaign declined to answer whether Robinson would support a resurrection of HB 2, the infamous anti-transgender “bathroom bill” that passed in 2016.
At the time, the law’s passage triggered a significant backlash against the state, causing it to lose an estimated $4 billion due to travel boycotts and canceled events. Several companies also canceled plans to relocate to or expand operations in the state due to concerns over being able to retain talent.
The law was eventually repealed in 2017, though local ordinances are prohibited from providing protections that explicitly allow transgender people to use facilities matching their gender identity.
The law also prevented, for a required number of years after repeal, any pro-LGBTQ ordinances extending protections in housing and employment. Once that deadline passed, some municipalities soon passed pro-LGBTQ nondiscrimination ordinances but abided by the prohibition on public accommodations and bathroom use.
Robinson often declares that support for LGBTQ rights is incompatible with being Christian. In March 2023, Robinson established himself as a crusader against LGBTQ rights, declaring that God had created him to lead such a fight. He also criticized LGBTQ-affirming churches, saying, “Makes me sick every time I see it — a church that flies that Rainbow flag, which is a direct spit in the face of God almighty.”
In 2021, Robinson gave a sermon at a church comparing LGBTQ people to cow dung and claiming straight people are superior to gay people due to their ability to procreate.
In that same sermon, he rejected the idea that gender identity can differ from a person’s biological sex, saying of transgender individuals, “I don’t care how much you cut yourself up, drug yourself up and dress yourself up, you still either one of two things — you either a man or a woman.”
Other anti-LGBTQ comments he’s made include comparing drag queens to child molesters, claiming that identifying as gay is a step before pedophilia, and wrote on Facebook, in response to the Pulse nightclub massacre, that while he would “pray for the souls of all those killed” in the massacre, he would not celebrate “gay Pride” or LGBTQ identity, declaring homosexuality an “abominable sin.”
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