Back in May, Fox News's Chris Wallace pressed Republican Gov. Pat McCrory on his support for North Carolina's anti-LGBT HB2, which requires individuals to use restrooms in government buildings that correspond with the sex shown on their birth certificates rather than the gender they identify with. Wallace asked McCrory how many people had "been convicted of using transgender protections to commit crimes in bathrooms" in the last five years. McCrory admitted none had.
Wallace then wondered why, "if there's not a case of transgender people going in and molesting little girls," McCrory wouldn't simply "let it go" and stop defending the law. McCrory rejected Wallace's argument, saying "I haven't used that at all," meaning he hadn't raised the specter of sexual assault as a justification for the law. HB2 wasn't about safety, McCrory insisted, but rather "an expectation of privacy that all of us have had for years."
That was four months ago. Now, facing difficult re-election prospects against Democrat Roy Cooper and a deeply unpopular Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, McCrory has decided that HB2 is about safety after all. McCrory's newest TV ad features a sexual abuse survivor named Gina Little, who delivers this address directly to the camera:
"At nine, I was molested by a teenager. When I found out that President Obama and Roy Cooper want to force schoolchildren to share the same locker room, shower and restroom with someone who claims to be the opposite sex, I was horrified. Gov. McCrory knows this is not about discrimination, money, or politics. He's standing up for us under extreme pressure and doing what's right. Our governor is on our side."
Little's ordeal was horrific, but as reporter Tom Bullock of WFAE observes, it has no connection to HB2. Little was not assaulted by a person claiming to be transgender in a public facility but rather by her own brother, at home. We should be doing everything we can to prevent terrible crimes like these, but not even a supporter of HB2 could claim that the law would have prevented Little's abuse. That McCrory would even try to is shameful in the extreme.
Watch the video below: