Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel.
From Right Wing Watch: On today’s “Faith and Freedom” radio program, Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver asserted that North Carolina’s anti-LGBT law and the Religious Right’s boycott of Target are necessary because efforts to allow transgender people to use facilities that match their gender identity are being pushed by pedophilia advocates.
“The fact is we know sexual assaults occur,” he said, “they are going to occur with or without these laws, there’s no question about that. People commit sexual assaults, they commit them in buildings, they commit them in restrooms; but what you have now done, knowing that sexual assaults occur, knowing that they occur in these places where women are trapped and they can’t get out, now what we’ve done, through these laws, is we’ve opened the door for every rapist and pedophile.”
“Frankly,” he continued, “when you look at some of the people behind the North Carolina law and some of these other laws, who are they? They have been identified, some of them that have been advocating this, as pedophiles. Some of this is being financed by those who are actively promoting pedophilia.”
Naturally, Staver did not state just which groups are advocating child abuse.
Why are these pedophiles attacking women?
I imagine the answer to that question is the same as the one about just who these nefarious groups are: “________”.
Staver and Liberty Council are, as usual, full of shit. HB2 in North Carolina and similar laws in other states do nothing to protect anyone from actual predators (or pedophiles). They are aimed directly at a segment of the population that they do not approve of, and the splash damage makes it bad for everyone. Staver and his ilk just cannot tolerate people who simply want to live their lives as they please and want the same rights as everyone else. Haters gotta hate.
If they were truly concerned with sexual assaults happening, they would work on laws that are aimed at the actual predators. Of course, they are accustomed to their god’s bad aim, so that is the only model that they have to go on.
To understand a side many liberals may not be immediately aware of it helps to keep in mind that it is received wisdom within the religious right that homosexuals are forced to spread their orientation by recruiting children. It is assumed that homosexuals cannot have children and that children of others, as the product of a perfect God, are not born homosexual.
Another assumption that many on the right unquestioningly believe is that genitals are the locus of control for sex. That man parts, as a matter of natural law, seek out woman parts. That the mind is secondary and/or perversely contradictory if the brain countermands this genital driven imperative.
These dynamics work underneath the surface. Always unobserved by others but typically unconscious to the person themselves. It is an odd experience to be talking to an otherwise reasonable and coherent adult and notice that these canards are being actively used as known good and unquestionable working assumptions that they then apply conventional logic to.
If you try to correct them they get confused and assume you are the one confused.
I’d don’t buy that bullshit for one second. Yes, there are people who are intensely sheltered in some religious factions, who are unaware of basic facts, but that does not apply in any way to people like Staver and Liberty Counsel. They understand it all just fucking fine, they simply don’t like it, and insist on legislating their bigotry. Their business is hate, and they are very good at it.
This really, honestly confused me for a few moments.
I read that, and I thought for a moment that what they meant was: by insisting that (burly, bearded) trans men use the ladies’ facilities, the conservatives have opened the door for every rapist and pedophile. And I thought “Well… yes, that’s exactly what they’ve done. What is the point here?” And I had to read it again before I twigged that they’re arguing precisely the opposite, having presumably not actually thought it through.
Reading “attack” not as sexual harassment, but just general misogynic stoopidity: Doesn’t everyone? (Add
</snark>to taste.)Premise: Correct. Congrats!
Conclusion: …
I’m lost. I don’t know what mental acrobatics you have to perform to go from the premise to the conclusion. By making it illegal for trans people to pee, you’re preventing predators from doing the thing that you admitted they’re already doing????? I just. I can’t. What do even. *short circuits*