The Great North Carolina Transgender Pee-In

Officer! Arrest that statue!

Call the guy I'm talking about “Agitprop Al.” I think he’d like that nickname, although I’ve never asked him. He’s the kind of a guy who, when he walks into a bar, all the muzz-muzz that begins with openers like, “How about those Yankees?” thuds to a halt. Al thinks in big, dramatic thoughts. Big, dramatic, and also crazy, but big all the same.

Agitprop Al made an entrance at a Manhattan saloon the other afternoon and the bartender didn’t even try to stop whatever would come next. Instead, he instantly reached up and turned off the TV. Never mind that the Yankees were getting clobbered by the Rays. That wasn’t the reason. Or maybe it was. 

“I’ve got a way to screw North Carolina good,” Al announced.

Al was referring to a new North Carolina law that requires transgendered people to use public bathrooms earmarked for the sex they were physically born with — regardless of what sex they are now, or what sexual equipment they currently do or do not happen to have.

It seems that North Carolina Grand Poobahs of Idiocy are spreading a panicky nonsense theory. They say that men will pretend to be transgendered, go out and buy a dress, some makeup, and falsies, put all that stuff on, and then charge into ladies’ rest rooms and rape the fairest examples of southern pulchritude. 

That barely might have worked as a somewhat shaky cinematic concept back in the time of Hitchcock movies.  I have a suspicion that in today's real world, the merest suggestion that they wear a dress and falsies would have most rapists gasping and gagging.

Mind you, this Idiot’s Law about where to pee is already having negative repercussions for which the people of North Carolina can thank their law makers. 

It has led to the cancellation of Ringo Starr, Pearl Jam and Ani DiFranco concerts in North Carolina. It has led to millions, if not billions of dollars worth of hotel reservations cancelled by tourists who were formerly planning to visit North Carolina. It has led to harsh criticism from corporate America, and to a negative travel advisory from the British Foreign Service to its own LGBT citizens. 

But that could be nothing compared to Agitprop Al’s Big Idea.

“We get busloads of former women who have transgendered into men. We put them through boot camp, during which they learn karate, Tae Kwon Do, and other martial arts. We put them through intensive body building regimes. And they all grow big beards.”

“Uh oh,” the bartender said.

“Then we send them down to North Carolina to use the ladies’ rooms in big, menacing-looking groups,” Al went on. “Hey, they look like men, they identify as men, they’ve got beards, and they’re a little bit scary looking. It should terrify the confederate panties off the women.”

“They’ll get busted,” somebody down at at the end of the bar said.

“For what?” asked Agitprop Al. “They’re all being completely legal, because they’re going into ladies’ rooms which is the sex they were assigned at birth. And that’s what North Carolina’s own law says they have to do. In fact, each transgendered male should use the ladies'  room while carrying a birth certificate that says he was born a she. It's like a get out of jail free card. And who knows — these guys might pick up some attractive women.”

The question then arose as to what could be done in Mississippi, where the law, in the name of religious freedom, allows anyone to discriminate against a member of the LGBT community if he feels the Bible tells him so.

“In that case,” Agitprop Al said without missing a beat, “we send in a bunch of goons who say it’s their religion to beat the crap out of Bible thumpers. You can't stop them if that's their sincere religious belief.”

He thought a minute, then he began to recite. “And lo, they came to a watering hole and they filled it with water. And they heard The Word, and The Word was, Ye shall pee as ye choose to pee, and neither men nor women, nor their sons nor their daughters, nor their menservants or their maidservants shall have dominion over the hole. And those who seek dominion, them shall ye smite.”

“What the hell is that supposed to be?” somebody asked.

“It’s from the Book of Al, Chapter Seven, Verse Six. You wanna hear what it says about pooping?”

“That’s it, Mister!” said the bartender, switching the TV back on. “Finish your drink and go.”

The Yankees lost to the Rays, 8 to 1.