Chris Cuomo Debunks The 'Bathroom Predator' Myth Behind Anti-LGBT Laws

Chris Cuomo: “You Are Creating The Problem. You Are Not Solving It.”

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Written by Media Matters Staff

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New Day host Chris Cuomo debunked the baseless defense of a recent anti-LGBT law in North Carolina that broadly bans transgender people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity by Peter Sprigg, a spokesperson for anti-LGBT hate group, the Family Research Council. Although CNN's New Day still did not identify FRC as a hate group, Cuomo slammed Sprigg's false claim based on the repeatedly debunked “bathroom predator” myth that allowing transgender people to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity will allow men to pretend to be transgender to sneak into bathrooms and commit sexual assault. Cuomo noted that these “risks” haven't “play[ed] out in any statistic.” From the April 4 edition of CNN's New Day:

CHRIS CUOMO (HOST): I think its more about culture and I think we should have that discussion. But just to be clear, Title IX, okay, which is obviously the discrimination on discrete categories, there hasn't been a specific case about transgender yet. But we do know that transgender has been in many cases applied as a Title IXrequirement category. So that would be the legal basis of this contravening federal law would then trigger funding mandates about places that receive federal funds. But, again, whether this is legal or not can be tested out. But this is about something else. This is about what folks in North Carolina and Mississippi right now, Georgia recently, want and don't want.

PETER SPRIGG: Well, I agree that it's about culture and it has always been a part, not only of our culture but of every culture that has ever existed that we separate biological males and biological females for the purpose of certain intimate activities the like bathing, dressing, and going to the bathroom. And that's all that this bill provides is retaining the status quo with respect to that longstanding tradition.

CUOMO: But times change. And that's what this is really about. Are you ready to change in North Carolina? Are you ready to respect transgender people for what they say they are? Because you can't point to any potential danger here. I know that's what you are doing and others are doing, saying there is a risk to women. But we don't see that play out in any statistic that you can cite. You know I know you have been using the baker analogy that we saw with gay marriage. You shouldn't have these bakers be having to bake cakes for people they don't want. You shouldn't have these girls having to go into bathrooms with people they don't want. We don't see that risk. However, we do see the reciprocal risk. We do see the risk to transgender people when they are called out and exposed to this kind of scrutiny.

[...]

SPRIGG: When you see someone who is obviously a man, regardless of whether they're wearing a dress or not, I think a woman in a restroom where she expects only to be with women or a girl who expects to be with girls, has the right to feel uncomfortable about that. And to feel like her privacy has been violated. It is a privacy issue. Even if their safety is never violated in practice.

CUOMO: But the point is that the reason it looks like a man is because the person identifies as a man. So they want to go into the men's bathroom. You're saying yeah but on the birth certificate, it still says that that person is woman so they have to go into the women's bathroom. You're creating the problem. You're not solving it.

SPRIGG: No, No. The transgender people are creating the problem by pretending to be the opposite of their actual biological sex even when people can see that they are their biological sex.

CUOMO: See, but that's the pretending part, though, Peter, right? Because that's the concern. You're saying they're pretending. They're saying they're not pretending. And this is part of cultural evolution. You seem unwilling to embrace that.

SPRIGG: I am unwilling to embrace that. And most of the American public is unwilling to embrace the idea that people's inner feelings somehow trump the objective reality of their, biological reality of their bodies. It's very much a world view issue, and it's one where the American public is not on the side of the transgender movement.

Cuomo continued to debunk the myth in a series of tweets:

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[Twitter, 4/4/16]