WashPost Likens Virginia GOP Bathroom Bill to 'Jim Crow,' Wrongly Claims No Crime

January 8th, 2017 4:55 PM

In a Saturday article titled, "Virginia's Latest Attempt to Marginalize Minorities," the Washington Post editorial board slams Virginia Republican Delegate Robert Marshall for proposing a bathroom bill similar to that in North Carolina that would bar men from using women's restrooms. As it wrongly claims that there are no examples in Virginia of men pretending to be women to victimize them in such public places, the article even likens the "obnoxious" legislation to racism in the Jim Crow South and suggests that some Republicans would support it because they like "marginalizing minorities."

In the print version, the piece claims the bill is "discriminatory" in the subtitle: "A state delegate introduced a bill similar to North Carolina's discriminatory bathroom bill."

The article then begins:

It is curious that a Republican state legislator in Virginia is hoping to legislate discrimination and thereby emulate North Carolina, whose notorious "bathroom bill" last year cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sporting events, tourism, conventions and concerts, to say nothing of jobs forfeited when prominent companies such as PayPal squashed planning expansions. That Delegate Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William) wants to copy the Tar Heel State's disaster and risk a similar firestorm of disrepute in Virginia suggests an agenda that does not exactly enshrine the Commonwealth's best interests as his number one priority.

After accusing Delegate Marshall of showing a double standard in claiming that he wishes to protect women and girls from "predatory men" even though he supported Donald Trump for President, the article wrongly claims that there have not been any cases in the state of Virginia of male sexual predators pretending to to be women to gain access to women's facilities:

What really rankles Mr. Marshall is the very existence of transgender individuals. He warns of the threat they represent -- that desperate boys and men will pretend to be transgender "to make a move on some teenage girls or women" in bathrooms, notwithstanding his inability to cite a single instance in Virginia of such misconduct.

But the Daily Wire has enumerated several cases of predatory behavior under such circumstances in various locations, including one in the Northern Virginia area. The University of Toronto even reversed its liberal policy after male students took advantage of it to spy on female students.

The piece then ridiculously begins likening an unwillingness to allow men to use women's restrooms to the kind of state-instituted racist policies of the Jim Crow South:

Once upon a time in Virginia, and elsewhere in the Jim Crow South, it was black people whom lawmakers sought to repel from public facilities used by whites. Now it's transgender individuals, who represent a new kind of "other," anathema to sentries of the old guard such as Mr. Marshall who prefer an America in which people who are different can be safely defined as deviants, without igniting a politically correct tumult.

The article then takes a shot at Republicans over laws that try to reduce abortion as it predicts that the GOP legislature would likely not pass the bill because it is "still licking its wounds from a hullabaloo five years ago triggered by a bill that mandated transvaginal ultrasounds for women considering abortions, the better to punish and humiliate them. Even if Mr. Marshall's obnoxious legislation were somehow to clear both houses of the General Assembly, Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, would veto it."

It is then suggested that Republicans like "marginalizing minorities" as there fretting over whether the bill might have a chance of advancing:

Still, it's likely to attract votes in the House of Delegates, where the idea of marginalizing minorities -- see: voting restrictions -- retains a certain allure. The legislation would not only discriminate against transgender individuals; it would also press public school teachers and principals into the project by requiring that they report any unauthorized bathroom use and convey the information to parents.

Wrapping up its demonization of Delegate Marshall, the article concludes: "That's an effective way to foster prejudice and confusion at any school, costs that Mr. Marshall is more than willing to bear in the cause of intolerance."