All this to solve a non-problem? It's idiotic.

@1
We can take away their bathrooms, but we can't take away their FREEDOOOOOOMMMMMMM!.

I'm a bit confused about this whole issue, because I'm not sure why we have separate bathrooms in the first place. Without an answer to that, I don't see how we can set a rational policy on who should use which bathroom.

For instance, if we have separate bathrooms because people with male urinary tracts and people with female urinary tracts are best served by different interfaces, then it would make sense to assign bathrooms based on your urinary tract, not what your birth certificate says or your gender identity.

If that is why we have separate bathrooms, though, then it would make even more sense to change our future bathroom designs. Instead of men's rooms with urinals and toilets, and women's rooms with just toilets, we should be making urinal rooms and toilet rooms. If you wish to urinate, you are asked to use the urinal room if you can (i.e., you have a male urinary tract). If you do not have a male urinary tract, or you wish to defecate you head for the toilet room.

@3: Uhhh,..... no!

@4: "no!" to what? That toilets should be open to all? That there should be urinal rooms? That it doesn't make sense to talk about who should use which restroom without first figuring out why we have separate restrooms?

@6 The consequences of states passing discriminatory "bathroom bills", both legal and financial, are still playing out. It's worth noting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit just held that a Virginia school board’s policy barring a transgender boy from using the boy’s restrooms at his school violates Title IX’s ban on discrimination on the basis of sex. There are several other precedents worth looking at here under titles IX and VII (https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/wysk/…).

The financial consequences for NC so far don't seem small either, with lost jobs, convention business, and tourism. You don't need to factor in losses in federal funding to get to painful damage from a law like this. If I-1515 gets its signatures, I look forward to seeing Washington State companies donating to oppose it at the ballot.

And before you disrespect the Williams Institute, you should look into their work. There's often a dearth of data on LGBT policy issues and someone has to do the work assembling it. Their Census snapshots are very interesting and built on a dataset that's hard to ignore.