Mike Huckabee spews anti-transgender bigotry and brags about wanting to creep out showering girls

As reported by Vox’s German Lopez, the far-right website World Net Daily uncovered controversial remarks by Former Arkansas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, in which Huckabee spewed anti-transgender bigotry and bragged about wanting to creep out showering girls:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee perpetuated one of the most pervasive myths about transgender people at a convention earlier this year, suggesting that men can abuse trans-friendly laws for voyeurism in women’s bathrooms.

“Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE,” Huckabee said in a video resurfaced on YouTube over the weekend by World Net Daily, according to a report by BuzzFeed’s Megan Apper and Andrew Kaczynski. “I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.'”

Regardless of whether or not Huckabee was joking, I did not find what Huckabee said one bit funny.

First off, Huckabee repeated a common canard that bigots will use to oppose equal rights for transgender people. They believe enacting laws and ordinances prohibiting discrimination against transgender people would lead to men claiming to be women so that they can creep out, or even sexually assault, women in women’s public bathrooms. That’s an absolutely false claim, as, in states where transgender people enjoy legally-protected rights, there has been not one documented instance of sexual assault or voyeurism that has been attributed to laws prohibiting discrimination against transgender people.

Secondly, for Huckabee to claim that he wanted to claim that he’s a woman in order to creep out girls showering in a high school locker room is absolutely disgusting. Huckabee is, in effect, condoning bathroom voyeurism by men against women, which is flatly inappropriate. Huckabee shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House with that kind of attitude towards girls and women.

Oh, by the way, I strongly encourage people to read this article about how to talk about transgender people properly.

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Four Minnesota newspapers publish full-page ad calling for transgender people to be banned from playing sports

An anti-transgender group called the Child Protection League (CPL) paid for a full-page ad in four Minnesota newspapers calling for the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL), the governing body of high school sports in Minnesota, to reject a proposal to allow transgender athletes to participate in high school sports in Minnesota and ban transgender athletes from participating in Minnesota high school sports.

The ad ran in Duluth, Mankato, St. Cloud, and Winona newspapers covering parts of northeastern, central, south central, and southeastern Minnesota.

These ads amount to anti-transgender bigotry, right-wing fearmongering, and hate speech being published in Minnesota newspapers. Unlike the anti-transgender bigots, I firmly believe that transgender people should be allowed to play in sports with athletes of the same gender identity (i.e., transgender people who identify as male should be allowed to play on boys’/men’s teams, and transgender people who identify as female should be allowed to play on girls’/women’s teams).