The Daily Show perfectly captures how so many feel about North Carolina’s bathroom fight

The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah can’t believe how far North Carolina is willing to go to defend its anti-transgender bathroom law.

In the latest turn of events, North Carolina has risked losing billions in annual funding for education after the US Department of Justice declared the state’s anti-LGBTQ law violates federal civil rights laws. Specifically, the Justice Department took issue with provisions that prevent trans people from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity in schools and other government buildings.

“These guys are not fucking serious,” Noah said on Tuesday. “You’re willing to give up $2 billion over bathrooms? There is no one I would not let use a bathroom for $2 billion. In fact, I would be a bathroom for $2 billion.”

Noah added, “You realize you’ve already been sharing the bathroom with trans people for your entire lives, and you’ve never noticed it? And why would you? Because it’s a public bathroom. You’re supposed to go in there, mind your own business, and get out as fast as you can. That’s all you do. If you can ID anyone else who is in the bathroom with you, you are paying too much attention.”

But as Noah pointed out, it’s not just about bathrooms. North Carolina legislators used the guise of public safety — the myth that letting trans people use the bathroom of their choice would lead to attacks in bathrooms — to ban all laws in the state that stop discrimination over sexual orientation and gender identity. So the state used bathroom fears to enable discrimination against LGBTQ people in the workplace, education, and other settings.

Or, as US Attorney General Loretta Lynch put it in announcing the federal lawsuit against North Carolina, “This action is about a great deal more than bathrooms. This is about the dignity and the respect that we accord our fellow citizens, and the laws that we as a people and as a country have enacted to protect them — indeed, to protect all of us.”