The "Bathroom Bill": How North Carolina does it's best to discriminate against LGBTQ persons

North Carolina has just passed a law, House Bill 2 (HB 2, aka the "Bathroom Bill"), which requires transgender persons to use the bathroom of the gender they had assigned to them at birth. Now it is illegal for them using the bathroom of the gender they identify as. 

To understand the impact on transgender people it is worthwhile reading the transcript of or watch an interview with Payton McGarry and others (part 1 and part 2). 

To mention just one privacy problem: Would a police officer be allowed to demand from someone to drop their pants just to determine whether a person is allowed to use a particular bathroom? Or how male does a male have to look like, so that they are allowed to use the male bath room? If a female appears too masculine to a police office, would the police office be allowed to strip search that person to find out whether they just broke the law as the leave the female bathroom?

Why hasn't this whole issue been solved by simply introducing unisex bathrooms already (done by many organizations)? Imagine we would introduce separate bathrooms for different skin color. That wouldn't be acceptable. So since we don't discriminate based on skin color (or shoe size or ...), why would we want to discriminate based on gender or gender identity?

Passports and other official documents could just show an 'x' if we prefer to not state as identifying with a particular gender. Some more advanced countries already allow for that. 

Why is this whole matter such a big deal? Are people who support legislation such as in North Carolina just afraid of the LGBTQ community? Or perhaps they are just scared of themselves. Or perhaps they are just too scare to use reason (ie their brains). It takes a lot of courage to realize that you could be wrong and need to change your opinion. And no, I don't think it has anything to do with faith. All reasonable faiths, including and in particular Christian faith, tell you to love thy neighbor (e.g. Matthew 22, 39) in one form or another.

Leaving faith aside and looking at the more practical side: When I use a bathroom I honestly don't care what someone else, who happens to use a different stall, has in their pants. It's none of my business (pun intended!).

Let's hope that the lawsuit in a US federal court against North Carolina is successful and this new ridiculous law is declared unconstitutional. It is encouraging to read that North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper stated that the new law is a "national embarrassment" and that the state's lawyers will not defend it. So there is hope. The ACLU is supporting the lawsuit against North Carolina as well.