A radio host in Anchorage, Alaska, has launched the first stage of an effort to repeal the city’s two-month-old LGBT nondiscrimination law, arguing it allows men to prey on girls in public restrooms.
“We do not believe that a man should be using the same bathroom as our little girls,” Bernadette Wilson, host of Bernadette Live! on KFQD, told BuzzFeed News.
“I will leave up to your imagination what one person may do,” she added. "We don’t think a person with male anatomy should be where a young girl is changing."
Hardly a unique argument, talking points about men in women's restrooms — a dig at transgender women or those ostensibly posing as transgender women — has proven an effective message around the county to repeal or stymie laws protecting LGBT people.
“We do not believe that a man should be using the same bathroom as our little girls.”
On Nov. 25, Wilson applied for a petition to place Anchorage’s two-month-old nondiscrimination law on the ballot.
City officials have until Dec. 11 to certify the application, which contains signatures of 10 voters and a secondary sponsor, before the activists can launch a repeal campaign.
Deputy Municipal Clerk Amanda Moser told BuzzFeed News petitioners would then need to collect 5,754 signatures from registered city voters to qualify the measure for the ballot. If they submit those signatures by Jan. 11, she said, the measure would go before voters on April 5.
Passed by the Anchorage Assembly on Sept. 29, the ordinance bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity — expanding rules banning discrimination based on race and other characteristics. Critics bristle because it allows people who identify as women to file a complaint if they are barred from women’s facilities in places of public accommodation.
But there is a notable absence among the petition’s early proponents: leaders of a campaign in Anchorage that successfully defeated an LGBT nondiscrimination ballot measure in 2012.
Jim Minnery, president of Alaska Family Council and a key player in the 2012 effort, told BuzzFeed News in October that he and other faith leaders were pondering whether to run a referendum on the city’s new nondiscrimination law.
“They of course have a right pass what they did,” Minnery said of the assembly, “but we have the right to go back to the polls to see where people really stand on this.”
Minnery did not reply to phone calls from BuzzFeed News seeking comment on Wilson’s petition.
Like Minnery, Wilson was incensed that city officials would ram through a law that was rejected at the polls by a 14-point margin only three years prior.
“It is disappointing to see an assembly throw out the will of the people on something that we just voted on so recently," she said.
“They of course have a right pass what they did, but we have the right to go back to the polls to see where people really stand on this.”
Wilson could cite no examples of inappropriate behavior occurring in Anchorage restrooms since the law was enacted, nor did she know of such behavior in the 17 states and 200 cities with similar laws on the books.
Nonetheless, the specter of men and transgender women using LGBT nondiscrimination laws to sexually assault girls in restrooms has become a national theme among conservatives in recent years. It was the prime battle cry of an effort to repeal such a law last month in Houston, Texas. It was also a message used to repeal similar laws in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Springfield, Missouri.
Asked if she would oppose the law if it only concerned sexual orientation, and lacked provisions for gender identity, Wilson declined to answer.
“I don’t have time to deal with a hypothetical,” she said.
She also declined to say whether she believed transgender women were indeed women.
“They can have their transgender debate,” Wilson said. “The safety issue is that I don’t think anyone of the opposite sex should be using the bathroom or locker room where a young girl is changing.”