Texas Representative Louie Gohmert last
week defended a recently approved law in North Carolina that targets
the LGBT community.
Approved during a one-day special
session, House Bill 2 blocks cities from enacting ordinances that
prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender
identity and bars students attending public institutions from using
the bathroom that does not conform to their gender at birth.
During an appearance on Washington
Week, Gohmert, a Republican, told host and Family Research
Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins that he would have likely used
the law as a teen to enter the girls' restroom.
“When it comes to this current
legislation where – in most of the world, in most of the religions,
the major religions, you have men and you have women, and there are
some abnormalities. But for heaven’s sake, I was as good a kid as
you can have growing up. I never drank alcohol till I was legal,
never to, still, use an illegal drug. But in the seventh grade if
the law had been that all I had to do was say, ‘I’m a girl,’
and I got to go into the girls’ restroom, I don’t know if I
could’ve withstood the temptation just to get educated back in
those days,” Gohmert
said.
Gohmert went on to say that businesses
opposed to the law are “telling states that you have to let boys
into little girls' restrooms or we're pulling our businesses. It's
just the height of lunacy.”
(Related: PayPal
says decision to cancel Charlotte expansion based on anti-gay law.)