During a recent interview with Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin on CNN’s State of the Union, anchor Jake Tapper took issue with a new state policy that requires students’ bathrooms and sports teams to be based on a student’s actual biological sex, not what they are pretending or think themselves to be at that particular moment.  Tapper’s concern was not for the girls anxiety about having to share a locker room with delusional boys who pretend to be girls, but rather that this would make boys who think they are the opposite sex unhappy.

This is a new chapter in an old battle.

In 2016 the Charlotte city council enacted laws that would permit males claiming to be females to access women’s bathrooms. Shortly thereafter, following an appeal from concerned citizens in Charlotte, the North Carolina legislature passed a law restricting access to gender assigned public and school bathrooms based on one’s gender as recorded his/her birth certificate, either the original or as amended following sex change therapy. Actually, the legislation had little to no effect.  It was very rare for for a male to invade a female’s bathroom or shower, so no specific enforcement mechanism was required. Life went on much as before. 

Nevertheless, the LGBT community and its allies exploded with rage.  They were determined to punish North Carolina for its temerity, and full-scale war was launched against the government and people of the Tar Heel state.  The liberal elite virtually declared North Carolina to be a social pariah, and not a day passed without some politician, business entity, sports figure, or entertainment celebrity slamming the state and proposing some sort of retributive action.

Over the following months North Carolina was increasingly buffeted by economic boycotts, job losses and public criticism. Sports leagues relocated games, companies canceled expansions and some tourists decided to spend their money elsewhere.  Fiscal losses to the state were calculated to be more than 3.7 billion dollars and rising.

Even basically conservative North Carolinians began to change their minds.  Was the fight worth it?  In November 2016 a Democrat was elected governor in place of the otherwise popular and moderate Republican who had signed the “bathroom bill”.  Two months after the new governor took office the “bathroom bill” was repealed.

North Carolina continues to lick its wounds.

Will Virginia encounter the same sort of public condemnation, or has some of the furor and misinformation gone out of the fight?  Time will tell.