Top Republican says trans people who need the toilet should ‘find a corner outside somewhere’
North Carolina’s Mark Robinson has a long history of making anti-LGBTQ+ remarks. (Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency via Getty)
Top Republican politician Mark Robinson has said that trans women should be arrested for using women’s public toilets.
At a campaign event earlier this month, Mark Robinson, who has previously insisted that straight people are “superior” to LGBTQ+ people and claimed that trans people are the work of the antichrist, said trans women who use women’s public toilets “will be arrested”, and reportedly suggested they “find a corner outside somewhere” to relieve themselves instead, The Washington Post reported.
“We’re going to defend women in this state,” said the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, who is the Republican frontrunner to replace Democrat governor Roy Cooper later this year.
“That means if you’re a man on Friday night, and all of a sudden Saturday you feel like a woman and you want to go in the women’s bathroom in the hall, you will be arrested, or whatever we got to do to you.”
He is reported to have added at a separate event that “if you are confused [about which toilet to use], find a corner outside somewhere… we’re not tearing society down because of this”.
North Carolina was criticised in 2016 for being among the first states in the US to pass a bill to prevent transgender people using toilets that correspond with their identity.
In the years since, the Tar Heel State has passed several anti-LGBTQ+ bills, limiting LGBTQ+ education in schools and trans youth’s participation in school sports, as well as banning certain gender-affirming care procedures.
That legislation follows a trend across the US, which has seen hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in the first few months of 2024 alone.
In 2021, Robinson faced calls to resign after he called LGBTQ+ people “filth”, adding, when asked to apologise, that he would not back down.
“There is no reason anybody, anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality or any of that filth,” he said.
