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And let’s be clear here: these laws are anti-gay. They’re dressed up as issues of public safety and basic liberty but they’re simply a mendacious means of trying to beat back the progress of the modern gay movement.

The laws take two forms. The first works under the pretext of protecting religious freedom. The pretense is that forcing a baker to make a cake for the wedding of Adam and Steve is an abrogation of religious conscience. Now here’s the funny thing: unlike the Tea Party crowd I really am a libertarian. So go ahead and decline customers, but please put a sign in the window spelling out whom you refuse to do business with. I’m pretty sure there aren’t enough righteous gluttons to sustain a bakery with a sign reading “We don’t serve gays.”

The second form hinges on a panicky subterfuge about the safety of washrooms. We are told that allowing people to use facilities that correspond to their gender identity is a free pass to perverts to put on drag and hit the ladies locker room. In an open letter to Bruce Springsteen after he canceled a concert in Greensboro in protest of North Carolina’s new bathroom laws, Pastor Michael Brown asked the rocker how he would feel if his granddaughter found herself in a bathroom with a 6’4″ former professional football player who has decided to be a woman.

“Do you think it might be traumatic for a little girl using the library bathroom to see this big man walk into her room wearing a dress and a wig?” he writes, “Should we take her feelings into account, or is she not important?” Of course this isn’t an abstract thought exercise. I might ask the good reverend if he wants to share a bathroom with Caitlyn Jenner? Or would he be comfortable with his wife sharing a locker room with Men’s Health cover model Ben Melzer (pictured), who was born a woman?