President Obama and major corporations are threatening North Carolina with millions in lost funds for passing a law to ensure equal access to sex-specific bathrooms by both sexes.

North Carolina’s Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, which requires people to use the bathroom that matches their biological sex and not their preferred “gender identity,” has been maligned across the nation as “anti-LGBT,” but the law isn’t discriminatory at all.

The state legislature passed and the governor signed the Privacy and Security Act after the Charlotte City Council voted to require businesses to allow a man into a women’s restroom, shower, or locker room if the men want. According to governor’s office, “this ordinance would have eliminated the basic expectations of privacy people have when using the rest room by allowing people to use the restroom of their choice.”

The Charlotte ordinance, which had been soundly defeated in the past but was pushed through this year despite opposition from parents, businesses, and pro-women groups, brought up serious questions about privacy, as well as safety concerns that perverts posing as transgender people could take advantage of the law to harm others.

North Carolina’s action is not isolated. It is one of at least 37 states where cities and towns cannot pass regulations that exceed the authority given to them by the state. In passing the bathroom ordinance, Charlotte was exceeding its authority and setting rules that had ramifications beyond the city. According to the state, “the legislature acted to address privacy and safety concerns if this ordinance was allowed to go into effect on April 1.”

The backlash has been heated as the legislature has been accused of passing a bill that violates the rights of LGBT citizens. In response, Gov. Pat McCrory published a list of “Myths vs Facts” about this common-sense privacy law. He makes 18 very important points, including that the bill does not “limit or prohibit private sector companies from adopting their own nondiscrimination policies or practices,” “take away existing protections for individuals in North Carolina,” prevent businesses from allowing “transgender individuals to use the bathroom, locker room or other facilities of the gender they identify with, or provide other accommodations,” or “prohibit towns, cities or counties in North Carolina from setting their own nondiscrimination policies in employment.” In addition, “This law simply says people must use the bathroom of the sex listed on their birth certificate. Anyone who has undergone a sex change can change their sex on their birth certificate.”

Obama, Corporations Threaten Blackmail

President Obama is currently considering whether he thinks the new law is a reason to axe North Carolina’s federal aid for schools, highways, and housing. Title IX funding is being threatened, even though a court has already ruled in Virginia that schools should not lose Title IX funding for not allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice. According to this ruling, McCrory is right that NC won’t lose the funding. This decision, however, is being appealed.

No one is being denied use of a bathroom, and private businesses are free to do what they want.

Obama’s threat in the name of “civil rights” puts pressure on North Carolina to repeal the law. Experts say this is unlikely, but Obama’s review of the pro-privacy act puts North Carolina on notice, as has happened in other states. Such a threat would make sense if the law were actually discriminatory, but it isn’t since men and women are being treated equally—both have equal access to bathrooms according to their actual sex. No one is being denied use of a bathroom, and private businesses are free to do what they want.

Despite this fact, big companies, such as American Airlines, Lowe’s, Google, Apple, and the NBA have denounced the law. ESPN, which has been considering Charlotte Motor Speedway for its summer X Games, has said it embraces diversity and inclusion and will “evaluate all its options.”

Facebook, which has a data center in North Carolina, says it’s “disappointed by the recent events in North Carolina.” The NCAA, which has men’s basketball tournaments planned in North Carolina through 2018, has stated that it is “monitoring the situation.”

Do What We Want Or Else

Obviously, there is a full-court press of intimidation being leveled at North Carolina for standing up for a common-sense privacy law. This hysteria over HB2 shows the power LGBT militants and their sycophants in Hollywood and big business exert over the minds of Americans, which results in nothing less than propagandized groupthink rooted in mass delusion.

Threatening a state that wants to protect those rights is a form of bullying that borders on fascism.

Forcing businesses to allow men into women’s bathrooms (and vice versa) and violating real privacy rights and then threatening a state that wants to protect those rights is a form of bullying that borders on fascism—a point Tammy Bruce made when LGBT activists made threats against owners of a pizza shop in Indianapolis.

“For us to put on to these small business owners this kind of totalitarian boot is clearly us becoming the monster we were fighting against,” she said. “This kind of bullying, this kind of fascism in the name of equality doesn’t make sense.”

Libertarian journalist John Stossel agrees, saying in an interview with Bill O’Reilly that the homosexual “movement has moved from tolerance to totalitarianism. It’s the totalitarianism of the Left.”

The Ultimate End: Expanding Government Power

When the governor of New York said he was going to ban travel of public employees to North Carolina because of the pro-privacy law, McCrory called him out for his ludicrous declaration.

If you stand with North Carolina, you stand for states’ rights, individual liberties, actual civil rights, and common sense.

“Is the type of democracy we’re going to have where you go to Cuba and then you tell citizens not to come to North Carolina?” McCrory asked. “First of all, a lot of New Yorkers already moved to North Carolina, have made North Carolina their permanent home. I’m sorry, Gov. Cuomo, but that’s a fact. Maybe it’s because we believe in just common-sense privacy laws, and by the way we also are against any types of discrimination, but that doesn’t mean we overturn basic common-sense expectations of privacy that men and women and children expect when they go to a locker room or a restroom or a shower facility. This is ridiculous.”

It is ridiculous. The Charlotte ordinance that started all this would have forced businesses and schools to open bathrooms to anyone according to their self-perceived gender identity, violating the safety and privacy of women and children. The state of North Carolina rightly stepped in, because this is a valid pubic safety issue, and restored the rights of North Carolinians as well as protecting women and children, something the gay mafia dismisses in the name of its militant agenda.

Now, the Obama administration is trying to exert authoritarian control over a sovereign state in the name of civil rights when no civil rights are being violated. This is really what’s at the heart of transgender laws—not equal protections of transgender people, but the growth and power of the state.

Anyone who supports this kind of totalitarian overreach or cheers the boycott of North Carolina has drunk the Kool-Aid of leftist bullies. If you stand with North Carolina, you stand for states’ rights, individual liberties, actual civil rights, and common sense. The NC governor needs to be supported, not attacked, and encouraged not to cave to the dictates of the gay mafia as other governors have done.

“The bottom line is that it will take real courage to stop the machine of government abuse of power, a machine the gay mafia has such a hand in promoting,” writes Senior Contributor to The Federalist Stella Morabito. “GOP governors who refuse to respect the will of the majority of the people of their states by caving to LGBT tactics of extortion may think they are protecting their state’s economy and reputation. They may even feel gratification when the mafia pats them on the back for cooperating, and congratulates them for ‘nothing happening’ to the nice state they got there. But that will prove to be nothing but a temporary illusion for those governors and their states. And as such things always go, the children will suffer the most.”