A senator in South Carolina is pushing for a new bill that looks very much like North Carolina’s HB2, an anti-LGBTI provision that was enacted last month.

Last Wednesday, Senator Lee Bright presented S. 1203 to the Senate floor. The bill, though not as sweeping as HB2, is heavily targeted at transgender people.

Essentially, it would bar all local governments in South Carolina from passing nondiscrimination ordinances that would protect transgender people, like allowing them to use public bathrooms according to their gender identity.

Worse still, the new law would force transgender students in all schools to use bathrooms that correspond to their ‘biological sex.’

‘I’ve about had enough of this,’ Bright said. ‘I mean, years ago we kept talking about tolerance, tolerance, and tolerance, and now they want men who claim to be women to be able to go into bathrooms with children. And you got corporations who say this is okay.’

Speaking openly on his condemnation of the companies who are boycotting North Carolina, Bright continued by targeting PayPal:

‘Men and women sharing bathrooms in public places is just beyond me.’

In response to Bright’s proposal, Governor Nikki Haley disagrees and says there is no need for a new law as the state’s 16-year-old religious freedom legislation ‘has worked perfectly’:

‘In South Carolina, we are blessed because we don’t have to mandate respect or kindness or responsibility in this state.

‘And so I’ll tell you that law has worked perfectly. I don’t know of any example that we’ve had a problem of.

‘And South Carolina is going to continue to focus on ethics, and on roads and on jobs and on all of those things because we think we’ve got that part covered.’

Chase Glenn, chair of the transgender committee for gay and transgender rights group, SC Equality, argues that the bill would create ‘an unsafe environment for transgender men and women by outing them because they would have to use the bathroom based on the gender listed on their birth certificate.’

‘This is our worst fear,’ said Glenn. ‘This is playing into the myth of the bathroom predator. This myth has been debunked.’

Glenn who is a transgender man added that he had no problem using public bathrooms since his transition over a year ago.

‘If I had to use the women’s room, I would get a lot of really weird looks and probably get yelled at,’ he added.



On top of discriminating against transgender people, Bright is also known to be a strong and vocal advocate for the right to bear arms, and the preservation of the confederate flag in his state.