Equates peeing to “imposing your lifestyle on others”

Following North Carolina’s passing of HB2, the so-called “Bathroom Bill” which along with barring local and countywide officials from passing ordinances prohibiting discrimination against LGBT persons also stipulates that trans-people must use the bathroom of their “biological origin,” similarly discriminatory legislation has begun popping up in GOP-controlled state legislatures around the country.

As momentum and legal precedents begin to swell, it is no surprise that this conversation has seeped its way into the rhetoric on the campaign trail from those seeking to represent the Republican Party in November.

The policymakers behind these laws across the country all seem to cling to one dangerously false narrative: that a transgender person would use this opportunity to prey on young girls and women and sexually perverse manner.

Despite overwhelming evidence patently proving that no transgender person has ever attacked someone in a public bathroom, Ted Cruz has used Donald Trump’s puzzling opposition to HB2 to launch a national discussion on legalizing hatred towards the LGBT community.

Just a few days after his campaign staffers forcibly removed and subsequently humiliated a 16-year old transgender boy silently protesting at a rally in Maryland, a video captured this past weekend at a stop in Indiana shows the Texas senator admitting that he does not actually believe transgender people should be allowed to use any restroom except the ones in the privacy of their own home.

“Every one of us has the right to live our lives as we wish,” Cruz says in the video, “If any one of us wants to dress up as a woman or man and wants to live as woman or man and believes that we might be something other than what we were born, God has made each of us with free will and the ability to choose to do that if a man wants to dress as a woman, and live as a woman, and have a bathroom at home.”

“So then they shouldn’t use the bathroom out in public?” asks a reporter seeking clarification.

“You don’t have a right to intrude upon the rights of others,” confirms Cruz adding, “because whether or not a man believes he’s a woman, there are a lot of women who would like to be able to use a public restroom in peace without having a man there – and when there are children involved, you don’t have a right to impose your lifestyle on others.”

The comments come in the midst of an ever-increasing rhetoric displayed by the presidential candidate towards the GOP presidential candidate, seeking to capitalize somewhat on Trump’s more apathetic stance on the issue.

This past weekend, he also released an uncomfortably creepy attack ad on Trump saying “Should a grown man pretending to be a woman be allowed to use a women’s restroom? The same restroom used by your daughter? Your wife? Donald Trump thinks so.”