When the Department of Justice recently sent North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory a stern letter warning him that North Carolina’s House Bill 2, aka the bathroom bill, violated the Civil Rights Act, McCrory fought back.
HB2 requires “that transgender people use public bathrooms that match their birth certificates.”
In other words, males use the men’s room and females use the women’s room. Sounds logical to me, but it was quickly labeled “anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT)” by some, including Attorney General Loretta Lynch. She issued McCrory an ultimatum “to confirm that North Carolina would not comply with or implement HB2.”
McCrory responded by filing a lawsuit against the DOJ, citing Lynch and others for their “radical reinterpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.” The suit also called their position “a baseless and blatant overreach.”  
In my view, the duel between the DOJ and Gov. McCrory is the beginning of a series of bathroom and locker room battles that will spread like wildfire across the nation. Ultimately, these contentious issues will have to be resolved reasonably by Congress and the courts, not by fiats from the DOJ.
Members of the LGBT community are becoming more and more adamant about demanding their “rights” when it comes to bathroom and locker room access. Meanwhile, they dismiss, disrespect, and demonize those of us who have legitimate and serious concerns about their radical agenda.
As I understand it, people who call themselves LGBT make up a minuscule portion of our overall population. According to most polls, they constitute about 3.5 percent of some 322 million Americans. Despite their small numbers, they are entitled to equal rights and the protection of those rights under the rule of law.
However, it seems to me the LGBT’s latest demands go way beyond equal rights and wander into the fantasyland of “feelings.” Let’s say, for example, John Doe is a hairy-legged boy or man, with the plumbing to prove it. Just because he “feels like a natural woman,” does that entitle him to invade the privacy of the ladies restroom or locker room? I don’t think so. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Unfortunately, logical thinking and commonsense compromise are in short supply among our political leaders lately. When Attorney General Loretta Lynch likened the bathroom and locker room issue to “Jim Crow laws,” she trivialized the trials and tribulations endured by generations of blacks in America under the yoke of segregation. That was a shameful thing to say.
When Lynch and the DOJ aid and abet groups like the LGBT, they are trampling on our rights by giving preferential treatment to others at our expense. And that’s a dangerous thing to do.
Retired Army Col. Thomas B. Vaughn can be reached at tbvbwmi@blomand.net.