Anti-LGBT Bigot James Dobson Implies Men Should Shoot Trans Women in Restrooms

Evangelical Christian author James Dobson published a violent screed Tuesday that took transphobia in public restrooms to a horrifying new level.

Taking aim at the Obama administration's historic support of transgender individuals — President Barack Obama issued a declaration in May calling on states to allow trans people to use public facilities that match their gender identity — Dobson falsely equated trans women with sexual predators and offered a thinly veiled solution to the alleged danger they pose in bathrooms:

Man up and shoot 'em.

"If you are a married man with any gumption, surely you will defend your wife's privacy and security in restroom facilities," Dobston wrote at WorldNetDaily, which bills itself as having "the largest reach of any Christian website on planet Earth."

"If you are a dad, I pray you will protect your little girls from men who walk in unannounced, unzip their pants and urinate in front of them. If this had happened 100 years ago, someone might have been shot. Where is today's manhood? God help us!" 

Dobson also accused Obama of acting "like a king" and trying to "change the way males and females relate to each other."

"The president's order made me furious, and then sick to my stomach," Dobson wrote. "Who is it that is warping our children? It is Barack Obama, one of the worst presidents in American history, and it is time we stood up and said so!" 

Dobson's rant disguised as journalism — titled "Protect Your Kids From Tyrant Obama" — also outlines numerous scenarios that have little to do Obama's words, or with the countless transgender people across the United States who simply wish to use the restroom in peace.

For instance, Dobson asks readers to imagine men dressed as women, "peering over toilet cubicles" at people doing their business, or grown men unzipping their pants and urinating in front of young girls. 

In framing his argument this way, Dobson ignores a simple truth: Trans women are women, not men in dresses. So even if men were caught committing these crimes, they would in no way be a referendum on what actual trans women are doing.

What's more, the myths about trans people Dobson perpetuates have been repeatedly proven false. 

Anti-trans advocates have famously failed to name any documented examples of transgender people assaulting anyone in public bathrooms — let alone the kind of patterned violence that might call for legislation to prevent it. 

But that hasn't stopped states from passing such laws anyway. The subject has been at the center of a national controversy since North Carolina passed HB2, which requires people in the state to use bathrooms that match their gender assigned at birth rather than their gender identity. 

Target recently announced customers would be allowed to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity — and anti-trans bigots wasted no time trolling the store's bathrooms while publicly poking fun at trans identity.  

At the end of the day, Dobson's piece not only misunderstands what being transgender means, it openly and shamelessly advocates attacking trans women, a community that faces a staggering amount of violence already. Last year proved to be one of the most violent on record for transgender women, who were killed at a rate of one per week in January and February in 2015.