HICKSVILLE, N.C. — Comparing North Carolina’s House Bill 2 — the so-called bathroom bill — to segregationist laws of the Jim Crow era, President Obama is threatening to send federal troops to escort firefighter and father of three Gus Shaftman, 34, into the girls’ restroom at his daughter’s school.
Shaftman, who last year began to undergo hormone replacement therapy and asked friends and family to use female pronouns when addressing him, says that earlier this month, he was watching his 11-year-old daughter Ashley play basketball against a rival school when he felt the need to pee.
“When a lady’s gotta go, she’s gotta go,” Shaftman explained to the Dandy Goat’s public restroom policy expert Dr. Cortessi Flush. “So I walked into the little girls’ room, found an empty stall, lifted the seat, and drained the old weasel.”
That’s when school janitor Dim Whit, who moved to the U.S. from Laos in 2008, saw several girls hurrying out of the restroom.
“I told Mr. Shaftman, you cannot do pee-pee in that one,” he said. “You use other bathroom, like sign says.”
School principal Billy Hilliard agreed, and when Shaftman refused to exit the six-toilet restroom, local police forcibly removed him, citing the recently passed law that requires individuals to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex as stated on their birth certificate.
Shaftman was let off with a warning and compliments on his dress, but he says that his dignity as a woman has been attacked, and he is considering pressing sexual assault charges against the officer who wrapped his arms around where Shaftman’s breasts will eventually be implanted.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch says that the actions of school officials and the Hicksville Police Department violate Titles IX, XVI, XLVII and MCMXI, according to a Justice Department memo sent to Principal Hilliard earlier this week.
In a television address on Wednesday, President Obama described Shaftman as a modern-day Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. rolled into one.
“If these backwards Southern hillbillies don’t wake up and realize that this is the year 2016 and not 2013, I will pick up my phone and order soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division into Hicksville Elementary School to escort Mr. Shaftman into the girls’ bathroom,” Obama said. “And they will stand guard over him as he stands there taking a long, natural piss, as is any woman’s right.”