As I’m sure you’ve heard, there’s currently a huge nationwide controversy that erupted from North Carolina. The controversy is rooted in the fact that North Carolina has passed a law, House Bill 2 (or HB2), in which people must use the bathroom of the gender they were born in. For example, Caitlyn Jenner would have to use the men’s room in North Carolina.

The bill was championed by Republicans in the state who say that it will protect young women and girls from being attacked by men pretending to be transgender women in bathrooms.

In protest, many musicians like Ringo Starr, Bruce Springsteen, Demi Lovato, Nick Jonas, and Pearl Jam have cancelled their concerts in the Tar Heel State in retaliation to the HB2. This has lost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.

Eight cities and four states have banned publicly funding travel to North Carolina. Lionsgate, the production company known for "The Hunger Games" and "Orange Is The New Black", moved an eight-day film production to Canada. PayPal has cancelled its plans to open a new global payment center in Charlotte. Deutsche Bank has also cancelled its plans to expand into the state. This has cost the state hundreds of jobs.

The New York Times has projected that North Carolina will lose billions of dollars due to companies and businesses protesting their “bathroom bill.”

So why is North Carolina and its governor, Pat McCrory, risking losing billions of dollars for schools, roads, and housing for the sake of this law?

Because of prejudice.

Transgender people have been getting a lot of coverage in the media these past couple of years due to celebrities like Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner speaking out about their community. People are learning more about trans people and trans issues and that’s scaring some close-minded folk out there. Therefore, Republicans are taking the same old script that they used about gay men and applying it now against transgender women.

They are claiming that they want to protect the children. Transgender women have been using the bathroom of their choosing for decades and there haven’t been any issues. There is no record of a man ever pretending to transgender in a women’s bathroom and attacking or harming a child. This is simply a prejudicial attack against transgender women veiled as some sort of righteous and protective cause.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Justice Department and North Carolina filed dueling lawsuits over HB2. The Justice Department also threatened to stop federal funding to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina.

With millions of dollars at stake, UNC President Margaret Spellings defied her governor and her state by complying with federal law and saying that UNC will continue in its tradition of not discriminating based off on, among other things, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

In response to these bathroom bills, the Obama administration also made some moves of its own. Two weeks ago, the administration directed schools across the country to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms and gym locker rooms of their chosen gender identity. This move affected almost all public schools and public colleges/universities. Yesterday, eleven states sued the Obama administration over this.

It looks like this is going to be a long and drawn out fight that will definitely bleed into the next presidency.

We’ll see how these bathroom bills play out in this upcoming presidential election and in the courts. I don’t see how these states will win considering that Title IX prohibits discrimination at educational facilities that receive federal funding.

Nonetheless, Republicans in this country have found their new wedge issue. They lost the fight against gay marriage and it took them less than a year to find a new social issue to incite fear and divisiveness in the American people.

No one ever was “afraid” of a man pretending to be transgender in order to attack young girls in women’s bathrooms until Republicans made it an issue this past March.

Hopefully transgender people won’t have to fight for their rights as long as the gay/lesbian/bisexual community had to fight for gay marriage.