Mark Robinson's new campaign slogan- "North Carolina: Just Shit Anywhere!!"

Why does someone who calls himself a Christian hate transgender people with such intensity?

You're dumb, Garraty. You and me and Pearson and Barkovitch and Stebbins, we're all dumb. Scramm's dumb because he thinks he understands and he doesn't. Olson's dumb because he understood too much too late.

Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

For reasons known only to himself, transgender people live rent-free in the head of North Carolina Lt. Governor and current gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson (R). Though the total transgender population nationwide is slightly less than 1%, Robinson has decided that they pose an outsized threat to those North Carolinians who use bathrooms.

And. He’s. Not. Having. Any. Of. It. No, Robinson is demonstrating his leadership by making it clear that transgender North Carolinians, at least on his watch, can shit in the streets for all he cares. And there are growing numbers within the Tarheel State’s transgender community who are willing to use Robinson’s front lawn as a public restroom.

Trans people are not popular with North Carolina Republican Mark Robinson. So when the sitting lieutenant governor and leading candidate for his party’s gubernatorial nomination said this week that if elected in 2024 he would arrest assigned-male-at-birth trans folk who use gender-congruent bathrooms, “or whatever we got to do to you,” the looming threat of violence surprised no one….

ROBINSON: We’re not going to have conversations about which bathrooms to use. If you are a man on Friday night, and you at the mall on Saturday night, you better go to the men’s bathroom. If you are confused, find a corner outside somewhere.

Call me silly, but don’t Republicans like Robinson have better things to obsess over than who’s using which public restroom to do what? I don’t know about you, but that seems to me a particularly petty, hateful, and small-minded way to approach your fellow human beings.

Then again, Lt. Gov. Robinson is nothing if not a tightly wound, self-superior ball of hate who believes himself God-ordained to lead.

Yeah, someone’s off his meds again….

People like Mark Robinson make me thankful to be an atheist.

Surprisingly this recommendation has been omitted or downplayed in coverage of Robinson’s threats of arrest — or worse — even though it’s hard to think of a business owner or suburban dad who would be in favor of trans people pooping on the ground in any convenient location. “North Carolina — Just shit anywhere!” doesn’t seem like a slogan that would attract tourists’ dollars either.

In the video you can see and hear the crowd respond positively, so there’s clearly a base there enthusiastic for any laws that target trans people, even if they cover North Carolina in sewage as thick as Robinson himself. You don’t expect to see that from just any voter, but remember that these are the people who voluntarily showed up to a campaign event for the guy who seems to hate everyone but Hitler:

In a series of previously unreported Facebook posts, which remain publicly available, Robinson shared a quotation attributed to Adolf Hitler, compared the toppling of a Confederate statue to Kristallnacht and frequently minimized the legacy of the Holocaust while decrying the threat of communism, among other inflammatory remarks.

And Lt. Gov. Robinson, as of this writing, is the leading candidate for Governor in North Carolina. That, to me, at least, means one of two things:

1. North Carolina is thoroughly devoid of competent gubernatorial candidates who are decent, kind, and moral human beings or

2. The Tarheel State’s Republican voters are almost as intolerant and batshit crazy as Lt. Gov. Robinson. That’s a genuinely terrifying, if not particularly surprising, thought.

‘Course, it’s also possible that two things can be true at once.

If you’ve been hanging ‘round here for a while now, you know that I’ve written about Mark Robinson a time or six previously. Yeah, the man’s a moral reprobate and possesses all the kindness and compassion of Caligula on a good day.

All this is from a man who fancies himself a “Christian” but couldn’t lead a Christ-like life if you spotted him an annotated Bible and the Prince of Peace Himself. Lt. Gov. Robinson isn’t even a good person, much less a good Christian, but I’ll leave the theological examination to those who care enough to engage in such madness.

For me, it comes down to one thing:

The fact that Lt. Gov. Robinson is a hateful asshole fixated on a numerically insignificant proportion of the population that’s barely a threat to itself, much less good, God-fearing White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexuals, tells me all I need to know.

This man has chided women for working, leading, and succeeding; called out men who don’t take sufficient leadership (over women) in their homes; maligned queer people as “filth”; ranted that the “transgender movement” was the antichrist’s HR department (we believe we have that correct, but you should check the quote); attacked anyone who wants modest and reasonable gun law reform for being modest and reasonable; advocated getting rid of the UK’s “radical Muslim element #byanymeansnecessary”; called the vengeance of God down upon “cowardly” Republicans who have the temerity to not attack Robinson's enemies or to run against him in the primaries; and has attacked Democrats for, well, probably everything.

And while the media seems reluctant to cover Robinson’s shittiest remarks, his clear intent to revive North Carolina’s much reviled anti-trans bathroom bill from 2016 got plenty of notice in the state and some outside of it.

C’mon, y’all…the man’s a profoundly shitty human being, and you’re telling me he’s about to become Governor of North Carolina? WTF is wrong with y’all? Are we still living in the mid-19th century? Or are all y’all just that deeply, unimaginably undemanding of those who lead you?

I believe that’s what we in the writing trade call a “rhetorical question,” knowhutimean??

A reminder of some recent history: In 2017, months after the infamous HB2 went into effect, AP estimated a negative $3.76 billion dollar hit to the state’s economy, projected over a number of years. One big hit happened, with PayPal changing directions and declining to locate a new office and processing center in the state. Other smaller but notable hits included the relocation of the 2017 NBA All-Star Game and certain NCAA events. After being hammered with negative publicity for months and with a looming deadline from the NCAA, which wished to plan ahead as far as 2022 for its meets and championships, on March 30, 2017, HB2 was partially repealed, including all of its bathroom-related provisions (what remained was a ban on local non-discrimination ordinances that differed from statewide non-discrimination law). A sunset clause on the rest of HB2 passively completed the repeal in 2020, somewhat limiting the economic damage that the AP analysis had predicted.

Elected Republicans came out of the HB2 fight looking very much the bigots they were, and appeared to fear getting back into the anti-queer, anti-trans game. Memory of these burns affected GOP politics in the state for years, but as other states stepped up their attacks, the fear of being singled out for negative publicity subsided. Axios declared dead the lingering influence of HB2’s fallout as of the end of April last year.

If not for intense public pressure, HB2 would be law in North Carolina, and Republicans would be policing public restrooms. Think about that for a moment. Something that should be easy, accessible, and PRIVATE would’ve become a political battleground, with people arrested and harrassed (or worse) over the question of which restroom they’re entitled to use.

What sort of small-minded, self-righteous PERVERT engages in that sort of behavior? Republicans, that’s who.

Remember the “Party of Small Government?” Yeah, I think we can safely say that farce has long since been dead and buried by busybodies who believe that they have the right to police far too many aspects of our bodily functions.

During the 2023 session the NC General Assembly introduced at least six bills targeting LGBTQ+ people and communities, and the appetite for attack seems only to have increased since then. Robinson, of course, has been vocally opposed to the rights and lives of QTs (say it out loud) for more than a decade, and did not stop when he first became a public figure in 2018 nor when he first took elected office in January 2021. So Republican support for Robinson is something of an imperfect proxy for a number of bigotries in his state’s party.

By that yardstick, the numbers are not encouraging. As of February 16, East Carolina University’s Center for Survey Research puts his Republican primary support at 53 percent, with his declared opposition at 13 percent and seven percent, respectively. Only 27 percent remain undecided.

If you think this sounds distressingly like the numbers for Donald J. Diaperload, you’re on to something.

North Carolina is FUCKED, y’all….

If there is any good news for North Carolina in the poll, it’s that at least a few politically bi-curious voters have noticed the stink surrounding Robinson’s campaign. The dominant Democrat in the primary is Josh Stein (support at 57 percent with his nearest competitor at seven), and when ECU questioned voters about the all-but-certain fall matchup, Stein was tied with Robinson at 41 percent each. Perhaps that doesn’t seem like such good news (especially this far out), but, for perspective it’s better than many Biden-Trump polling matchups.

If Dems make the case that not only would Robinson bring back the economic harms and bad publicity of the HB2 days, but also flood the streets with trans women’s urine, it seems possible that pissed off voters could flush Robinson’s ambitions down the toilet.

Perhaps if hundreds of transgender people and others in the LGBTQ community showed up at Lt. Governor Robinson’s house and used his front yard as a latrine, it might send the message that he and his agenda stink.

Hatred and oppression are a lousy way to lead, and yet that seems to be precisely where Mark Robinson is heading…and he feels perfectly within his rights to do so.

Lt. Governor Robinson reminds me of the late columnist Mike Royko explaining why it’s easier to be a Conservative than a Liberal. He always said it’s because it’s simpler to flip someone off with your middle finger than to lift a finger to help make someone’s life better.

Mark Robinson makes Ayn Rand look like a Girl Scout.

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