Seth Meyers schools Ted Cruz and Fox News on the folly of anti-LGBT 'bathroom laws'

Seth Meyers has explained before why "bathroom laws" that force transgender people to use the restrooms of their birth gender are a misguided solution to a nonexistent problem — a conclusion that Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace also reached, as Meyers showed on Thursday's Late Night. But other hosts and pundits on Fox News have parroted the talking point that these laws prevent grown men from dressing as women and lawfully going into the bathroom with little girls. "To be clear, that's not how gender identity works," Meyers explained. "It's not just a whim, it's a person's innermost concept of self, it's their identity, it's who they are."

But misunderstanding transgender identity isn't the only flaw with the laws in North Carolina and Mississippi. "Now, there are any number of problems with these laws," Meyers said, "and aside from the fact they're hateful and discriminatory, they're also unenforceable," as Mother Jones discovered when it actually spoke to North Carolina police departments. The laws also force people who have transitioned from one sex to the other to use the wrong restroom. "That's how absurd these anti-trans laws are," Meyers said. "A policy hasn't created this much policy confusion since hipster bars stared using animals as bathroom door signs."

But he reserved his deepest scorn for a certain presidential candidate. "Some of the ugliest comments on this issued have come from Ted Cruz, who has decided in the last week to use the bathroom bills as a political wedge against Donald Trump," Meyers said, playing a highlight reel of Cruz slamming Trump for at one point not disagreeing with the law — even, at one point, telling a crowd that Trump shouldn't be able to dress up as Hillary Clinton to use the ladies room. Meyers had had enough. "Oh sure, but if a lizard dresses up in a suit, he can run for president," he said over a particularly reptilian photo of Cruz. Watch below. Peter Weber

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up