Samantha Bee digs up dirt on lawmakers supporting the anti-LGBT 'bathroom laws'
TBS
Samantha Bee decided to look into the legislators behind bills that legislate what bathrooms transgender people can use, aka the "bathroom laws." Focusing on Tennessee, Bee on her show "Full Frontal" found that a couple of these lawmakers have some pretty atrocious public records.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz famously supported the possibly unconstitutional bathroom laws, saying, "As a father, I'm not terribly excited... about men being able to go alone into a bathroom with my daughters."
She first looked at Tennessee Representative Jeremy Durham, one of the sponsors of the bill. He has been accused of sexual harassment, including inappropriate touching, severe enough that Durham was deemed a "risk to unsuspecting women" by the state's attorney general, and then forced to move his office out of the legislative building.
"Tennessee's self-appointed ladies' room bouncer has been deemed such a risk to women that he needs a whole separate building to protect female colleagues from him," Bee said. "But he's still a champion at protecting children from sexual predators, right?"
But then Bee dug deeper. Durham actually wrote a letter of support for a former youth pastor who admitted to having child porn and pleaded guilty to the statutory rape of one of his youth group members. As a result of Durham's intervention, the man's prison sentence was reduced from 20 to three years.
Durham wouldn't disclose how he knew the man, nor why he wrote the letter.
"Because sexual predators stick together?" Bee suggested. "You know what they say, bros before little people who stick up for themselves."
Then Bee moved on to Tennessee Representative Sheila Butt, another supporter of the bathroom law. The host found that Butt helped to pass a law that denied rape and incest victims from being exempt from the state's 48-hour waiting period for abortions. Butt's reasoning? These cases can't be verified.
"Right, those crimes are totally unverifiable," Bee responded. "So we should go with the likeliest assumption that girls are lying whores who just like the prestige of claiming to be raped by their fathers."
She also discovered a tweet written by the lawmaker that stated, "It's time for a Council on Christian Relations and an NAAWP in this country."
Watch Bee take down the bathroom law backers below:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/HPZQWqPfVzc
Width: 560px
Height: 315px
NOW WATCH: New York Republicans ignored Ted Cruz while he gave an impassioned speech at the GOP gala