Illinois GOP legislator threatens violence if state passes all-gender bathroom bill

Illinois state senators last week were told to expect violence if they voted to pass legislation that would allow businesses to install multiple-occupancy restrooms open to all genders.

Speaking on the Illinois Senate floor Thursday, state Sen. Neil Anderson, a Republican, said he would be driven to physical violence if “a guy” entered the same restroom as his 10-year-old daughter.

“I’m telling you right now, if a guy walks in there, I’m going to beat the living piss out of him,” Anderson said during Thursday’s floor debate on House Bill 1286 as his supporters cheered. “So, this is going to cause violence, and it’s going to cause violence from dads like me.”

The bill — which would require mixed-gender, multiple-occupancy bathrooms be equipped with floor-to-ceiling stall dividers, locks, baby changing tables and at least one vending machine for menstrual products — seeks to expand an existing state law requiring that single-occupancy restrooms be open to all genders.

The legislation passed the Senate largely along party lines in a 35-20 vote Thursday and was given final approval by the Democratic-controlled House on Friday. The measure would go into effect with Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s signature.

Anderson’s comments during Thursday’s floor debate were condemned as gratuitously violent by Illinois Senate Democrats. State Sen. Mike Simmons (D) suggested Anderson’s remarks should be stricken from the record.

“I wouldn’t want a single person in the state to read that record and think that anybody here would come after them if they would do something so mundane as to use the bathroom,” he said.

Simmons, Illinois’s first openly gay state senator, in a Twitter post late Thursday said Anderson’s comments targeted LGBTQ people.

“I refuse to accept dog-whistling against LGBTQ+ communities,” he wrote, “and today’s floor debate on gender neutral restrooms legislation was no exception.”

On Friday, three LGBTQ rights groups — Equality Illinois, Pride Action Tank and AIDS Foundation Chicago — issued a joint statement denouncing “the violent language” used during Thursday’s debate and accusing a “state senator” of advocating for “transphobic violence,” an apparent reference to Simmons.

“This violent language is appalling and emblematic of what trans and gender-expansive people experience in their daily lives,” the groups wrote in the statement. They referenced data from a 2015 survey that found 58 percent of transgender people in Illinois avoided public restrooms because they were fearful of confrontation.

“The violent language like that used by the state senator gives license to transphobic actors to harm trans people,” the groups wrote Friday. “Enough is enough.”