UPDATE: North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said he has signed into law the legislation that revises HB2. Among other things, it repeals the provision of HB2 that requires people in schools and government buildings to use the public restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to the sex on their birth certificate.

“Today’s law immediately removes that restriction. It’s gone,” Cooper said.

Robert Wenman was four years into being a “full-time” transgender woman in Ontario, Canada, when a police officer asked him: “You got all your legal rights by now. Why don’t you just enjoy life as a woman?”

The question left the then-LGBT activist stuttering: Here he was, training a group of law enforcers on transgender rights, yet he couldn’t answer a basic question: Why? Why was he still campaigning, still fighting?

Laura, Laura, can you hear me?”

The surgical nurse’s call was the first thing Walt Heyer heard when he opened his eyes. He felt a strange jolt: She called him Laura. Laura Jensen, not Walter James Heyer, his birth name. Despite the post-surgery fog, Heyer/Jensen drew in a sharp intake of euphoria: Finally, at age 42, he did it! Finally, he felt free from the guilt, shame, and confusion, saddled over decades of cross-dressing. Surgical tools had fixed nature’s mistake: He was now a she, and Walt was an ugly past.

Welfare reform partially succeeded in the 1990s when legislators stopped haranguing about “welfare queens” gaming the system and started showing how governmental payments harmed the poor. We need a similar change in the transgenderism debate. Bathroom criminals are a problem, but we should emphasize a larger set of potential victims: transgender humans themselves, and women athletes who will suffer unintended consequences.

When Cari Stella recounts her transgender experience in a series of YouTube videos, she doesn’t shed tears, but she does talk about pain.

As a teenage girl, Stella felt a strong desire to live as a man. A therapist obliged. After three or four visits over a three-month period, and without suggesting other options, the therapist prescribed testosterone. Stella was 17. A few years later, she underwent a double mastectomy.

Stella says her family was supportive, and her workplace included transgender leadership. Her transition seemed like a success. Except it wasn’t.

North Carolina’s controversial restroom law could cost the state $3.76 billion in lost business over the next 12 years, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.

Mennonite businessman Philip Zodhiates, convicted in September of helping a woman flee the country to avoid giving custody of her daughter to her former lesbian partner, will serve three years in prison for his role in the case. 

Zodhiates drove Lisa Miller and her 7-year-old daughter Isabella across the Canadian border in 2009 so they could fly to Nicaragua. They have remained in hiding since then.