Why Ben Carson's Transgender Bathroom Idea Is So Potentially Dangerous

GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson has a suggestion for the transgender community: Use a separate bathroom. (Getty)

In an interview with Univision Thursday, Carson suggested creating separate but equal restrooms for transgender people. “How about we have a transgender bathroom? It is not fair for them to make everybody else uncomfortable,” Carson said.

Carson made the comment after he was asked about Houston voters’ rejection of a law that would ban LGBT discrimination in the city, a portion of which addressed gender discrimination for transgender people in public restrooms.

“In a year with at least 20 murders of transgender people – mostly transgender women of color – on record, it is frightening that the national political stage would permit this type of hostile and dehumanizing sentiments about transgender people,” Chase Strangio, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, tells Yahoo Health. “The idea that transgender people make other people so uncomfortable that we should be banished to another facility is both haunting and absurd.”

Bathroom rights have repeatedly been an issue for the transgender community — especially in schools. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education threatened sanctions against an Illinois school district for refusing to allow a female transgender student to have unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room.

Related: What People Get Wrong About Being Transgender

In late October, the Obama administration said that schools that prevent transgender students from using the restroom affiliated with their gender identity are violating federal law.

Lila Perry, a transgender teen in Missouri, made headlines in September over her fight to use the girls’ locker room at her high school. Students in California and Maine school districts have also fought for (and won) the right to use the restroom affiliated with the gender with which they identify.

Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality, tells Yahoo Health that the concept of transgender bathrooms is “ridiculous” and also impractical. “Who is going to build these separate bathrooms across the country?” she says. “Are the nearly one million transgender people in the U.S. supposed to hold our bladders until they’re built?”

Practicality issues aside, Tobin says the idea is also potentially dangerous. When transgender people are relegated to a separate bathroom, “it puts a sign on people’s backs and says something is wrong with you,” she says, adding that it can lead to mistreatment and harassment.

Related: Chicago School District Defends Privacy Curtains for Transgender Girl

Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, tells Yahoo Health that there have been no incidents of transgender people harming others in a public restroom. “The opposite is true,” she says. “It’s transgender people who are harmed in restrooms. Asking transgender people to use a restroom that is not associated with their gender elevates the risk that they will be harmed.”

That fear of harassment can also lead to health problems for transgender people. “When transgender people don’t have normal access to something as basic as restrooms, they try to hold it,” Tobin says. “People will try to get through the day without going to the bathroom at their job or school and they have health problems as a result.”

Transgender-only public bathrooms may also be illegal in many contexts, says Warbelow: “This is a clear example of sex discrimination. Where sex discrimination is a violation of state or city law, it would be illegal.”

And, of course, it would be difficult to enforce. “The chance that Dr. Carson has shared a restroom with a transgender person and not known it is exceedingly high,” Strangio says.

But why is there so much contention around transgender rights and restrooms? Tobin says it’s one of the few places where Americans still segregate people by gender.

“There is still a lot of basic misunderstanding about transgender people,” she says. “Public restrooms are just representative of that.”

Related: All Yahoo Health transgender coverage

Let’s keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Health on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Have a personal health story to share? We want to hear it. Tell us atYHTrueStories@yahoo.com.