In an ostensibly noble attempt to tease out the logic behind North Carolina’s discriminatory H2 law, Megyn Kelly interviewed Governor Pat McCrory last night. And for a moment, her practical perspective (made more powerful coming from someone who’s been experiencing women’s bathrooms for her entire life) cut through the bigoted bullshit.

Kelly asked McCrory what fears led to his passing of this bill. “I do not want government to be able to tell private businesses what their bathroom policies should be,” he said, regarding a Charlotte anti-discrimination ordinance that H2 overturned. “I have no desire to be the bathroom police for private business.” He elaborated:

It was a respect for privacy. It was an expectation for privacy that individuals have, especially our youths have, when they go into a locker room or shower or a restroom, they expect only people their gender to be there in that shower, locker room or rest room. It’s a tradition we’ve had for many years.

(Tellingly, McCrory frequently used “gender” during this interview when he seemed to mean “biological sex,” because he does not care about or understand the notions of gender identity that we’ve also had for many, many years.)

Kelly then pointed out the fundamental misunderstanding of how things go down in the women’s room that’s a the heart of this bill:

I want to ask you about bathrooms, ‘cause I’ve been in women’s bathrooms my whole life, and we don’t have the urinal situation. We got, like, the stalls. And we get to go in, we go do our business, and, like…we don’t see each other. So why are you concerned about young girls exposing themselves or seeing someone else exposed in a woman’s bathroom?

“Well, first of all, I can’t believe we’re talking about this,” said McCrory. “This is not an issue that I started. This is an issue that the left started, not the right.”

Governor Pat McCrory can’t believe that anyone would attempt to engage him in a practical discussion regarding how his law will affect actual human lives, as opposed to upholding the right’s age-old straw man argument about protecting women, children, and tradition from the queer monsters.

Kelly specifically called him out on his seeming perpetuation of stereotypes. “What is your fear? ‘Cause you know there is a misconception that transgendered are somehow molesters, and they’re not. That’s not true,” she said.

“I don’t use that term,” said McCrory. I think he means “molesters,” though it’s doubtful he’s used the term “transgender” much, for that would mean having to consider other ways of life. Whether he uses it or not, he surely implies it.

“Typically male molesters are heterosexual and if they want to sneak into a bathroom, they’ll do it. But in 90 percent of the cases, molestation happens with someone you know. So what is the fear about the transgender situation in bathrooms?” countered Kelly.

“Mine is not a fear, and I don’t like the rhetoric that’s often used on the right saying what the fear is,” said McCrory. “It’s a basic expectation of privacy that I hear from mom and dads, that, when their daughter or son goes into a facility, a restroom, they expect people of that gender, of that biological sex or gender to be the only other ones in that. That’s the expectations that we’ve had for many, many years, as both you and I have grown up on.”

McCrory did concede that H2 creates untenable situations for trans people. “For those people who have these unique gender identification issues, which I emphasize with, we ought to allow the schools to make special arrangements for those people,” he said.

After calling out PayPal for pulling out of North Carolina, while continuing to do business in places like Saudi Arabia and Yemen, where homosexuality is illegal, Kelly called McCrory a “stand-up guy” for appearing on her show and the illusion of justice faded from sight.