A spokesman for North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said the governor would not release his birth certificate in response to a report that said his gender was left blank on his birth certificate when he was born nearly sixty years ago.
"The governor's birth certificate is a private and not a political matter," I.M. Flack, McCrory's press secretary, said Monday.
McCrory also refused to answer questions about his birth certificate as he campaigned for re-election. Nevertheless, he continued to defend the state's HB2 law that requires transgender people to use bathrooms responding to the gender on their birth certificate and not the gender they identify with.
Charity Fairness, a LGBT activist, demanded that McCrory use unisex public restrooms until he could prove he belonged in a men's restroom.
"Governor McCrory should use only unisex public bathrooms until he releases a birth certificate that confirms that the gender on the door of the restroom he's using is consistent to the gender on his birth certificate," she said.
Tru Mendacity, a North Carolina blogger, published McCrory's birth certificate on his website on August 23. It included details of McCrory's birth, such his birthdate, October 17, 1956, and his birthplace, Columbus, Ohio. McCrory's gender, however, was left blank.
Mendacity said he published the birth certificate to, as he put it, "point out the stupidity of basing state laws on birth certificates."
Mendacity wrote on his website that it's absurd to think that everything on a birth certificate is immutable.
"According to McCrory's logic, a person must remain the height and weight on their birth certificate for the rest of their lives," Mendacity said. "God forbid, someone should ever get married and want to change the name on their birth certificate!"
Political analysts say the story is more bad news for the incumbent governor, who trails in his re-election bid to Democratic attorney general Roy Cooper, according to polls released last week.
The governor's low approval figures are connected to his support of HB2, the so-called "naughty potty law," which he signed into law in April.
A majority of North Carolinians say the law has hurt the state's economy.
A number of corporations have either left the state or canceled future projects there in response to HB2. The National Basketball Association moved the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte. In addition, entertainers, including Bruce Springsteen, canceled concerts in the state. Mayors and governors of several cities and states have banned state-sponsored travel to North Carolina.
In May, McCrory sued the U.S. Justice Department after it said HB2 violated the U.S. Civil Rights Act. In his lawsuit, McCrory accused the federal government of "a baseless and blatant overreach."
The defiant governor said that the state had been openly violating the Civil Rights Act since it was passed in 1964. Why, he asked, was the federal government only now telling the state to comply with the federal law?
"If we have to protect the rights of the transgendered," McCrory said in a press conference, "who's to say the government won't come back and tell us we have to do the same for women and blacks and other minorities? What then?"
The posting of McCrory's birth certificate also resulted in criticism from at least one conservative state legislator who had previously supported the governor.
Dire Balderdash, R-Imbecility, expressed outrage after reading that McCrory was born in Columbus, Ohio, and not Columbus, Georgia, as he believed
"Just when you think you can trust a man, you find out he's a Yankee!" Balderdash said.