North Carolina lawmakers on Wednesday passed what is nothing short of a hateful statute that grants anyone in the Tar Heel State a sweeping license to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans. This is Indiana 2.0, but on steroids. Here's a very good description of it from Michelangelo Signorile:
The new law basically rewrites the state’s civil rights laws to protect on the basis of race, color, country of origin, religion, age and “biological sex,” creating a new category meant to exclude transgender people.
How it overturns existing ordinances protecting LGBT people in localities — and seeks to get around the Supreme Court’s landmark Romer v. Evans decision — is by not singling LGBT people out: HB2 states that any local ordinances protecting any group that is not protected statewide with regard to wages, employment or public accommodations are officially rescinded. So, they’re not targeting LGBT people, they will tell you, legalistically — they’re targeting anyone and everyone equally.
Republican Gov. Pat McCrory invoked the right's hateful bathroom panic trope, "No men in women's bathrooms," as a justification for signing the bill. The Senate Democrats wanted no part of it:
Every North Carolina Senate Democrat just walked out of the chamber rather than vote on the bill which legalizes anti-LGBT discrimination. The remaining GOP Senators then approved the bill 31-0.
Just to be clear: This Is War. The new statute was enacted as a specific response to the Charlotte City Council passing #LGBT nondiscrimination protections last month.
Georgia's governor, Nathan Deal, is currently weighing a similar bill and the Nebraska Senate just shut down a bill that would have provided LGBT protections.
LGBTQ Americans are now the clear target of a nationwide campaign being prosecuted by religious zealots to systematically solidify discrimination in every state that hasn't already enacted nondiscrimination protections (i.e. red states). We already knew this, but what we're seeing now is that it's actually becoming a reality much like the 2004/2006 anti-gay marriage amendments that swept the country.
Stay tuned ... I'll have more thoughts in my column this weekend. If you want to ready my reflections on how non-existent LGBTQ issues have been on the 2016 campaign trail, last week’s column is here.
Also, I'm going to start adding a bit of shameless promotion at the end of my #LGBTQ rights posts for my book Don't Tell Me to Wait because it is a reminder of this fact: When we fight, we win. It is also a playbook for how to wage that war. The grassroots has to keep fighting and do more of it because our national groups aren't getting the job done. And they won't figure it out until we push them to do so.