House Bill 2 is now causing a bit of a stir among the top of the North Carolina Republican ticket. Last week, Governor Pat McCrory said that Congress should take up the issue of who should use which bathroom. The governor has been burned enough by the misguided bill and he wanted to pass the issue off to the federal government.
That didn’t sit so well with NC Senator Richard Burr. He’s in a competitive race of his own and the last thing he wants is that nasty debate settling into his race. He called the governor “off-base.” Burr said that the issue is now in the courts and it’s not Congress’ place to “get involved in judicial matters.”
What’s clear is that Pat McCrory has become the face of House Bill 2. He’s all over national news in a futile attempt to recast the bill as either protection for women and children or an effort to reel in overreach by the Charlotte City Council. He’s never developed a clear message or reason for the bill so trying to defend it never works out, especially when the people asking the questions are better prepared than he is.
McCrory has been taking a throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks response to HB2. The lob to Congress was just another attempt to get away from a bill that’s clearly hurting him. He’s playing hot potato all by himself. Every time he throws it, it ends up back in his hands.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Heh-heh–you said “flow”. Seriously, though, from what I know of Pat McCrony (and I lived in Charlotte for decades), he counted heads in the early demonstrations/calls on this issue and deduced that he could lock in the bigot vote in the upcoming election by taking the bonehead side of the argument. And he may be right: it’s not hard to visualize church buses filled with pee-pee voters rolling through the state on election day. However, at this point Pat has no “friend of the court” in the federal race: Trump has said he doesn’t care where people pee, and both Clinton and Sanders have denounced McCrony’s and the GA’s actions. So unless Pat and the current GA majority have plans to convince NC to secede (and we all know how well that turned out the last time), they need to get over themselves. It would be nice if they would do something positive for our state: but I’m not holding my breath on that.
Hi JC
I have seen many good replies to my post about HB2.
But , I think my original idea is being overlooked.
As I mentioned , HB2 is all about developing a ‘wedge issue ‘ , just like Amendment 1 , in order to drive conservative votes in the upcoming election.
My intention is to spread a wedge of our own : that this anti-LGBT bigotry is bullying on a grand scale , harming people who , in some cases , are victims of forces beyond their control. Hell , That is true of the majority of us poor folk who have made the best we can of limited options we were born into , yet the Right demonizes us as leeches (Mitt Romney, 2012) , or worse.
What I am suggesting is a Wedge of our own ; to spread the message of shaming these hotshots , like Trump , who would dare to ridicule , and punish , from the high horse , those who they assume are not as ‘ able’ as themselves.
Maybe I’m just pissing in the wind. The arrogance of the wealthy inheritors , and their Frat Boy ilk perhaps makes them immune from criticism.
That makes our effort even more difficult , especially in the face of divisions among supporters of the Democratic candidates
Does anyone know that being Transgender is not necessarily a choice ?
There are people living among us now , who , due to accidents of nature (hermaphrodite) , or medical accidents (circumcision machine malfunction) , have had gender reassignment as toddlers.
I have been aware of this for decades due to an incident at Atlanta Baptist Hospital in the 80’s. Though rare , I imagine these things happen often enough , but are not talked about.
So , the GOP bullies have found their wedge issue for November.
As usual , they pick on a minority few understand , and too small to defend themselves , at least against lawyers and politicians.
Worse, if you follow the news , vigilante violence , and mistaken accusations based on how some people look , is on the rise.
Just as with Muslims, demonization leads to wider attacks against those thought to be offenders.
No, the ignorant and biased don’t understand—-and don’t want to understand—-that being transgender is not, at its core, about personal choice or preference. And, no, the gullible have no idea how they are being used by callous and fear-mongering politicians.
Well , in all this talk about the ‘Bathroom Bill ‘ , I have yet to hear something scientific , if you will , from either side . As I heard on the Dianne Rehm show , there is no medical protocol for the Transgender as there is for Homosexuality.
The thing is , I would like to see the medical conditions I mentioned shoehorned into this discussion. We could perhaps shame the bigots for bullying people with medical conditions , although that didn’t stop Trump!
These are pretty clear discussions, and the APA links are science-based:
http://www.transequality.org/issues/resources/understanding-transgender-people-faq
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-does-it-mean-to-be-transgender.html
http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender.aspx
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2015/11/psychology-transgender.aspx
Enjoyed the post, but please don’t give those nuts any more ideas. Interstate commerce! How many more foolish nonsense can they conceive of as fitting into that category? OMG!!
It appears that NC McRory was looking for a solution where there was not a problem.
Could anyone relate how many problems there have been with this bathroom thing?
Except of course the Dennis Hastert and Larry Craig instances, also the
Paterno situation. but that seems OK, they are all republican men!
Last time I heard McCrory explaining, HB2 is actually a “privacy” issue for women and girls and passing HB2 was essential to provide that privacy. Yeah, and here I was thinking that the lock on the women’s stalls in all public bathrooms I have ever been in was sufficient for privacy! Wonder how he would like to explain why that privacy issue does not apply to my medical decisions.
Tiny Tim and Phatboy Phil didn’t know what they were getting into. Sad!
Just what we need from our legislators. I need to know where to go to the bathroom. Great work from one term Pat.
Art Pope and the Tea Party extremists in Raleigh just couldn’t help themselves. HB2 is merely a symbol of what they’d really like to do, which is to re-segregate the public schools and have whites-only drinking fountains. That’s what’s behind reactionary nostalgia for the 1950s.
This was an issue that should have been left alone by everyone — Charlotte, the legislature, the Obama administration. It was not a problem before, and it’s not a problem now except in the eyes of extremists at both ends of the political spectrum. And now, in one of the most politically stupid moves possible, and in an opinion with no basis in legal authority, the Justice Department is dictating to every school district in the country how to handle this issue. That feeds into every narrative the right has about the administration. It is a gift to right wingers like the one in Rowan County who said this week that students should be able to carry pepper spray in case they get attacked by transgender people in the bathroom. Will the lunacy please stop on all sides?
The NCGA should have left it alone.
If it had remained just a city ordinance—like it has been in over 200 municipalities across the nation—there would have been no dust-up.
But the GOP’ers in the NCGA got their intolerant juices flowing, and once they tried to make it a campaign issue by passing HB2 (including adding some additional provisions to that law that were oppressive on all NC cities and workers), the matter blew up in their faces. It has hurt the state’s economy and its standing as a place to visit and do business, and has prompted national and corporate condemnation. And it also forced the feds to respond; HB2’s transgender provision appears to break federal civil rights law. And now, as Thomas notes, it’s even causing arguments and “hot-potato tossing” within the NCGOP.
If anything, the Rowan County case is a gift FROM right wingers, not TO right wingers. Some county education leaders implying that transgenders are, by nature, violent attackers (when there have not been any case histories of such) is fear-mongering and bigotry pure and simple, and has been identified as such by most all of the sane folks following the case.
Finally, political and policy arguments that distribute blame to all sides of an issue, or calling both sides “extreme,” are becoming quite the rage of late, especially among uber-conservatives. IMO, it is taking false equivalency to its broad-brush and silly extreme.
Do you still wish to stand by your statement that the move by the Federal Department of Justice is ‘politically’ motivated?
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Great Seal of the United States
Long title: An act to enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States of America to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes.
Maybe, just maybe the issue should never have become one of politics. It is after all about people and yes students, who have real challenges that need not be objectified by politicians and those that is it frankly none of there business. Aren’t you embarrassed that we are talking about peeing ? Should be.