Sometimes, news fills you with joy. It inspires you, drawing upon that font of pure positivity that too often lies dormant in your heart, swelling to incredible sizes and bringing back that twinkle in your eye.
And sometimes, news makes you want to gouge your eyes out with rusty nails. I'm afraid this is a case of the latter.
On Wednesday, henceforth known to us as Inexplicable Bigotry Day, North Carolina lawmakers came together to ensure that anti-discrimination laws would no longer plague the state. And in record time! Indeed, over the course of (LESS THAN) nine hours, a law making body wrote and signed a bill into law, something which only occurs if the building is infested with blood-sucking snakes or a group of scheming ne'er-do-wells wants to score cheap political points with their Conservative base. This instance demonstrates a little bit of both.
The bill, signed into law by B-movie extra and combover advocate, Governor Pat McCrory, in addition to overturning Charlotte's anti-discrimination ordinance, "prevents any local governments from passing their own non-discrimination ordinances, mandates that students in the state’s schools use bathrooms corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate, and prevents cities from enacting minimum wages higher than the state’s."
Not only can businesses return to turning away customers based on gender identity or sexual orientation, but McCrory has now successfully barred any legislative bodies from fighting back against him, rendering them impotent. As a representative of a party that so often screeches about the overuse and oppressive nature of big government, McCrory seems out of step with this oppressive piece of legislation. How can someone who ostensibly creams his pants at the sight of "Don't tread on me" be so willfully authoritarian? Well, by appealing to fear of course!
Indeed, like any good fear monger, McCrory has gleefully played on the anxieties of parents of schoolchildren by ensuring that this new bill would combat the numerous sexual assaults and privacy concerns he has conjured out of thin air.
"I have signed legislation passed by a bipartisan majority to stop this breach of basic privacy and etiquette which was to go into effect April 1."
The implication being that opening up bathrooms to people who identify as the vague little human drawn on front, biology be damned, will result in mass chaos and the destabilization of society as we know it. Now where has that bullshit logic been used before...
McCrory is a jackass, plain and simple. But the Republicans and Democrats in the General Assembly and in the Senate that allowed and voted for this to happen are even worse. Because people expect a governor of a certain stripe to show his true colors and flaunt them proudly. But someone given the task of legislating and deliberating over said legislation have the duty, nay the moral obligation, to assure that the rights of ALL people within the state they preside over are protected.
Buying into the absurd narrative that gay activists are coming to demand entitlement from small businesses and force their views down people's throats has led to an overwhelmingly stupid conclusion. But stupidity, at least is forgivable. This has done real damage. This will affect the lives of LGBTQ peoples who, even when given the right to marry, still struggle every day to be accepted by society. It will affect the integrity of a system that, while corrupt on a statewide level, at least had pockets of progressive sanity to keep it afloat. And, honestly, worst of all, it will affect children who, looking to live the normal lives their peers enjoy, will be barred from that normality and forced to languish in a place of confusion and fear. Where they will be forced to listen to grown men and women tell them that what they are is abnormal and unworthy of protection under the law. Where they will continue, as has been the case for many before them, to look in the mirror and wonder, "Why won't society accept me for who I am?"
You can read the bill here.
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