North Carolina lawmakers are bending to media-magnified pressure from business groups, the sports industry and from advocates for transgender policies, say conservative supporters of the state’s popular ‘bathroom law’ which preserves sexual privacy in public bathrooms.
“The opponents of privacy and freedom won’t be satisfied with any compromise and appeasement to the NBA and their business sponsors,” said Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the N.C. Values Coalition, immediately told the paper her organization opposes any changes to the privacy and security bill, also dubbed HB2.
“They will hold the City of Charlotte, the 2017 All-Star Game, and the entire General Assembly hostage until our children are forced to shower, undress, and use the restrooms with grown men,” Fitzgerald’s organization said in a press release. “We believe the people of North Carolina have already spoken through their elected representatives,” she said.
The security and privacy nullified an ordinance in the City of Charlotte that would have allowed people to choose whatever bathroom the feel like using at any given time, just by saying they have a so-called “gender identity” that matches the sex for which the bathroom is designated.
The popular bill caused all manner of boycotts of the state by Democratic-affiliated Hollywood entertainers, the NBA and businesses such as General Electric, Pepsi, PayPal, and others. The White House also intervened, sending the Attorney General Loretta Lynch out to declare that the bathroom privacy bill is similar to racist laws from the 1800s.
But the bill also included various other provisions that are strongly opposed by advocates for gay-rights, including limits on lawsuits.
Fitzgerald told Breitbart News that the original bill was “the right thing” and should not be altered.
We are aware that changes to HB2 are being discussed by legislators. We remain opposed to changing HB2, and we believe that Governor McCrory and members of the General Assembly did the right thing by passing HB2. NC Values Coalition will continue to advocate for common sense solutions that will strengthen privacy and safety in restrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities and bolster the state’s defense against any further overreach by the Obama Administration
Lawmakers have told the Charlotte Observer that alterations and amendments to the bill could be formally introduced as early as the first week of July.
Some of the changes might include restoring the right to sue for gender discrimination in state court, something GOP Governor Pat McCrory has supported in the past.
The bill could also give transgenders who have gone through the full “sex reassignment” surgery the right to choose a bathroom that conforms to their surgically altered gender and affording them a “certificate of sex reassignment” to prove their status.
That’s little different from the privacy and security law, which allows transgender people to change their legal sex after undergoing surgery.
Another proposal is the creation of a new state “anti-discrimination task force” to review charges of discrimination in connection with the law.
An NBA spokesman told The Charlotte Observer the changes they’ve been told about are a “step in the right direction.”
Governor Pat McCrory’s support for the bill has spiked his support in the hard-fought gubernatorial race. In May, it helped gain him a 15 point swing in the November race against the Democratic candidate, Attorney General Roy Cooper. That popular support leaves McCrory little room to backtrack on the transgender aspect of the bill, even as local business groups push him to accommodate the high-tech and sports industries.
McCrory has also pointed out that the the progressives are trying to change the state’s law and culture to make the transgender idea of “gender identity” replace the public’s support for the idea of two different, equal and complementary sexes.
N.C. Values Coalition also put out two video ads urging lawmakers to stay the course on HB2.
Opponents of the bill, of course, won’t be satisfied until there is a full repeal of HB2. Gay activists and several big business such as PayPal have made no bones about the fact that they want the whole law eliminated, root and branch.
In general, the transgender ideology says government should require every American to validate every person’s choice of created “gender identity,” even though a man who wants to be a woman is still a man by every known scientific measure of evolutionary life. For example, an Oregon law recently allowed a jury to award $60,00 t0 a transgender teacher because other teachers declined to use the teacher’s preferred pronoun, which is “they” rather than “him” or “her.” New York City has also establish similar forced-speech rules.
The ideology’s claim that government must enforce a new right to “gender identity” also means that government must ignore and often dismantle many civic rules that evolved to help the two distinct sexes — men and boys, women and girls — meet their legally equal, but different and complementary, needs. For example, the transgender ideology demands that single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms — including those in K-12 schools — must opened up to people of the opposite sex, regardless of age, and without any verification of created “gender identity.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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