It’s been 50 years since Jim Crow laws ruled the South, but in the past few months a North Carolina governor has created a fire storm that some would call the new civil rights issue of our time.
I’m talking about North Carolina HB2 of course, a law designed to keep women and children safe in bathrooms, and preserve the gender norms of public bathroom usage. The GOP spearheaded the effort, followed in large part by churches and religious leaders who feel that the LGBTAQ+ community is attacking traditional values and exposing our kids to predators.
Are they right?
The facts would seem to be against them. In over 200 cities and counties, including some of the largest cities in the country, including New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle and Austin, Texas, have rules banning discrimination against transgender people in public accommodation, including bathrooms. Since those ordinances were passed, not a single conviction involving a transgender individual or even a crossdressing male predator has occurred. Surely with all this hype there is a basis in fact?
It would seem many of these same arguments were used decades ago, but about allowing gay men to use the same bathrooms and showers. Advocates have circulated old propaganda like videos saying “the homosexual” lurks in the bathroom waiting to prey on young boys. Arguments about bathrooms were used to justify segregation and helped doom the Equal Rights Amendment.
What is interesting to note is that people who identify as other genders have used male/female bathrooms for a long, long time. It would seem to the logical person that they should have equal protection under the law. After all, according a UCLA Berkley study, transgender persons are far more likely to be harassed or even attacked by straight individuals then vice versa. Over 70 percent of transgenders reported verbal harassment using gender separated bathrooms. 70 percent. That’s a lot.
Proponents of HB2 state that it actually helps with this issue by creating gender neutral bathrooms, and clarifying who can use which. Quite the overreach by a party that has long urged for government to be limited in its power. Beyond the whole civil rights issue, here’s where HB2 goes wrong.
The law states, “This Article does not create, and shall not be construed to create or support, a statutory or common law private right of action, and no person may bring any civil action based on the public policy expressed herein.”
Professor Brian Clarke teaches employment law at the Charlotte School of Law after being an employment lawyer for 11 years. He says in an April interview with WBTV that one sentence in the law was very big.
“The legislature took that power expressly away, so forbade any local government from raising the minimum wage beyond what federal and state law require,” Clarke said.
“In a very hidden way, it eliminated the ability for employees in North Carolina to file claims under state law for employment discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, color and age,” Clarke said, “And that’s a right that North Carolina employees have had since 1982… and it’s gone”
Speaking of employers, PayPal recently canceled plan to expand in Charlotte North Carolina, citing the discrimination of HB2 and stating that it was inconsistent with the values of the company. Republicans, and later the Washington Post, were quick to point out that PayPal Headquarters is located in Singapore, which punishes male homosexuality by up to two years in prison, and that in 2011 PayPal opened a global operations center in Malaysia, hiring over 500 workers in a country that forbids homosexual behavior, and punishes offenders by up to 20 years in prison. Oh, and public whippings. How progressive of you PayPal.
The more objective look we take at HB2, the more apparent the hypocrisy seems on both sides of the debate. Chad Sevearance, president of the Charlotte Business Guild, and one of the leaders to end bathroom discrimination was recently ousted as being a registered sex offender, convicted of fondling young boys while a youth minister. Before members of the GOP begin to sing this tale of apparent hypocrisy from the rooftops, they should be reminded that far more conservative Republican politicians have been convicted of sex related bathroom crimes, then the entire LBGT community.
This indeed is the new Civil Rights Issue we face today. For the conservative, HB2 is the wrong answer. And for the progressive, it strikes a chord that America should have left in the rear view mirror many years ago.
I don’t have an answer that can make everyone happy. I can tell you the reality. People have the right to go to a public bathroom in safety. Any law or ordinance that forbids that is a travesty of justice.
