Across the nation, many people have expressed concerned over North Carolina’s House Bill 2 (HB2). It has been labeled by many as an “anti-LGBT” bill. As a lifetime resident of North Carolina, I must confess that I have been embarrassed by a number of bills and laws passed by my state government. From North Carolina’s strict voter registration laws that limit who can vote and how they can register, to their legendary gerrymandering of state districts, to many other controversial laws, North Carolina has quite frequently made headlines for restricting the rights of their citizens. Yet, House Bill 2 takes my state’s pattern of discrimination to a whole new level.
House Bill 2 reads as (1) “an act to provide for single-sex multiple occupancy bathroom and (2) changing facilities in schools and public agencies and to create (3) statewide consistency in regulation of employment and public accommodations”. Many have dubbed HB2 the “bathroom bill” because of its aim to draw a more decisive line between genders and which bathroom a person of a certain gender can/must use. Much of the criticism has been that the bill is insensitive to transgender people, who may have the anatomy and appearance of one gender but may identify as another gender. I think that the concerns of the LGBT community of very important, but many of the critics of HB2 are missing many of the major problems in the bill.
Many civil rights activists have spoken out against House Bill 2. Reverend William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, has spoken very critically about this bill over the past few weeks. In an interview two weeks ago with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, he classified House Bill 2 as a “hate bill” and said that it is a true representation of “old-line, white Southern strategy politics”, policies that he says haven’t been used so explicitly since Jesse Helms ran for state senate in 1984.
Rev. Barber’s main complaint is not with the part of the bill that everyone has raised hell over, the “bathroom bill.” He is more concerned with the “blatant” hints of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and hatred in the bill. In his interview with Ms. Goodman, he also said, “Inside of that bill, Amy, section 2 denies a municipality or a city the ability to raise a living wage, require contractors to pay a living wage, to pay sick leave, to pay vacation and to have minority set-asides. So this is an anti-family, anti-labor, anti-worker bill, as well. In the third section, this bill disallows citizens of North Carolina from filing employment discrimination cases in state court. So this is a trick bill, and the transgender community is being used the same way black people were used in the past or Latino people. They are being scapegoated in order to pass all of these anti-poverty -- anti-labor and anti-living wage parts of the bill.” Rev. Barber has spoken out very loudly over the past few weeks about House Bill 2. He has brought together many groups of people to march, protest, and demand that House Bill 2 be overturned and scrapped due to its clear violation of human rights.
Rev. Barber has also come out as very critical of Republican Governor Pat McCrory, who has stood behind this bill as a “major piece of production that legislature” that he believes will “further North Carolina’s growth as a great state.” In his interview with Ms. Goodman, Rev. Barber said of Gov. McCrory, “Many people see him as having been a very, very bad governor. He has presided over the worst voter suppression laws, the worst redistricting laws, the worst attack on unions, the worst attack on same-sex marriage. He cut more money from public education than any other governor before him and put North Carolina lower than Mississippi. He’s denied 500,000 people Medicaid expansion -- 346,000, by the way, who are white. The only state governor to cut the earned income tax credit, that even Ronald Reagan supported. So he’s not really a Republican, he’s an extremist.”
House Bill 2 is widely supported by North Carolina Republicans and Republicans nationwide. It is almost unanimously despised by Democrats statewide and nationwide. Even R&B star Beyonce has called HB2 “controversial” and “discriminatory.” Last Wednesday, The United States Justice Department ruled that HB2 violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act and Title IX, a federal statute that protects students against sex-based discrimination. Federal officials have given Gov. McCrory until May 9 to respond “by confirming that the State will not comply with or implement HB2.” Gov. McCrory has not made a final decision on the life of House Bill 2, but many Republicans in the North Carolina House of Representatives have strongly said that they want the bill to be held in place.
Because of the underlying implications of discrimination and restriction of rights across many groups of people, we should all be concerned about North Carolina’s House Bill 2.
