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As part of its quest to take the Republican party back to the Middle Ages, North Carolina Republicans have offered a “fix” for their anti-transgender bathroom law. And sadly, it’s just as bad as the problem it’s trying to solve.
You’ll recall that HB2, the offending law, requires people in North Carolina to use the public bathroom that corresponds to the gender listed on their birth certificate.
In response to this absurd requirement to, in essence, police the papers of everyone entering public bathrooms in North Carolina, all hell broke loose. The NBA threatened to move next year’s all-star game should the discrimination continue. And a large number of companies and celebrities have announced that they’re boycotting the state, including: Ringo Starr, Deutsche Bank, Bruce Springsteen, General Electric, Dow Chemical, Pepsi, Hyatt, HP, Whole Foods, Levi Strauss, Lions Gate, and more.
Asheville, North Carolina, USA – April 2, 2016: Sign about HB2 calling it legislation made in fear and hate at a rally protesting the new NC law that denies rights to those who are gay or transgender. J. Bicking / Shutterstock.com
Then a funny thing happened. North Carolina Republicans, realizing that they’ve committed the greatest self-immolation since the Brexit (does that make this the Trans-it?), decided to amend the law to make it more trans-friendly.
Yeah, not so much.
The current version of the law says that if you’re trans, you go to the bathroom of your birth certificate, period. The new version says if you’re trans, and you’ve had a sex change, you can go to the state and get a certificate of sex reassignment that you can then, presumably, flash to the nanny state as you enter the bathroom.
So, in essence, North Carolina Republicans want trans people to register with the state, like animals.
Putting aside for a moment the fact that this solves nothing — people are still going to get carded every time they try to pee in North Carolina — the “fix” also does nothing for those transgender people who haven’t had a sex reassignment, which is the overwhelming majority. They would still be covered by the new law stating that they can only enter the bathroom that corresponds to their birth certificate.
The “compromise” was immediately shot down by Equality North Carolina and the Human Rights Campaign, as it should be. As Equality North Carolina notes in the press release on the latest “fix”:
Only 33 percent of transgender people actually have gender reassignment surgery. This is due to a variety of factors – including but not limited to cost, age, health and medical needs, and access to skilled providers.
The North Carolina legislature is trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic; or to use the local vernacular, put lipstick on a pig. And if I may mix my metaphors, that pig won’t fly.
If North Carolina doesn’t want to lose the all-star game, and a ton more business, they need to outright repeal HB2. Anything less, and the boycott continues.
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