Intolerant immoral LGBT bullies bash Pastors in North Carolina
In a situation reminiscent of last year's religious freedom
fight in Indiana, and the more recent one last week in Georgia, powerful
politicians and CEOs across America are teaming up with the LGBT lobby to
pressure North Carolina to overturn its new law protecting privacy in restrooms
and similar facilities.
Inside the state, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has refused to
back down on his signature of the measure, despite pressure from Democratic
Attorney General Roy Cooper, who is running a campaign against McCrory.
The Republican governor signed the
law last week after a
statewide outcry against a Charlotte ordinance requiring all businesses and
public buildings to allow citizens identifying as transgender to use their
preferred bathrooms, locker rooms, and similar facilities.
The bill overrode the Charlotte ordinance, but included
exemptions that allow public entities to make their own internal hiring
policies, and allows transgendered individuals who have legally changed their
gender on their birth certificates to use restrooms and other facilities of the
opposite sex.
Calling the law "a national embarrassment," Cooper has
said he will not defend it, and on Tuesday he declared that "this new law
provides for broad-based discrimination" and that "the LGBT community
is targeted." He also said the law conflicts with the employment policies
of the Attorney General's office, and thus "in order to protect our
non-discrimination policy and employees, along with those of our client, the
State Treasurer's Office, part of our argument will be that HB2 is
unconstitutional."
State Senator Phil Berger said in a statement that Cooper's
"zeal for pandering for the extreme left’s money and agenda in his race
for governor is making it impossible for him to fulfill his duties as attorney
general – and he should resign immediately."
Cooper argues the governor's office and others named in the
lawsuit can hire outside attorneys to represent them.
Cooper's rhetoric mirrors that of CEOs and politicians
nationwide who have partnered with LGBT advocacy groups to declare North
Carolina persona non-grata thanks to the law.
Several LGBT advocacy groups have filed
suit, saying the law is unconstitutional and meant to legalize
discrimination. Scores of businesses have opposed the law, as well, with more
than 120 "major" CEOs, including mega-billionaires like Facebook’s
Mark Zuckerberg and Kellogg’s John Bryant, signing a letter opposing the law that was delivered to the
governor by the Human Rights Campaign. The companies include Google, Microsoft,
Barnes & Noble, Levi & Straus, Twitter, Starbucks, and Wells Fargo.
“In our meeting with Governor McCrory, we made crystal clear that HB 2 is discriminatory, shameful, and needs to be repealed immediately,” said Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin in a statement earlier this week. “The question Governor McCrory faces is a simple one: will he seize this opportunity to show true leadership, or will he allow North Carolina to remain on the wrong side of history? This law is doing extraordinary damage to the state’s economic prospects, its reputation, and most importantly, it’s LGBT community.”
In the letter, the CEOs said they "are disappointed in your
decision to sign this discriminatory legislation into law. The business
community, by and large, has consistently communicated to lawmakers at every
level that such laws are bad for our employees and bad for business. This is not
a direction in which states move when they are seeking to provide successful,
thriving hubs for business and economic development."
"We believe that HB 2 will make it far more challenging for businesses across the state to recruit and retain the nation’s best and brightest workers and attract the most talented students from across the nation. It will also diminish the state’s draw as a destination for tourism, new businesses, and economic activity."
Corporations have regularly come down on the side of LGBT
advocacy groups in recent years. Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook led the charge
against an Indiana religious freedom law that was eventually neutered by
Governor Mike Pence.
The openly gay Cook, whose organization does business in nations
such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, had threatened Indiana with the loss of business
from his company.
Earlier this week, several mayors and the governor of New York
eliminated non-essential travel on the public dollar to the state. San
Francisco and New York City -- as well as Seattle, whose mayor eliminated all
publicly funded travel to North Carolina -- have been joined by Chicago and
Boston, and Washington State, Connecticut, and Vermont became the newest states
to ban publicly-funded travel.
“It is my hope for our nation that we do not allow issues of
discrimination to divide us,” said Seattle Mayorr Ed Murray, who is openly
homosexual, in a statement. “Our union is only made stronger when all Americans
are treated equitably.”
For his part, McCrory has refused to back down. He accused New
York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of hypocrisy, telling
Fox News that Cuomo
should not continue to encourage travel to Cuba -- a nation that commits major
human rights abuses as a matter of course.
In a statement earlier this week, McCrory spokesperson Josh
Ellis said that "there’s no doubt there is a well-coordinated, national
campaign to smear our state’s reputation after we passed a common-sense law to
ensure no government can take away our basic expectations of privacy in
bathrooms, locker rooms and showers."
In an unrelated press release, McCrory praised his state's 3.1
percent unemployment rate, calculated by the Labor Department. According to the
release, since McCrory took office in 2013, North Carolina "has added more
than 260,000 private sector jobs and is currently ranked 6th in the nation in
job creation."
