I don’t want this to turn into a full-time bathroom blog (though now that I think of it, somebody might want to consider starting one), but I’ve run across a couple more things related to North Carolina’s HB2 not mentioned in my earlier post today or previous ones.
First, Republican former NC Governor Jim Martin has written a sensible essay about the law that you can read here. Governor Martin is more polite about it than I am and speaks of “compromise,” but it’s pretty clear that he recognizes that HB2 is ridiculous, even for the current legislature (which some Republicans I know have been calling an embarrassment pretty much since it took office).
Second, here’s a clip from yesterday’s edition of Fox News Sunday in which host Chris Wallace points out to North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory that the problem HB2 was supposedly meant to address doesn’t actually exist in the real world:
Link: https://youtu.be/KT0V2qfwkyQ
Governor McCrory at least has the sense to more or less admit that Wallace is right, though of course he also does the expected political posturing about “federal overreach.” (How dare the Justice Department urge the state to obey the law and court decisions!) He also tries to blame the law on liberal Democrats in Charlotte, who apparently forced the Republicans to pass the law, possibly by double-dog-daring them or something.
One might hope that if even NASCAR and Fox News recognize that the law is dumb, at least a few brighter members of our GOP-controlled legislature would at least start having second thoughts. In fact, I suspect that a lot of them would happily repeal the law now they realize how completely wrong-headed and useless it really is. (In practice, the bathroom provisions are counterproductive and almost impossible to enforce as written, and by far the biggest consequence, eliminating civil rights lawsuits in state courts, was apparently a drafting error that McCrory himself has explicitly called for repealing.)
In fairness, by the way, I should note that some of the legislative votes in favor of HB2 came from Democrats. Dimwittedness is bipartisan.
Update: In the meantime, Governor McCrory filed suit to ask a federal court to declare that HB2 doesn’t discriminate and the federal Department of Justice filed a separate suit to block enforcement of some provisions of the law. WRAL television news has a summary here.
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