Governor Pat McCrory
North Carolina has faced intense pressure to repeal House Bill 2 from major businesses such as Apple and Facebook, but now, they may lose billions of dollars in federal funding for passing the anti-LGBT bill.
The Obama administration is in the process of considering whether HB2 makes the state ineligible for federal funding for schools, highways, and housing, reports The New York Times. House Bill 2 bans transgender people from accessing public facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity, eliminates all existing LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances in the state, and prohibits cities from adopting any new ones.
The Department of Transportation, the Department of Education, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development all told the paper that they are currently reviewing the law to determine whether the state will continue to be eligible for federal funding.
A spokeswoman from the Department of Education told The Times on Friday that they “will not hesitate to act if students’ civil rights are being violated.” Last year, they provided the state with $4.3 billion dollars in funding for kindergarden through 12th grade, and for colleges, reports The Times.
If states are going to insist on legislating hate and bigotry, I think it’s a fine idea for them to lose all federal funding. Then they can see how much it is worth to them to continue embracing their hate. The full story is at The Advocate.
Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant
On the Mississippi bill, considered to the be the worst one yet, passed the senate and is now poised to hit the governor’s desk:
Mississippi’s sweeping anti-LGBT “religious freedom” bill is now headed to the desk of Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, who has indicated his potential support for the legislation.
A final concurrence vote took place in the state’s House of Representatives this morning, following a final Senate vote Thursday in favor House Bill 1523, reports BuzzFeed News. Full story: http://www.advocate.com/politics/2016/4/01/mississippis-anti-lgbt-bill-headed-governor
And am I ever tired of seeing photos of old, straight, religious white men attached to every bit of nasty legislation looking to force people into a not quite human category.
Kudos to Obama for taking some action.
* they may lose billions of dollars in federal funding
* The Obama administration is in the process of considering
* they are currently reviewing the law
Sounds like a bluff to me. They might hold up the $4.3billion for a week or two, just to create some newspaper headlines, but that’s as far as they will dare to go (and probably not even that far).
The cynic in me says McCrony won’t even care about the loss of federal funds. Why would he, he’s been slashing funds to public schools for years now, telling what few successful schools that are left to stop being wasteful and tighten up their belts. Our area’s districts manage to accomplish what they do only because there is widespread public support for education and a hardworking, mostly volunteer, parent run grant committee that each year has to find more and more creative means by which to shore up an ever dwindling budget.
Oh but don’t worry, he’s got some revenue generating strategies in mind! Like reimplementation of the two week period in March and April during which drivers can be fined for going 1 or 2 mph over the speed limit, which is totally not an excuse to pull over as many people as possible on trumped up bullshit! And taking away public utilities from municipal control, then selling them off to the highest bidder! And legislating away climate change. Basically, he’s awful on everything.
Fuck this dude. Nobody likes you, McCrory, and nobody ever will. /bitter
Onamission5:
Jesus Christ, what a nightmare. He doesn’t sound remotely competent, and I think you’re right, he won’t care about the fed funds. I do think revoking fed funds from states who insist on this hate legislation is a good idea, and I’d like to see it carried through, but I doubt it will be.
What gets me is that the bill has nothing to do with the ostensible cause. Yes, the GOP is big on getting government out of people’s lives and this has government groping everyone’s crotch, but even that isn’t the kicker simply because the GOP has always been very selective about which government interventions count and which don’t. The divide always falls on the divide between those with wealth and power, and those who don’t. Funny how that works.
What gets me about this is that this is primarily a symbolic act. This is entirely a matter of the right thinking it has found an issue that evokes ugly enough mental pictures, men lustily trolling women’s bathroom for little girls while claiming to be transgender, for their core constituency to guarantee a big turnout.
The mental pictures fire their imaginations, and titillate their latent deviancy enough to cause them to recoil in horror. I’ve long contended that within the more religious districts it is not their fear of gays , or in this case, transgender, persons, the passion comes from inside themselves and skirting too close to their own dark desires. They can picture going into a women’s bathroom and scratching that dark itch. They imagine all sorts of lurid developments if they could just get to the female inner sanctum where they imagine it is always sexy time.
Of course, this is nonsense. I used to do maintenance at several bars and have, on occasion, by necessity, I had good reason to go into very busy woman’s bathrooms. Nobody else was going to take care of it and with half the toilets backed up women were starting to line up around the block. So wearing my coveralls and my finest rubber boots, and carrying an auger and plunger, and stern face I advance on the offending clogs.
I clearly announced my presence and intention to clear the room but the need to take care of business had them ignoring my presence and any signs I posted. I had two older sisters and not much of what goes on is a mystery. For the most part exposure is behind closed doors. What incidental bare flesh there may have been was in the context of human necessity. There wasn’t a damn thing sexy about any of it. Just people taking care of a human necessity as quickly and efficiently as possible.
What this comes down to is that just as the anti-gay legislation had more to do with getting out their base the transgender issues around bathrooms are practical non-issues being used as a political ploy. Of course, while the right plays political gotcha the people who suffer are the most vulnerable. Male, female, straight, gay, cis or trans, everyone has to take care of business. To deny them a place to do it is inhuman and cruel.
The up side to all this is that it might serve to highlight the issue of toilet parity. In a whole lot of places the number of receptacles in the women’s bathroom is a fraction of receptacles in the men’s bathroom.
It also isn’t, as I understand it, uncommon for the stalls in the women’s room to be rigged with a toll. You had to put a dime in to use the stall at an airport in Virginia. I heard women complaining about it and asked a girl coming out. She told me the bathroom was empty and I could look for myself. Sure enough, six stalls, and all six had a device on the door. Damn. Charging women to pee. That’s low. There were no such devices in the men’s room.
Perhaps we need to go entirely unisex. Just a row of stalls, and no need to police what sorts of genitals people have. And, if on the off chance, someone sneaks in to diddle the girls, we can take care of that on a case-by-case basis. Last I checked sexual assault was still a crime. Even if it happens in a bathroom.
Yeah, he’s terrible. I wrote a long thing listing bullet points of his terribleness taken from wiki, but it got really discouraging; suffice to say basically the only halfway decent thing he’s done in three years was to veto a “religious freedom” bill, but that’s effectively canceled out now.
The pressure to repeal needs to come from somewhere, no doubt, and it needs to have serious teeth. I’m glad the fed is considering withholding funds, I hope they’re doing more than considering, I hope the GOP of NC doesn’t hate the idea of trans people existing so hard they decide to call their bluff.
grumpyoldfart says:
Of course it’s a bluff. How can the Obama administration be expected to withhold funds from only one state? It can probably be refuted as an arbitrary exercise of power under the equal protection clause of Amendment 14. It’s not as if gender expression or sexual orientation is a protected class under federal civil rights laws.
Kudos to Obama for taking some action
Do you really want to credit Obama for what amounts to a throat-clearing trial balloon?
Rereading, the second paragraph of my first comment I appear to be saying that McCrory has done, or will do, those things in order to prepare for loss of fed funds due to this bill. He has not, those are just examples of some bullshit he’s already pulled, my hyperbolic way of saying I wouldn’t put it past him to fuck over his constituents financially in order to continue to fuck us over legislatively.
Marcus Ranum #9
Yes, I do. Unless you prefer him not to have said that, that is.
Alexander @ 11:
Yeah, I’m with you on this one.
Yes, I do. Unless you prefer him not to have said that, that is.
I would have preferred him to actually, you know, do something. Nice attempt to set up a false dichotomy from you, though. No, I lied. Actually, that sucked.
I guess you prefer him to not actually do anything that affects anything, rather than some kind of executive order?
(Hint: Obama is the CiC of the DoD. He could issue an order that would utterly jack NC’s ass up, in 5 minutes flat, and nobody could stop him.)
Marcus Ranum #13
He could also order martial law in NC and have his arse carved on Mt. Rushmore. He could do lots of things. I’m not saying that what he is doing (and yes, issuing statements is an action, and sometimes a very forceful action) is sufficient, but it is better than nothing (which was the response of every fucking president thus far when it came to LGBT rights) and most of all, it’s low-key, but clever.
Obama showed his position on the issue without committing to any single course of action, and sympathetic parties were emboldened by it. No, Obama’s actions aren’t forceful, but they just might be enough. Whereas your preferred leadership style:
is a Trump slogan.
@Marcus--
Yeah, the president could take military action against a US state. Problem is, people live in states, not just governors and representatives, and it’s those lowest on the ladder who tend to get utterly jacked first. Mind, this isn’t the only problem with your very helpful suggestion, but it is a primary one.
Probably totally selfishly, I don’t want to die in the name of protecting me. Can we as a general rule not discuss obliterating entire states because of the shittastic actions of one party’s leadership within that state? That would be awesome.
I’m afraid I have to pile on here, Marcus. I’m with Alexander and Onamission5. I think the Prez already has enough targets painted all over him at the moment, but even so he isn’t staying silent about this. He’s far from stupid, and I think this is a clever move with the clout.
And no, I don’t think anything will happen in the manner I would like, but it is something, and it’s a whole helluva lot more than turning your back and doing nothing.
The problem with cutting off federal funds for housing, highways and education is that they serve everybody and not just the rich folks. Now if President Obama wanted to really watch some heads swivel around he’d announce that Department of Defense procurement contracts in NC were under review for possible suspension, since employees of the contractors might be discriminated against.
.
Just wishing. . .
Opus:
Now that’s a damned good idea, and it sure would get their attention.