Why Are Businesses Lying About the Reality of the North Carolina Bathroom Bill?
Lies are born the moment someone thinks the truth is dangerous. Apparently, a good number of business and sports executives think the truth about North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” (HB2) is dangerous, that’s why they are lying about it. Well, perhaps I should be a bit more charitable: Some may not be overtly lying about it, but they are expressing their disapproval without knowing what the bill actually does.
On Monday, Lt. Governor Dan Forest, who helped call the special session to pass HB2, called the executive in charge at one large protesting company and simply asked if him if he or anyone there had actually read the bill.
He admitted they had not. They just labeled it “discriminatory” without even reading it. Who needs the truth when you make so much “progress” by ignoring the truth and engaging in the very bigotry and name-calling you claim to oppose?
READ: This Governor Has Already Done What Others Wouldn’t
The truth is that they, like other companies who haven’t bothered to read the bill, are simply taking their marching orders from the misnamed “Human Rights Campaign,” who have the audacity to claim that men have a human right to have access to women and girls in public bathrooms, and that any acknowledgement of the biological differences between men and women is somehow discrimination against people who prefer same-sex relationships.
In the name of diversity, I’d like to offer a different view in six points:
1. All good laws discriminate against behaviors, not people. No one is being discriminated against with HB2, which discriminates against the behavior of a man using the women’s restroom. If any law is wrongly discriminatory, it is the bad law passed by the Charlotte City council to create this controversy. It actually discriminates against women and children by making public restrooms unsafe for them. (The ACLU has already filed a lawsuit alleging HB2 does not provide “equal protection” to some folks. Ironically, it’s only because of HB2 that women and children get “equal protection” from predators in public bathrooms!)
2. People are equal, but their behaviors are not. Good laws treat all people equally, but not all of their behaviors equally. In fact, the very reason laws exist at all is because all behaviors are not equal and must be treated differently for the benefit of individuals and society. HB2 discriminates against no one who identifies as LGBT. The law merely sets a safe public bathroom use (behavior) for everyone, and keeps employment law consistent across the state (more on this below).
3. Your identity is not in your feelings, but your biology. I can’t believe there is actually a need to say this, but many on the Left are living in their own invented realty and they are demanding that we live in it too. The reason we’ve always had separate bathrooms is because of biological sexual differences, not because of feelings or “gender identity.” HB2 simply says that people will use public bathrooms that align with their biological sex as found on their birth certificate.
How could this possibly be controversial? Are we to risk the safety of millions of women and children in public restrooms because an extremely small number of people are experiencing a mismatch between their psychology and their biology? Good public policy does not risk the physical safety of women and children so an extreme few have a preference for a different bathroom.
Moreover, HB2 actually accommodates people who have had so-called “sex change” operations. They can use the bathroom of their choice provided they’ve had their birth certificate changed. It also affects only public restrooms. Companies and other private organizations can adopt any policy they want for their workplace. Does the NBA and the NFL allow men in women’s bathrooms? Does Apple? Cisco? Marriott? Lowes? Then why are they insisting the government force everyone to do so? Why do they think North Carolina is wrongly discriminating when they are doing exactly the same thing in their businesses?
And why aren’t these holier-then-thou folks threatening to pull their business from Iran and Saudi Arabia, who are actually murdering homosexuals? Their moral outrage is not only misdirected, it shows that they’re willing to put women and children at risk by kowtowing to a deceptive special interest group, but they’ll sacrifice nothing to save the people they say they care about by confronting real evil abroad.
4. The danger is real from sexual predators in women’s restrooms. If you don’t think so, then watch this video. Just the first six minutes are chilling enough.
5. Race and LGBT are not the same: Race is not a behavior and race has no impact on someone’s behavior. But homosexuality is a behavior and LGBT political goals are all about imposing certain leftist behaviors on others, from forcing people to participate in same sex marriage ceremonies to allowing men in women’s restrooms.
READ: LGBT Activists Now Taking Aim at Another Southern State
The Human Rights Campaign also wants to use the strong arm of government to force companies to give employment preference to a long list of sexual orientations. This would mean that someone who claimed a homosexual orientation—or someone who exhibited the behavior of cross-dressing at work for example—would have more job security than John or Jane Doe. How so? Because if a company has to downsize, who are they going to let go—one of the helpless Does, or the person who can bring a costly lawsuit alleging “discrimination”?
6. Opposition to harmful behavior is not bigotry. It is wise. Unfortunately, some on the Left and in business falsely equate opposition to a behavior as prejudice toward people who engage in that behavior. That’s the central fallacy in virtually every argument the Human Rights Campaign puts out—if you don’t agree with every aspect of LGBT behavior or their political goals, you are somehow bigoted against people who identify that way. If political opposition is bigotry, then the activists at the Human Rights Campaign are bigots for opposing conservatives. The truth is conservatives have good reasons based in public health and safety for not wanting to advocate same-sex marriage or men in women’s bathrooms. But it’s much easier for the Human Rights Campaign to ignore those arguments and call people names.
The truth is just too dangerous. {eoa}
Dr. Frank Turek is the president of CrossExamined.org. He is a leading apologetics expert and cultural commentator, a dynamic speaker, award-winning author, and radio and television host.
