I've read countless articles about North Carolina's recent LGBT/trans-bathroom law, and virtually all of them spoke of the law in almost apocalyptic terms. They used language that I'd expect if a state brought back segregation or started interning Muslims in concentration camps. However, I noticed that most articles were very long on potential horror scenarios and vitriol and very short on specifics. Then it occurred to me that even though I chase a 2-year old around the house and change diapers for a living, I did practice law for several years, graduated from law school, and worked as a legislative aide prior to that. I've read thousands of statutes, rules, and regulations over the years, so instead of relying on news commentaries, I just decided to go read the damn bill. So after reading about the bill, I assumed I'd find language criminalizing transgendered people who take a piss in public bathrooms, the creation of bathroom gestapos checking birth certificates and arresting people, etc. I found nothing of the sort. In fact, after reading the actual bill, I've come to the conclusion that everybody is full of **** on this. First, the bill is far more limited in scope than many (though not all) are acknowledging, and many of those who acknowledge it downplay the limit. It only applies to public agencies and school districts. If a private individual or business wants to let that hairy dude-looking chick with a beard who's on some of the internet memes go into the men's room, it can. In addition, the bill expressly distinguishes between multiple occupancy bathrooms and single occupancy bathrooms, or as I like to call them, "one holes." Public agencies and school districts may accommodate people whose sex and/or gender is "ambiguous" by making single occupancy bathrooms unisex. The only place where it draws the line is the multiple occupancy bathrooms. Second, the bill does not create any sort of criminal offense or civil sanction on anybody. For one thing, it doesn't even mention transgender people or even dictate where anybody actually goes to the bathroom. It only sets a mandate on public agencies and school districts, which the state has every right to do. The idea of having bathrooms segregated by sex is largely enforced by common courtesy and common sense (until now, of course), and usually not by the force of law. If the hairy chick with the beard decides to go use the men's room, this bill will not charge her with a crime or sanction her in any way. (Of course, she could just use the bathroom like a normal person of any sex or sexual orientation would by going into the stall and using the bathroom without waving her junk around to people, which means nobody would know the difference but common sense is out the window now.) So why do I say everybody's full of **** on this, and why am I not high-fiving the gay and tranny-bashers? Because the Right doesn't have clean hands. In fact, it has filthy hands - perhaps even filthier than the Left does. It exploited this issue to load a mess of corporate welfare into the bill. How? Well, first it abrogated a city's right to impose a minimum wage. Does the State have a right to do this? Sure it does, but it's a dirty trick, because it's not germane to the underlying bill. There were probably members who wanted to vote for the bathroom portion and the religious liberty part of the bill who didn't want to also change the state's labor laws in ways that aren't relevant. Why include this? In addition, the bill eliminates the state cause of action for race, religious, national origin, disability, and sex discrimination. Most people know about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, what many don't know is that many states (including North Carolina and Texas) have enacted their own discrimination laws. Why would a state do this when there's already a federal law? (1) Because the federal law contains administrative hurdles, some of which effectively create a very short limitations period. (2) The federal law creates federal subject matter jurisdiction, which means the cases will end up in federal court. State courts tend to be much faster and have different rules of procedure and evidence. (3) The state law sometimes has different remedies available and different elements of proof. Well, this bill eliminated the state cause of action for discrimination, leaving North Carolinians who have discrimination claims that have nothing to do with transgenderism or homosexuality with no remedy under state law. If the Legislature wants to do that, it can, and there's nothing wrong with having that debate, but like the minimum wage portion, what the hell does that have to do with protecting the sanctity of the bathrooms or protecting religious liberty? OK, I'm done with my rant.
don't care who is in the bathroom when I go except no wasps----had a bad experience in an outhouse when I was four years old. And would you please ditch Constanza? That picture is creepy.
Costanza was creepy, but the Hillary picture was just horrifying. Too bad CornDog Perry is no longer relevant.
Nice analysis @Mr. Deez. Now wait a minute sir, as a White Anglo Sax— ...oh, you meant the bugs. Never mind.
Got to hand it to you Deez, reading the actual bill, now that's impressive. How long did you spend doing that?
Thank you Mr. Deez for breaking it down for the common folk. Looks like your skills are still pretty sharp for a chaser of 2-year olds!
Thank you, Holland. I did it while Deez, Jr. was napping. It's much quieter during that time. @Clean, it took about ten minutes to read the bill, which was about 5 pages long. I also had to do a little contextual research, which took longer than the reading. In total, it took a little over an hour to read the bill, research, analyze, and write my post.
I hate bill riders. But both sides like to use it as a wedge item. Terribly dishonorable. Thanks Deez! I, too, was unaware of the degree to which the response was grossly overreacted ... and I didn't know about the riders, either!
Not to sound like a smug douche, but most journalists don't have my expertise. Even if they read it, they wouldn't understand it as I do. (And how many male lawyers also know that Boudreaux's Butt Paste is the best diaper rash creme on the market?) However, I'm not letting them off the hook. They have access to lawyers who could tell them everything I could. However, they'd rather push a political agenda. Furthermore, "it's not that big of a deal" will never sell papers or attract interest like "the apocalypse is coming" will.
I was a practicing journalist for seven years. You're not wrong. In most cases, frankly it's an issue of laziness and arrogance. Journalists are trained to "become an expert" in a sense on any subject they cover, which of course means going and talking to people who know what they're doing, developing a basic understanding of the subject matter and theoretically getting a sense of both sides of an argument if there is one. Problem is, we have a breed of journalist now who believes there's only one side of many of these arguments, and the other one is just racist or bigoted. So IF they talk to someone, it's usually the biggest loudmouth local agitator they can find who will give them a nice inflammatory quote, but probably doesn't have a whole lot of insight into the issue. Because they're not looking for insight; they already "understand" the issue just fine. I honestly don't think it's deliberate dishonesty or a drive to sell papers. It's a genuine inability to empathize or see beyond a cultural viewpoint. Funny how that whole idea of "diversity" in a newspaper only extends to race and rarely if ever to worldview or culture or even religion. No one's saying "we really need more conservative Christian writers, because our paper is not serving their needs." It's "we need a religion writer, and of all the ones out there, this one seems to line up pretty well with this newspaper's editorial stance, so we're picking that one. There - diversity!"
PH: I too am a recovering journalist. The arrogance I encountered in newsrooms was galling. When I was a managing editor, I used to counsel my reporters to read the documents. Of course, we are predisposed to trust our sources, but sources can intentionally or unintentionally misinform and sometimes the misinformation is a lot more interesting than the real, complete story. With the internet making audiences available to less and less competent and competently supervised reporters/opinion writers, we have to do a lot of our own research.
Everybody might be wrong about the bill, but the Left has decided that NC will pay. First a big Pharmaceutical company halted plans to move there. Then aging rocker Bruce Springsteen canceled a concert. But now it gets serious, popular porn site "xHampster" is blocking IP addresses from NC. Now the resolve of the people will be tested.
Anything that doesn't unquestioningly accept the Left's agenda on sexuality is going to be treated as a horrific injustice. The reality is pretty much irrelevant. No surprise here. I may be the only one who thinks this, but Bruce Springsteen is a talentless turd. I've never understood the attraction.
My favorite is Bag Balm. Dairy farmers use it on udders to keep them from getting chafed, but the stuff works wonders on diaper rash, too. TMI alert -- stop reading now if you don't want an image you can never erase ...... As an avid cyclist, I use it on myself too. Amazing ****.
I probably shouldn't have called him a turd. I've never heard anything to suggest he's a bad guy, even if I think he's wrong on this issue. However, I do think he's pretty talentless. I don't notice any unique ability to play any instrument. I guess he can play the guitar a little. And of course, he's a poor singer, and his voice is bad - not quite Joe Cocker bad but pretty bad. Call me a wuss, but I generally prefer artists who can actually sing and have pleasant-sounding voices.
I actually like his music although less of his stuff appeals to me of late. His political posturing is getting old, and he's deeply partisan and doesn't mind ripping people who disagree with him but still buy his records and support him. I feel like more and more he just drifts along with the progressive crowd because that's what you do when you're a liberal rocker. But meanwhile he sits in the "farmhouse" and dodges state taxes, and fights off accusations that he had an affair with a guy's wife, who he met at a local workout facility. I'm less and less impressed with him personally the more I learn about him.
This probably warrants its own thread on the cactus cafe thread, but I'm not sure anyone goes there anymore I actually think he has a good voice in a non-traditional way (when he's not doing the yell-growl thing - here's an example). I tend to judge vocals by whether someone can sing on pitch, and he actually can. He has a gravelly rough voice which frankly isn't getting any better with age, but there's something to be said for someone who can sing on key even if their vocal style isn't standard. I used to hate Bob Dylan's voice with a passion but it sort of grew on me over time. And there are some other artists like that as well. I was always fascinated by how four guys like Don Henley, Glen Fry, Joe Walsh and Timothy Schmidt could all have such vastly different vocal styles, and none of them are what I'd call traditionally great singers except for Tim, but their harmony was still just amazing.
