Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
Sometimes it appears that government isn’t just stupid, but virulently so, it spreads and grows stupidity wherever it goes and whatever it does. A single little sneeze of dumbness from government can often turn into a full-blown epidemic of idiocy, as North Carolina continues to prove.
Yesterday, North Carolina Democratic Governor Roy Cooper signed into law a bill that replaces the controversial “bathroom bill” or House Bill 2 (HB2) that sought to prevent transgendered people from using the wrong bathroom in state-owned, and only state-owned, facilities. It was dumb that such a law needed written, but the origin of this infectious idiocy, the “Patient Zero,” was a city ordinance passed by the Democrat-dominated city of Charlotte that forced all private owners of bars, restaurants and other businesses to accommodate whatever mental illness a person has when it comes to what they think they are and what bathroom they should use. Of course, this rankled many North Carolinians, but mostly for the wrong reasons.
“The Charlotte ordinance alarmed social conservatives who, without evidence, feared it would endanger women and girls in intimate spaces,” Colleen Jenkins and Daniel Trotta reported for Reuters yesterday.
Of course, that certainly wasn’t the only reason for the backlash against the ordinance. The bigger issue, philosophically, is that the ordinance trampled underfoot the private property rights of business owners who might, for whatever reason and it doesn’t even matter what it is, want people to use restrooms that match their equipment.
The new law does address the rights of business owners by putting a moratorium on local units of government within the state passing an ordinance similar to the idiotic one passed in Charlotte last year that started this whole insane controversy. Sadly, that moratorium is only good until 2020. Even still, people who don’t understand the nature of human rights found this to be a savage attack against them.
“’This (is) the end of HB 2 in name only. The bill that was passed today is a disgrace, not a ‘fix,’ a ‘reset,’ or a ‘compromise,’ and certainly not a repeal,’ Mara Keisling, director of the Washington-based National Center for Transgender Equality, said in a statement.
‘Putting any kind of moratorium on civil rights, whether six months or three years long, is dangerous and wrong,’ she said,” Reuters reported.
The irony here is so sweet my foot’s tingling. I mean, she’s absolutely correct; the right of private business owners to decide who can use which facilities on the property they own is a basic civil right that should never expire, not in 2016, not in 2020, not ever.
Of course, she’s not talking about that right, which is actually right, but rather of the made-up right she assumes she has to force private property owners to accommodate her every whim. Obviously, that’s not actually a right. But then, we do live in a country where most of the population, particularly younger people, feel they are absolutely entitled to the property of other people against their will, so, that she’d be utterly confused as to whose rights were actually being violated here and how is understandable.
Government being the cancer that it is, the fact HB2 had been signed into law in NC last year had effects far beyond who pees where. All fired up on ignorance and stupidity, many entertainers, well Bruce Springsteen and Itzhak Perlman anyway, cancelled concerts in the state to protest the law. What really stung was when the NCAA pledged to withdraw its basketball tournament games and the All-Star game from the state after they’d previously awarded them to Charlotte. The deadline the NCAA imposed to repeal the law or face the loss of those games would have passed this week had the replacement bill not been signed. The NCAA hasn’t determined whether or not they’ll return to the state yet.
“The governor told reporters the law was imperfect but said Thursday’s action would help begin repairing North Carolina’s damaged reputation.
‘I wish this were a complete, total repeal, and whenever I get the chance to do that I will do that. … I’m going to fight every single day for LGBT protections,’ Cooper said,” Reuters reported.
I mean, he is a democrat, so, made up rights for the mentally ill must naturally trump the actual rights of private property owners.
The only good thing about this entire controversy is that it does serve to put the utter uselessness and stupidity of government on full display. After all this needlessly complicated rigmarole in a pointless attempt to circumvent people’s actual rights so as to accommodate a tiny minority’s feelings, now, almost a year later, government has only managed to screw things up yet more thoroughly.
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