I'm happy to see that Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, Pearl Jam and others have decided to not play in NC due to NC's unconscionable law concerning permits to purchase handguns.
Oh wait - that's not the law they were bitching about?
Here's a FAQ concerning NC's bathroom law. And here is the text of NC's Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act in .pdf form if you care to read the thing.
In a nutshell, the city of Charlotte passed a law that would have required government and businesses to allow folks who claimed they identified with the opposite sex to use the bathroom of their choice. The state passed this law in reaction to that, in order to clarify that for the purposes of bathrooms, lockers, showers, etc, biology trumped feelings, and that non-government entities could do as they wished.
Then a bunch of folks cried "Oppression!" and launched a boycott of NC. Let us look at those pinnacles of moralism, shall we?
Bruce Springsteen. Ah yes, the guy whose biggest hit pre-1984 was a ditty about a guy who abandoned his wife and kids without so much as saying good-bye. ("Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack - I went out for a ride and I never went back...") Yeah, I want to to lessons in ethics from this guy. To quote a musician with a Dutch surname that actually had talent, in regard to The Boss, "...a Southern man don't need him around anyhow".
Bryan Adams (who's boycotting Mississippi but will likely include NC if his fan there ever asks him to play).
When I was 14 I was watching MTV one day (back when they played music videos, of all things) and this brand spankin' new Tina Turner tune came on. In the video for It's Only Love I could clearly see Bryan Adams strumming in a manner inconsistent with the sounds emulating from said video. Poseur.
It's no surprise that he's a hypocrite when it comes to "standing up" for LGBT folk. He'll play in countries that toss homosexuals off the roof, but won't play in a state that clarifies what "boys room" and "girls room" mean.
Adams is a good songwriter within his genre. His tunes are a bit sappy but well constructed, both lyrically and musically. I admit my esteem for him went up years back when one of his singles led to him directing some of his philanthropic endeavors towards breast cancer research. Didn't change the fact that he was a poseur, but I thought a little better of him for that gesture.
But I just can't take seriously any moral condemnation coming from someone that had as one of his biggest hit's a tune about cheating on his woman.
Paypal is not happy with NC's allegedly "hateful" law. I wonder if this means they'll change their policy of refusing services to workers in the adult entertainment industry, many of whom are bisexual?
Michael Moore doesn't want any of his films played in NC. For once, I'd estimate that 99.9% of Tarheels agree with the ol' slug. Now that we've found a way to keep Moore's drivel of our screens, Imma start lobbying for a Colorado bathroom bill, just for this purpose alone!
NY and Connecticut are restricting state employees' travel to NC. Hell, half of the damned problems NC has is because of folks from NY traveling (and then staying!) in NC. But yankees using economics to pressure southerners to acquiesce to their cultural superiority ain't nothing new. NC survived reconstruction, I think NC can struggle through that little punk Cuomo and his staffers not vacationing at the Outer Banks. (It's more a case of progressives rather than yankees per se, but in certain regions the two are nearly synonymous.)
Malloy claimed this bathroom bill was a public safety risk. Pfft. It's not like NC threatened to jail people over having standard capacity magazines. Take a look at Connecticut's gun laws sometime: yet again. it's okey-dokey to discriminate against gun owners, but any perceived slight against a favored group (or initial of a group) and it's a public safety issue.
Let me tell y'all something; the first time a man in a dress walks into the bathroom where Bubba's tween daughter went in to take a tinkle, you'll understand what a public safety risk really is. And if this happens outside Raleigh proper, then a jury is gonna take all of 45 minutes to deliberate before they come back and pronounce daddy Bubba acquitted (the 45 minutes is cause they ain't gonna give up a lunch just to tell everybody what everybody shoulda known from the start). In Raleigh proper it'd take an hour and a half to deliberate, before the two holdouts capitulate to acquit lest they suffer more social media withdrawals.
What's puzzling to me is that the new law reinforces a private business prerogative to set its own policy (whereas the Charlotte law dictated everyone had to do as the city council saw fit). Open up a shop in NC today and you can let anyone you want to into your bathroom, locker rooms, showers, whatevs. Government is restricted to using biology as jotted down on a birth certificate, but they also have the option of setting up a single use facility to accommodate anyone who ain't comfy with using the room with the pictograph that matches their plumbing. So not opening a business, where one could set an example of allowing any use of facilities said owner thought trendy, seems to be short sighted.
I also hear the claim that bathroom laws such as NC's insinuate that trans folk are pedophiles. That's not the case at all.
If someone is truly transgendered they're no more likely to be a pedophile than any straight non-trans person.What is a concern is someone who is a pedophile claiming to be trans and using that as an opportunity to stalk closer to one of his victims. Currently if a male walks into the ladies room every woman in there will know something wrong and be on alert. But if that becomes a common occurrence then their guard will be lowered. No big deal for most males who think they're really females, but the only way to keep a pedophile from using this for vile purposes is to keep certain areas (bathrooms, showers, etc) segregated by biological sex. This won't eliminate the problem entirely (there are some pedophiles, male and female, that attack children of their own sex) but it won't exacerbate things like it would if these protestors get their wishes.
Oh, this is not speculation; here are five recent examples of males using gender neutrality as an excuse to get close to their victims. Even one of the proponents of the original Charlotte "anti-discrimination" bathroom law stepped down from his position as head of an LGBT group after it was made public that he's a convicted child molester.
All that being said, government has no legitimate interest in making any form of discrimination a crime for private entities. Government only has legitimacy in ensuring governments don't discriminate, since most government interactions aren't competitive (you can't go to another government for a service if you're unhappy with the way your government treats you, for example). Restricting bathroom use to people of the same sex is not nearly the same situation as having a "white's only" water fountain. Want to talk about discrimination in government? Then let's discuss why in many states most gunwoners aren't allowed in the Post Office (or most government run buildings) unless they abstain from engaging in a constitutionally enumerated Right.
Many of these "artists" (I mean Springsteen? Really? I could and did write better songs when I was 15! And if I'd have made a video with a circa 1984 Courteney Cox look-a-like they'd have been even bigger hits than his!) who claim to be taking some sort of moral high ground by not performing in NC due to its bathroom law are abject hypocrites. From their statements they don't seem to actually understand what the law in fact does, and considering their material they ain't got no ground to stand on when it comes to lecturing anyone on morals or ethics.
If any "artist" wants to really "stand up" for folks in the LGBT community, I'd suggest they stop launching these boycotts and join the Pink Pistols. Until then, they should boycott themselves, as they're denying, based solely on their own convictions, services to people they disagree with - in this case an entire state!
I'm not crazy about all the laws in NC. Their carry laws (a Shall Issue CCW for concealed) require improvement (at least a permitless if not constitutional carry law) and their holdover form Jim Crow (the permit to purchase a handgun law) should be repealed. Also NC has no damn legitimacy in banning smoking in buildings it doesn't own. All of those would be reasons to boycott the state, and possibly defenestration for the lawmakers responsible for not correcting those abhorrent situations wouldn't be amiss. But this bathroom law is not a good reason to avoid the state or attempt to punish it financially.
Besides, any "scandal" that obligates someone to use a title from a Klymaxx song has to be just utterly ridiculous, doesn't it? Ah what the hell; here's the vid:
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