April 13, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — California will keep its travel ban to North Carolina despite the Tar Heel State’s recent quasi-repeal of HB2, commonly known as the “transgender” “bathroom bill,” which barred gender-confused people from using opposite-sex public restrooms and locker rooms across the state.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced Wednesday that North Carolina will remain on a list of banned destinations under AB 1887, a law enacted Jan. 1 that “prohibits state-funded and state-sponsored travel to and expenditures in states with laws that discriminate against the LGBT community.”
California now joins Minnesota in sticking with their boycott of North Carolina despite the latter’s watering down of its bill protecting women from possibly being forced to shared public locker rooms and restrooms with severely gender-confused men.
The California pro-LGBTQ travel and spending ban has been in the news for creating difficulties for students and college athletes who need to travel to North Carolina for conferences or competitions but can no longer use state funds to do so.
According to a California Department of Justice F.A.Q. page on AB 1887, Kansas, Mississippi and Tennessee are included with North Carolina as banned destinations under law due to passage of “anti-LGBT” legislation.
“California is inclusive. We take pride in protecting the rights of all our people,” Becerra said in a press release. “Discrimination is unacceptable and we intend to protect LGBT rights. California's law was enacted to ensure that, with limited exceptions, our taxpayer resources are not spent in states that authorize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
What the new North Carolina law does and doesn’t do
Becerra said, “North Carolina's new law does not cure the infirmity of this type of discrimination.” But what does the new law do?
Homosexual and transgender activists and their allies were furious when new North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, agreed to a compromise rather than a full repeal of HB2. The compromise measure, which they called a “betrayal,” leaves important portions of the old law in place.
LGBTQ activists demanded a total repeal of HB2 and complained that the replacement bill, HB 142, prevents cities from passing pro-LGBT “public accommodation” nondiscrimination laws until 2020.
The Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual-bisexual-transgender lobby organization, tweeted that the new bill “is a bad deal that does not actually #RepealHB2. Instead, it doubles-down on discrimination.”
The catalyst for passage of the original bill HB2 was Charlotte City Council’s passage in February 2016 of an ordinance that banned “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity” in public accommodation, allowing, for example, gender-confused men to use ladies’ public restrooms.
There is a growing and seemingly endless array of newfangled (“non-binary”) “gender identities.” According to “transgender” advocates, men can become “women” and then gain access to women-only private spaces while still possessing male genitalia. Many “male-to-female” “transgender” individuals choose not to have body-mutilating “bottom surgery.”
To be clear, HB 142, the replacement legislation, gets rid of the most widely debated and denounced portion of its predecessor — Section 1, which said that in public buildings and spaces people could only use restrooms and locker rooms that matched the sex listed on their birth certificate. That is a big loss for conservatives, who said it is common sense that biological men should not be allowed into female private spaces with girls and women.
However, Section 2 in the new law keeps in place the portion of the old law that permanently prevents all state agencies in North Carolina, including universities, local school boards, and other branches of government, from regulating “access to multiple occupancy restrooms, showers, or changing facilities, except in accordance with an act of the General Assembly.”
Lastly, Section 3 of the new HB 142 law bans local governments throughout North Carolina from passing or amending ordinances that regulate “private employment practices or … public accommodations.”
In other words, no more Charlottes.
Section 3 expires December 1, 2020, keeping the state legislature firmly in control of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” nondiscrimination laws for the next 3 1/2 years.
The Washington Blade reports that the compromise legislation “was intended to alleviate economic boycott to the state as a result of HB2 in time for a deadline set by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to repeal the law or lose championship games for years to come. The NCAA later announced the new law was “minimally” acceptable to again consider championships in the state.”
Conservatives across the country were outraged at the NCAA for attempting to “bully” North Carolina by holding it hostage to support “transgender” activism that is regarded by many as denying biological reality and violating the privacy rights of women.
Various other major corporations like PayPal and Deutsche Bank, and dozens of cities pledged to boycott North Carolina or scale back investments there until HB2 was repealed.