Like the topic of Donald Trump, I try not to constantly talk about North Carolina and its foul anti-gay law passed in less than 12 hours thanks to self-prostituting Republicans. However, with North Carolina literally next door and family matters that will force the husband and I to dirty ourselves by crossing the border into the bigotry and religious zealotry that now defines that state, it is a hard topic to avoid. Especially when Kathleen Parker has once again wandered off the GOP reservation and let loose on the idiocy and extremism that now defines the Republican Party. Here are excerpts from Parker's latest venting in the Washington Post:
It’s been a long while since South Carolina could look down upon its neighbor to the North.
Thanks to North Carolina’s anti-LGBT legislation (HB2), also referred to as the “bathroom bill,” the state effectively has begun redefining itself from its long-popular characterization as a “vale of humility between two mountains of conceit” (South Carolina and Virginia).
The new law, which ludicrously requires transgender people to use the restroom consistent with the sex on their birth certificates, has liberated South Carolina from its persistent place as the brunt of late-night jokes. Remarking on the law, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said her state doesn’t have “that problem.” Brava.
The law in question was hurriedly passed last month and signed by North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) in response to what one state official called a restroom free-for-all, referring to sudden hysteria over the possibility of transgender individuals using the “wrong” restroom. How would anyone know?
This would be riotously funny if it weren’t so patently discriminatory.
Many bad deeds go unpunished, but not this one. The economic fallout from the law already is being felt and the price of not doing business is about to go up. . . .
But the real showdown will be this weekend when not nearly as many buyers and designers as usual will attend the biannual High Point furniture market — the largest in the nation and the state’s biggest economic event.
A study by Duke University placed the annual economic impact of the High Point market at $5.39 billion. The furnishings industry also generates more than 600,000 visitor days to the state each year and accounts for 37,000 jobs.
If there were a Darwin Award for states, North Carolina would win hands-down. Already the High Point Market Authority reports that hundreds or thousands of the 75,000 retailers and designers who annually attend the market won’t be visiting this year because of HB2, which, come to think of it, sounds appropriately like a disease.
Although North Carolina has been noted in recent years for its increasingly hard-right politics, it is still shocking that a state that boasts several of the nation’s top colleges and universities and is home to the famed Research Triangle, could codify what is so plainly a discriminatory law.
As in all other times when bigotry raises its hideous head, better angels will prevail. Either the courts will overturn the law or the state will come to its senses, if only for economic reasons.
North Carolina has proved itself a valley of ignorance, whose legislators and governor could use a moment of silence to consider their ill-conceived conceit.
Sadly, Parker fails to pinpoint the real cause behind the North Carolina bigotry: GOP slavish self-prostitution by Republicans to the Christofascists - people who are not nice, not decent, not moral, and who are down right foul and who ought to be unwelcome in decent, intelligent society. Once the GOP shunned such nasty people, but those days are gone.
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