LGBTQ political history could be made in North Carolina

by Rob Howard
Associate Editor

It’s not common that two of the nation’s pre-eminent newspapers would write on LGBTQ rights at the same time. Even less common when they both agree that a governor’s race in a swing state could point the way to more advances on the battle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in America.

The governor’s race that both the Washington Post, and the New York Times Magazine covered is the battle in North Carolina between incumbent Republican Governor Pat McCrory, and his opponent, state Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat.

The Post’s Dana Milbank wrote on October 7, “Not since Larry Craig widened his stance has a bathroom caused so much trouble for a politician.

“North Carolina’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory, was a good bet for reelection earlier this year. But then he signed HB2 into law in March, eliminating municipal nondiscrimination ordinances and requiring transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender listed on their birth certificates.

“Since then, McCrory’s fortunes have been, well, in the toilet.”

On the same day, the Times Magazine’sJohnathan Katz described Gov. McCrory having to shuffle dealing with flooding from a tropical storm with protests over the Police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, a federal appeals court decision striking down restrictive voting laws, and the long festering fight over the anti-LGBT state law called HB2.

Katz wrote, “the so-called ‘bathroom bill,’ a law passed in March that stripped legal protections for lesbians, gays and transgender people and made it illegal for transgender people to use public restrooms that don’t match the sex listed on their birth certificates. The legislation triggered a wave of corporate reprisals that have battered the state’s economy, and possibly the governor’s hopes for a second term. An analysis by the Williams Institute of the University of California, Los Angeles estimated that the law could cost North Carolina nearly $5 billion in lost federal funds, along with thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue.”

The Post wrote, “Last fall, the conservative group North Carolina Civitas had a poll showing the governor with a favorable rating of 54 percent. But in late April, a month after McCrory signed the bathroom bill, the same group found his favorable rating had dropped to 39 percent. Polling shows McCrory trailing his Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, by four percentage points. And there’s little doubt HB2 is a major cause. A plurality of North Carolinians disapproves of McCrory’s handling of the issue and say it makes them less likely to support him.”

Milbank, the Post writer, continued, “Nearly half a century after the Stonewall riots, a defeat of McCrory because of the bathroom bill would be a watershed (or, if you will, a water closet) moment for gay rights. Stigmatizing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans has already lost its potency as a political weapon. But this would be the first case of a prominent official being voted out of office because his anti-gay actions backfired.

“Maggie Gallagher, founder of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, wrote in National Review in August that ‘the future of religious liberty for traditional religious believers hangs on’ McCrory’s reelection. If he loses, she wrote, ‘the GOP will concede whatever the Left demands on gay rights.’

“In a rare convergence, Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin agrees. He says the McCrory election ‘holds the possibility of being a turning point in the political history of our fight for equality.’”

Fighting same-sex marriage has become a battle the right knows that they have lost. So instead, they have turned to laws restricting gay rights in the name of “religious freedom,” bathroom bills, and more, Milbank wrote.

“But while 202 such bills were introduced in 2016,” he says, “only five were enacted, according to the Human Rights Campaign. GOP governors in South Dakota and Georgia vetoed such bills to avoid backlash — and both are considerably more popular than McCrory, who finds himself increasingly lonely.”

Griffin may be right. At this point, Real Clear Politics shows that Cooper, who favors the repeal of HB2, has a 4.6 percentage point lead over McCrory. He has sustained a lead over the Governor since early August, and it continues to look like McCrory will go down to defeat.

If he does, as Griffin notes, it may be a turning point in LGBTQ political history.

Copyright 2016 The Gayly – October 10, 2016 @ 3:30 p.m.