IN THE annals of political intransigence, few beat Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. On abortion or gay rights Helms was unyielding, insisting that God’s laws pre-empted debate. As AIDS ravaged gay America in the 1980s and 1990s, Helms fought to block funds for research and treatment, blaming the disease on “perverts” whose conduct the Bible deemed an “abomination”.
Today, not quite a decade after Helms’s death, it is harder to stifle debate by citing the Scriptures or other eternal verities. Gay Americans may marry and join the army; an openly gay person sits in Helms’s beloved Senate. Yet culture wars continue.
In 2016 North Carolina’s Republican-dominated state legislature passed the “Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act”, one of several “bathroom bills” debated nationwide. Notably, the act overturned a local ordinance passed by racially diverse, fast-growing Charlotte, the state’s largest city. Charlotte had banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in a range of public places. Opponents paid special heed to the seemingly arcane question of transgender lavatory-access,...Continue reading
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