Opinion: the N.C. 'Bathroom Bill,' In Sum

One day. One bill. With your money

N.C. House of Representatives

Here’s what the North Carolina General Assembly did today, in your name, with your money: passed a bill that effectively defines “transgender” out of existence; forces transgender men to use women’s rooms and transgender women to use the men’s; allows private businesses to discriminate against gay and transgender people; prohibits local governments from preventing such discrimination; prohibits local governments from setting any employment standards, including minimum wage, for businesses they hire as contractors; jeopardizes $4.6 billion in federal Title IX funding for schools; nullifies every nondiscrimination ordinance ever passed by any local government in the state; allowed legislators five minutes to read the bill; allowed the public 30 minutes to comment on it; placed North Carolina on the regressive side of the state of Tennessee; claimed to be motivated by the need to establish consistent statewide standards for business operation in order to “improve intrastate commerce,” ignoring a brace of North Carolina companies that today publicly announced their opposition to the bill; and declared “that the general welfare of the State requires the enactment of this law under the police power of the State”; all predicated on their genuine or feigned horror over a presumed danger that has been shown, definitively, not to exist.

Let that sink in.