Backtracking A Bit On Bigotry

THROUGH AN INFUSION of right wing money, North Carolina, like Wisconsin, has lately leaned farther to the right than previously, but money can only do so much. Even the mighty Koch brothers run up against limits. Sometimes, people don't stay bought. American cities are liberal, the rest of the country is conservative. Charlotte, North Carolina supports transgender rights, in particular the right to use whatever restroom corresponds to a person's gender identification. The republican dominated state legislature does not, or rather, did not. That is, until the power of the almighty dollar finally kicked in, but good. Corporate plutocracy, like God and man, can giveth, and they can taketh away. It is a wonder what a few hundred million dollars of lost revenue can do to a principled conservative capitalist. You lose an NBA All Star game, and a few corporate conventions and expansions here and there, and its back to ye olde drawing board. Cold hard cash trumps, no pun intended, core conservative sexual mores and moral values, it would seem. So, this very morning, back into the state capitol swaggers the conservative end of the political spectrum, to repeal that which should never have been passed in the first place; the hilariously discriminatory state law proclaiming that all must use the restroom corresponding to the gender on the birth certificate, known as the "bathroom bill". How long must we wait until our conservative colleagues realize that a transgender person is not merely someone cleverly and perniciously disguising as a member of the opposite gender, presumably just for shits and grins? No, we are not risking an epidemic of men encroaching upon women's restrooms. Sexual predators as a rule are not transgender people. Transgender people are like caterpillars; living beings who are inexorably impelled to become something other than what they have been, once were, but can no longer remain. They aren't playing around. They go to an enormous amount of time, trouble, and effort to transform themselves, and let us assume for the sake of argument that there is a better reason for it than twenty four seven three sixty five Halloween costuming.