Well. This looks like fun.
The leader of something called the Christian Action League is summoning the Godly to Raleigh, North Carolina, to demonstrate in support of the odious, hastily-passed HB-2, which declares that anybody Moses would have stoned is unwelcome in North Carolina.
Ironically, HB-2 has become known as the “bathroom bill” because it overturns a Charlotte statute which guaranteed to transgenders the right to use public restrooms appropriate to the gender with which they identify. The Charlotte law should not have been especially controversial; I am certain that Caitlyn Jenner is in far more danger of being beat-up if she enters a North Carolina men’s room than my wife would be if Jenner happened to visit the ladies room at the same time.
HB-2 was about much more than bathrooms, however. It also forbade any jurisdiction in the state to pass any law which provided employment and housing protections to LGBT people and, curiously, digressed into a prohibition against passage of minimum wage laws. Subsequently, convention bureaus throughout the state are reporting cancellations, several businesses have cancelled plans to expand in North Carolina, and the feds are thinking about withholding funds normally available in connection with programs which forbid discrimination.
Thus the need for right-minded Godly folk to let our poor beleaguered governor know that they support him and appreciate his efforts to defend Southern Womanhood from the … Others. And, besides, didn’t Jesus say that people who follow Him would suffer? The universal scorn visited upon we Tarheels can only mean that the angels are beside themselves with joy at our steadfastness, et cetera, et cetera.
Once upon a time, North Carolina enjoyed a reputation as the least backward, most forward-looking of the southern states; that has been undone, and now we’re on track to join “Mississippi” and “Alabama” as the national code-words for backward-looking ignorance and malice.
“The past is not dead; in fact, it’s not even past.”
William Faulkner
Our history is always so near, and yet we forget. In 1970, less than 30-miles from here, in Oxford, North Carolina, a black Vietnam vet was beaten and shot to death in a public street by a mob of white men. The one white pastor in town who supported black demands for justice was fired by his congregation. When black demonstrators walked from Oxford to the Governor’s Mansion in Raleigh, members of that same congregation stood at the roadside and threw rocks at them.
So what? Forty-five years was a long time ago? Consider this: When the pastor applauds that sweet old lady who just turned 70 and hasn’t missed a Sunday since that glorious day she was saved 62-years ago — and that’s a southern type of which every church has a few — he’s talking about somebody who was probably a young wife in 1970 and may have carried picnic baskets of sandwiches to those people standing at the roadside throwing rocks.
Her husband — now deceased, bless his heart — probably told his children and grandchildren the story of his rock-throwing bravery. He may, even, have kept on the mantel the exact blood-stained cobble that cracked some black man’s skull, or broke his jaw. That couple’s children are now deacons, and their grandchildren are that handsome young couple with the new baby.
They are who will be at the odious Reverend Creech’s rally next week, waging the same shameful fight against gay civil rights that grammy and grampy made against black civil rights all those hot summers ago, with the same justifications, with the same incoherent malice, and with the same ignorant, mean-spirited Holy Men at their side.