"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Monday, September 19, 2016

Nice Non-Discrimination Ordinance You've Got There. . . .

It's been a while since I've written about Pat McCrory's Hate Bill 2; if you need some background, earlier posts are here and here. It's now cost the state in the neighborhood of $100 million in lost business and jobs, and the potential for economic disaster is growing day by day.

So, McCrory has a "compromise":

McCrory spokesman Josh Ellis said in a statement that the governor would call a special session if two requisites are met: Charlotte must move first to repeal its expanded protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people; and secondly, a majority of lawmakers must be in favor of repeal.

"If the Charlotte City Council totally repeals the ordinance and then we can confirm there is support to repeal among the majority of state lawmakers in the House and Senate, the governor will call a special session," Ellis said.

Isn't that nice? If Charlotte repeals its ordinance, the governor will try to repeal HB2. No guarantees, but he'll try.

Any normal person would call this "blackmail."

It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. McCrory is facing the loss of his office, and as the economic damage mounts up, his chances look grimmer. All he needs is for NASCAR to pull out of the state.

One can only hope that the Charlotte city council gives McCrory a big fat FU.

3 comments:

Pieter said...

Someone at the City Council basically did give him the FU. She said he'd given them no reason to repeal and they weren't willing to do that until HB2, which would prevent them from re-legislating, was gone. No word on how he reacted, but I bet I'm not the only one amused.

Glenn Ingersoll said...

Look, Charlotte, we legislated away your power to enact legislation like this, but if you repeal the legislation we don't like we promise we will consider repealing our legislation, as it would, necessarily, be irrelevant since by repealing your nondiscrimination ordinance everybody will be able to go back to discriminating, which was all we wanted in the first place, all we need, and solves the problem in our favor, plus we get to crow about removing the legislation that brought on the boycotts and you get whatever silly little blame there would be for re-okaying discrimination. See? Good for everybody!

Hunter said...

As might be expected, the reaction to Charlotte's FU is to blame the Charlotte city council for creating the problem to begin with -- in other words, lie about it and blame the victims. Here's liar-in-chief Tony Perkins' reaction: http://www.joemygod.com/2016/09/21/tony-perkins-slams-charlotte-mayor-jennifer-roberts-refusing-repeal-citys-ideological-terrorism/