Failure to repeal LGBT law inflflames culture war

Efffffffffffforts toward harmony fall apart amid distrust.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Repealing North Carolina’s law limiting LGBT protections at the close of a bitter election year was supposed to heal blows to the economy and perhaps open a truce in the culture wars in at least one corner of the divided United States.

The failure of state lawmakers to follow through instead shows how much faith each side has lost in the other, as Americans segregate themselves into communities of us and them, defined by legislative distric ts that make compromise unlikely.

The deal was supposedly reached with input from top politicians and industry leaders: Charlotte agreed to eliminate its anti-discrimination ordinance on the condition that state lawmakers then repeal the legislation known as House Bill 2, which had been a response to Charlotte’s action.

But bipartisan efffffffffffforts to return both the c it y and state to a more harmonious past fell apart amid mutual distrust, and neither side seemed to worry about retribution in the next election.

With GOP map-drawers crafting most legislative districts to be uncompetitively red or blue, politicians see little downside to avoiding a negotiated middle ground. And since the day Republicans passed and signed it into law last March, HB2 has reflflected these broad divisions in society.

The failed repeal shows the same polarization, said David Lublin, a Southern politics expert in American University’s School of Public Affffffffffffairs.

North Carolina had been “seen as the forefront of the new South,” focusing on education and economic development, and wasn’t “viewed as crazy-right wing or crazy-left wing,” Lublin said. Keeping the law in effffffffffffect, he said, “reverses that impression.”

It was always more than j u s t a “b a t h r o o m b i l l . ” Republican lawmakers commanding veto-proof majorities framed HB2 as a rebuke to the values of Charlotte and other urban, white-collar communities where Democrats are clustered and where gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people generally fifind support.

HB2 — which omits these people from state anti-discrimination protections, bars local governments from protecting them with their own ordinances, and orders transgender people to use facilities that match the gender on their birth certifificates — created a backlash that has cost the state’s economy millions.