The circus is leaving North Carolina -- but not the one locals wish would go. Cirque de Soleil packed up its tents in a huff over H.B. 2 and took off for Kentucky, which -- hypocrisy alert! -- also doesn't have the bathroom mandate they're supposedly supporting! Like Pearl Jam and Boston and every other group they're claiming are pulling out of the state, Matt Walsh writes, "the irony here is so thick I might choke on it."
"They are following their conscience and boycotting to overturn a law that allows people to follow their conscience. They are exercising their First Amendment rights in order to make a statement against First Amendment rights. They are discriminating in response to 'discrimination.' If a baker cannot withhold his services because of his conscience, why should [Bruce Springsteen] be allowed to withhold his for the same reason?" Even more mind-boggling, the North Carolina debate isn't about discrimination! But apparently, these celebrities can't be bothered to learn about the law before protesting it. If businesses like PayPal want to open their bathroom doors to a gender free-for-all, H.B. 2 won't stand their way. But it will stand in the way of any government that wants to punish companies with a different policy.
That fact seems lost on most people, including the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights -- which yesterday made the astonishing decision to condemn North Carolina's H.B. 2 and Mississippi's religious liberty law. "In the past," Chairman Martin Castor wrote, "'religious liberty' has been used to block racial integration and anti-discrimination laws. Those past efforts failed, and this new attempt to revive an old evasive tactic should be rejected as well." In perhaps the most stunning statement, Castor insists that "the North Carolina and Mississippi laws... perverts the meaning of religious liberty... and has no place in our society."
Thankfully, not everyone on the eight-member Commission feels as he does. And in a split vote, two dissenters wrote powerful rebuttals to the outrageous assertion that our First Freedom has no place in a nation founded on it. "Unfortunately," Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow fire back in a joint statement, "it is not entirely clear that the statement's signatories have actually read the relevant legislation. We have. Moreover, we have tried as best we can to reflect on the complexities of the policies they embody."
In Mississippi, they note, "the purpose of this legislation is not to deny same-sex couples the opportunity to celebrate their weddings. Such couples have many alternative sources for wedding services. The purpose is to avoid coercing unwilling individuals into participating in something they do not believe in. As Nelson Mandela once said, 'When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw' ...Toleration is all about leaving people alone to live their lives as they see fit; it is not about forcing people to take part in other people's lives. Whatever it is that our Commission colleagues are standing up for, it is not toleration."
As for North Carolina, the duo goes on, "Weirdly, few seem to have noticed that such businesses can still choose to designate its restrooms and changing rooms by 'gender' rather than biological sex if they desire to... we do not believe gender-specific as opposed to sex-specific restrooms and changing facilities work well, since they make it difficult to prevent voyeurs and pranksters... We regret the level of hysteria that has accompanied H.B. 2, especially any contribution to that hysteria made by the Commission majority's statement."
As FRC's Ken Blackwell pointed out, “Since the beginning of the civil-rights era, the purpose of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission has been to ensure respect for the rights of all Americans. Years ago, that was to protect against racial discrimination. Today, there is no civil right under greater threat than religious liberty, and no people more viciously attacked than those seeking to preserve traditional family values and live according to their faith and conscience. It is shocking and sad to see the Civil Rights Commission lead the charge to violate those civil rights. These Orwellian attacks on the First Amendment must end."
While the White House uses its appointees on the Commission to make a statement, the president could make the biggest one of all. If he wanted to, Obama could open up every federal building and park to the kind of gender chaos liberals are demanding. Why doesn't he? For the same reason that TSA still asks if you're male or female: public safety is popular! A full 70 percent of North Carolina voters thought the Charlotte ordinance Governor Pat McCrory (R) overturned was "unreasonable" and "unsafe." So Hollywood, corporate elites, and liberals can shake their fist at laws like North Carolina's, but when push comes to political shove, President Obama knows where voters stand -- and it isn't with his phony majority.
