Texas looks set to follow North Carolina with push for 'bathroom bill'
Source: The Guardian
The passage of a bathroom bill last March sparked a maelstrom with severe political, economic and cultural consequences for North Carolina that continued through the end of 2016. Yet Texas is poised to propose a similar law in 2017.
In November, one of the states most senior politicians published his top 10 priorities for the next legislative session. A Womens Privacy Act was at number six, right after banning immigration sanctuary cities and insisting on photo ID at the ballot box.
The act, said lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, is necessary so that women and girls can have privacy and safety in their restrooms, showers and locker rooms.
When filed, the bill is likely to turn national attention to Texas in the wake of North Carolina legislators failure to repeal their bill during a special session on 21 December. Patrick issued a statement the following day congratulating them.
Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/texas-looks-set-to-follow-north-carolina-with-push-for-bathroom-bill/ar-BBxMhf2
In light of Bernie's admonition that Democrats need to focus on working class issues, rather than appeals to diversity, how does this controversy fit into the narrative of what went wrong in the 2016 elections:
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/307014-sanders-dems-must-move-beyond-identity-politics
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Sunday that the Democratic Party must move beyond identity politics in order to connect with a larger share of the voting public.
"It is not good enough for somebody to say, 'I'm a woman, vote for me.' That is not good enough," Sanders told a crowd at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston, according to WBUR. "What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industries.
Sanders, who come in second place to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, has repeatedly voiced his concerns with the partys lack of support in middle America.
"The working class of this country is being decimated that's why Donald Trump won," the senator said. "And what we need now are candidates who stand with those working people, who understand that real median family income has gone down."
The Vermont independent, who was named chair of outreach among the Democratic Senate leadership this month, has said the party must shift its focus to winning back blue-collar workers and the economically disaffected.
Wounded Bear
(58,666 posts)I thought us Dems were the ones too focused on "bathroom bills."
mpcamb
(2,871 posts)Curious.
They alway make the same choice.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)smartest ones running our state offices, though they may feel Trump won the state the large metro areas like Houston is going in a different direction, it is time for all to get with the program, the republicans are still running their hate towards different groups, losing more votes all the time.
Vinca
(50,278 posts)bucolic_frolic
(43,177 posts)Redneck America heard only bathroom bill the whole year long and
voted that way, it sent every rural high school graduate household
to the polls, Archie Bunker types
We pushed it too quickly, I wonder if it had been absent if HRC
would have won
Wounded Bear
(58,666 posts)Repubs passed the bills. Corporate entities boycotted the state. And once again, Repubs are passing BS laws that don't work....except to inflame their base against the people who didn't actually do the deed.
Crash2Parties
(6,017 posts)In January 2016 - two months before North Carolina's HB2 - the GOP posted a resolution to their national party website. It was a directive to *all* Republican lawmakers at all levels to create as many anti-transgender laws as they could before the election. The stated goal was to try to recreate the flood of donations and get-out-the-vote from conservative Christians that they saw with marriage equality. Only this time instead of attacking grown adults who wanted to marry, their primary targets were transgender children in their schools. They sexualized them and tried to turn them into sexual predators. When called on it, they shifted to claiming it was to protect "women and children" from bad men pretending to be transgender. And when that failed the fallback was simply that trans people in bathrooms is a violation of privacy for anyone who doesn't to know they exist.
Trump threw off their game plan for much of the election season or it would've been even worse (and it was bad for trans people as it is). But the usual handful of deep red states did as they were told and built up a pipeline of anti-transgender laws & joined lawsuits to tear down any progress trans people had seen over the last decade or so.
The Dems were once again out-maneuvered as in good conscience they had to answer to the blatant attempts to built law based on religious beliefs at every level from local ordinances to Supreme Court level cases. Not to mention that what the GOP was doing was just plain wrong and immoral. When Sanders came out with that "identity politics" statement he lost a good chunk of feminist and lgbt support as it revealed him to be the wealthy, white man unaware of his privilege that he really is. Not to say they wouldn't have likely still voted for him if he had been granted the nomination, but a bit of his luster was lost.
Sunriser13
(612 posts)Last I heard, he had a secret meeting with The Rump about a place in his administration...
Bah. I don't care where he goes as long as he left the Governor's Mansion in NC clean and ready for Roy Cooper to move on in.
Betty
(1,352 posts)These states need sanctions just like any other regime like Russia
yuiyoshida
(41,831 posts)ever.
dhill926
(16,343 posts)jesus...
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,024 posts)wincest
(117 posts)Addresses, Phone Numbers and E-mail
of State Governors https://people.smu.edu/rhalperi/governors.html
support the aclu https://ssl.capwiz.com/aclu-action/issues/alert/?alertid=72196666&ms=web_160517_LGBTrights_DentSmith
Midnight Writer
(21,768 posts)His top ten list is all about fomenting furor among Anglo "Christian" fools.
Aristus
(66,385 posts)in Texas.
Texas is so corporate friendly that the low tax rate will attract more businesses than will be scared off by any boycott.
crazycatlady
(4,492 posts)And as a woman, I don't give a shit who is pissing next to me as long as they don't piss all over the seat (and not clean up) and flush.
I also haven't changed in a communal locker room ever. In middle/high school I would use a bathroom stall and at the gym I go to they have the option of private stalls available for changing (similar to a store dressing room). One gym I used to attend had communal showers, but nobody ever used them (they've since closed). The one I attend now has private showers (well stalls).