The controversy over the passage of House Bill 2 spread to a public education conference Saturday, where event organizers and speakers called the new law hateful and said it discriminates against the gay community.
About 500 activists from around the country are attending the
Network for Public Education’s (NPE) National Conference this weekend at the Raleigh Convention Center. Some groups have canceled events in North Carolina to protest HB2, but NPE printed labels for attendees to hand out saying they won’t return to the state until the law is repealed.
“It’s very late in the day to be making a decision about canceling because all of you would have lost money that you put down for plane fare,” said NPE President Diane Ravitch, an author and education historian. “We thought, you know it takes more courage to be there and to fight against them than to stay home.”
Under HB2, people can use only restrooms and locker room facilities at schools and public agencies that match the gender on their birth certificate. Some schools have been allowing transgender students to use multi-occupancy restrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify with as opposed to the one on their birth certificate.
“Clearly the majority of North Carolinians support making sure that guys are in the guys’ locker room and girls are in the girls’ locker room and they don’t have to worry about some voyeur thinking they have an opportunity to exploit something in the law,” said state Rep. Nelson Dollar, a Cary Republican who voted for the law.
HB2 also makes it illegal for cities to expand upon state laws regulating workplace discrimination, minimum wage standards and other issues. In some cases it eliminated protections that cities had set for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The law also took away the ability for people to sue in state court over job discrimination.
The Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, called HB2 anti-children, anti-family and anti-women during his keynote speech at the conference.
“It’s a hate bill, sure,” Barber said. “But it’s a trick. It’s nothing but the politics of Jesse Helms resurrected.”
Barber’s arrival was delayed because he was removed Friday night from a Raleigh-bound flight at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. Airline officials, while not naming Barber, described the incident as a case of a “disruptive passenger.”
The impact of HB2 was also discussed during a panel on how to support transgender students. Two transgender high school students who were born female but identify as male said they’re more fearful of their safety now that the law has been passed.
Kyle Barnes, 18, a senior at the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, said he’s been shoved in men’s restrooms and gotten looks of disapproval in women’s restrooms.
“Very recently I have had a large influx of really, really, really negative attention about who I am as a person and that definitely has a really large emotional toll,” Barnes said.
Jasper Christie, 16, a sophomore at the J.D. Clement Early High School College in Durham, said he always feels vulnerable in public bathrooms. He said he needs to have a “bathroom buddy” for his safety.
“I basically just can’t go to the bathroom alone anymore, and I have to be careful of other students who are a threat to me,” Christie said.
