Reader opinion: Yes, I am furious -- about HB2 and the so-called deal

Editor’s note: R.C. Masters sent us this letter via email Thursday morning in response to a reader letter we published from Chris Turner earlier this week. Turner’s original letter was sent following Charlotte City Council’s decision to repeal its LGBT nondiscrimination ordinance. Masters’ came after the state legislature failed to repeal House Bill 2 in a special session Wednesday. This letter has been minimally edited for clarity.

It is sad and almost unbelievable that 2017 will dawn in North Carolina with the reprehensible House Bill 2 still in effect, even after a so-called “deal” between Charlotte City Council and state lawmakers was supposed to produce its repeal.

The deal failed because the two sides had totally different reasons for addressing the issue in the first place. That was made clear in the Chris Turner opinion letter that was part of C5 on Wednesday. Turner’s cynical view that Charlotte’s nondiscrimination ordinance was Mayor Jennifer Roberts’ political ploy against Pat McCrory was chilling in that it failed to recognize that public policy for some is about people, not power and not profits. That she and the rest of City Council were willing to recant, at least for a while, to remove the scourge of HB2 from the entire state doubly proves the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished.

I believe that for Mayor Roberts, whom I’ve never met, the ordinance was rooted in a belief that the Constitution requires ALL citizens be treated as equal under the law.

In N.C., the entire HB2 controversy began out of human empathy for a little-recognized, little-understood minority and the principle of human rights for all. Mayor Roberts deserves credit for that. Was the timing “right?” Had the public been adequately prepared with education and intelligent debate? No. Mayor Roberts must at least share responsibility for that as well.

But Raleigh Republicans were the ones to see political opportunity in Charlotte’s decision to do what was right for Charlotte. Raleigh Republicans were the ones to fear-monger the issue, create legislation to deny the city — indeed, all N.C. cities — the right to be beacons of progress and empathy. Then, Republicans loaded that bill with a variety of other unrelated restrictions and disenfranchisements, rammed it through the legislative process in a dark and oppressive way, and Pat McCrory jumped aboard with craven alacrity, with no thought to the people being oppressed. If that was the proverbial straw that broke his governorship, so be it. He and his state partisans deserve no less.

For today’s Republicans, no less in N.C., it seems everything is about money and brute power, and Thursday’s General Assembly special session proved it. For anyone who might have still questioned that, Senate Leader Phil Berger’s last-minute effort to impose a moratorium on nondiscrimination ordinances until the end of the 2017 legislative session should remove all doubt — even for those with lingering sentimental attachments to what the Republican Party used to be.

For those who might think these thoughts must be from someone “active in the Democratic Party,” please consider: At one time, in a kinder, gentler era, I worked on Capitol Hill for a Republican member of Congress from Tennessee — one who was reelected repeatedly because he both ran and served as “Everybody’s Congressman.” But his was the now “dearly departed” Republican Party -– before Rush and Newt, then Bill O’Reilly and Fox News, and now the “Alt Right” and Donald Trump.

Because of all of the above, it is true that I no longer can vote for any modern-day Republican. It has become a party of greed, voter suppression, and steamroller legislative tactics. Its infrastructure now rests on a foundation of faux aggrievement and entitlement, forged by the searing heat of caustic talk radio, fake news and dark-hearted xenophobia, and fueled by the dark money mill made possible since Citizens United.

So, yes: I am furious about HB2, but not for the reasons Chris Turner cited, perhaps in preparation for his own mayoral candidacy under the Republican banner. I am furious that Charlotte has been put through this entire battle between municipal rights and state oppression because Republicans were willing to play power games with the lives of the tiny minority of mostly young people whose gender identification does not match their physicality at birth, and who have an opportunity to live their lives more authentically — if public policymakers will just recognize their Constitutional rights to equal protection under the law.

Unlike current Republican leaders in Raleigh — who on Wednesday actually berated senators who wanted to speak of civil rights — I do not have to be transgender to empathize with transgender citizens, any more than I must be black to feel black lives matter and black votes should not be suppressed, nor must I be Latino to empathize with Dreamers, nor unemployed to empathize with those displaced by profound shifts in the job market wrought by global trade and high-tech revolution.

I do not have to be a Ph.D. to feel facts matter, nor a journalist to argue that the public has a right to watch its government at work, nor a protester to know when the First Amendment right to free speech has been trampled repeatedly in Raleigh of late. I do not have to have political aspirations of my own or be a party activist to speak out about what HB2 has wrought.

I do not have to be any of these things to be furious at what has happened to Charlotte and to NC in 2016.

I just have to be willing to empathize with others not as fortunate as I, and willing to see what the Republican Party of the 21st century has become.

R.C. Masters, a Charlotte resident since 1998, recently retired after a 40-year career in journalism, government and education.

Photo: Charlotte Observer

This story was originally published December 22, 2016 at 7:05 PM with the headline "Reader opinion: Yes, I am furious -- about HB2 and the so-called deal."