I left the NC Bar Association over its broken promise to the LGBTQ community | Opinion

Just two years ago, the North Carolina Bar Association made a commitment to the queer community: It promised to stand for “full equality” for LGBTQ people and pledged to oppose discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

Now, the NCBA — the premier professional organization for lawyers across the state — has broken its promise to us and is itself engaging in discrimination on the basis of gender expression. That’s why I’ve resigned from the group.

The NCBA’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Committee planned a drag trivia event to be held June 8. It was meant to be a night of fun and fellowship where we could enjoy the kind of entertainment offered over the decades by, among others, Jack Lemmon, Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams and Patrick Swayze.

But on May 5, NCBA President Clayton Morgan canceled the event.

He later told SOGI members that to allow the drag event to proceed would be to enter “contested politics.” Instead of “taking positions,” Morgan advised, the NCBA should offer “balanced programming” that explores “both sides” of issues related to queer equality. To do otherwise could be perceived as “trying to advance just your agenda on the world.”

Nowhere in Morgan’s words could there be heard anything like the NCBA’s previously stated commitment to “full equality” for LGBTQ people. Political cowardice offers the best explanation for the about-face.

Republicans in North Carolina and across the nation are using drag as the leading edge of their campaign to roll back decades of progress for queer people. As lawmakers file anti-drag legislation — like House Bill 673, which would make drag a crime if performed on public property or in the presence of anyone under the age of 18 — Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson calls queer people “filth” and compares us unfavorably to cow excrement. Meanwhile, the GOP’s state and national platforms continue to characterize us as corrosive to civil society and seek to strip us of our marriage rights.

And now, thanks to Rep. Tricia Cotham’s decision to join the Republicans, the party enjoys super-majorities in both houses of the legislature.

Given this political reality, getting too cozy with the LGBTQ community by sponsoring a drag event would mean “our Bar Association-backed legislative agenda will be negatively affected,” Morgan told SOGI members.

So he canceled the event: Abandoning queer people and endorsing homophobia were costs the NCBA was willing to pay to preserve its political clout in Raleigh. Its pledge to us was conditional. We were expendable.

Not that selling us out was easy. Morgan said the decision to cancel the drag event pained him. Maybe he felt real pain. Maybe, if it were up to him, he would gladly welcome his queer colleagues into full political, social and cultural equality. Maybe his heart is as good as he says.

But his heart doesn’t matter nearly as much as his actions, and the ethical conflict he experienced while contemplating the drag event’s cancellation — along with the choice he made about which side of that moral struggle to endorse — brings to mind Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s letter from Birmingham Jail.

As he sat incarcerated for working to dismantle racial segregation, King’s letter targeted not the virulent racists who put him behind bars, but the well-meaning moderates who considered themselves allies of the civil rights movement, even as they expressed disapproval of King’s methods. These purported friends of “lukewarm acceptance” and “shallow understanding,” King wrote, will often leave us “gravely disappointed” because they “prefer a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

And so it is today in the fight for LGBTQ equality.

We know where people like Mark Robinson stand. They mean to harm the queer community. They tell us this forthrightly.

It’s otherwise with feeble allies like Clayton Morgan and the NCBA, who promise their support and then abandon us as soon as their commitment to equality becomes inconvenient.

Gravely disappointed indeed.

This story was originally published May 21, 2023 at 6:00 AM.