Reading the Right Wing: Mourning for North Carolina's HB 2

It should be no surprise that the repeal of North Carolina's infamous anti-LGBT House Bill 2 didn't make contributors to far-right websites happy. What is a bit surprising, but probably shouldn't be, is the intensity of their ire, as we discovered in this week's reading of the crazier wing of the right wing (so you don't have to).

Jesse Lee Peterson, a commentator for World Net Daily, went deep into traditional gender roles, saying the men who supported repeal weren't real men -- because, in Peterson's view, real men are homophobic and transphobic. And logical, implying women aren't.

Noting that rock superstar Bruce Springsteen canceled a concert in North Carolina after HB 2 was passed, Peterson wrote, "I must say that Bruce Springsteen is not a real man, nor is any liberal male. Liberals think themselves defenders of 'victims,' but they condemn good and promote evil. When you don't think clearly and logically (like a man), you create emotion-fueled garbage. The lack of love of fathers opened the door for this mess. Weak men allow it."

Peterson then had this to say about Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who agreed to the HB 2 repeal, even though most Democrats thought it didn't go far enough: "I wondered aloud on my radio show whether Gov. Cooper -- as a grown man -- really believes in this transgender madness, or if he's just making a paycheck."

The repeal removes the requirement that, when in government buildings, including public schools, transgender people use the restrooms, locker rooms, and other single-sex facilities designated for their birth gender. But it leaves policy regarding these facilities in the state's hands indefinitely, and it prohibits municipalities from passing or amending nondiscrimination ordinances addressing other public accommodations or private employment until December 2020, although it lifts the block on enforcement of existing ones.

Peterson noted that his despised liberals were upset with the moratorium on nondiscrimination ordinances, then said, "Discrimination against people in their wrong is good -- a wakeup call reminding them that they're wrong. But companies mired in liberalism discriminate against people who are right -- to protect those in the wrong!"

And the cherry on top, after remarking on Cooper's support among African-Americans, "the vast majority of whom are Democrats yet think they're Christians" (Peterson's words), he asserted, "You cannot believe in God and support the Democratic Party."

The folks at Breitbart didn't go quite that far, but said the moratorium "will protect the sexual privacy of adults and children in public bathrooms and shower rooms," not recognizing that trans people want privacy too. Breitbart contributor Neil Munro went on to question trans people's authenticity and imply they're abnormal.

"The almost-four-year period until 2020 is also only a temporary defeat for advocates of the transgender ideology," he wrote. "Those groups are demanding that the state forcefully require Americans to validate the sex-switching claims of 'transgender' people, regardless of the cost to the roughly 99.7 percent of normal Americans who do not wish to live as members of the opposite sex."

Over at BarbWire,a site founded by anti-LGBT activist Matt Barber, columnist and Christian right activist Mark Creech stood against cities' adoption of LGBT-inclusive antidiscrimination laws by saying, "Sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) laws create serious problems for free markets and contracts, free speech, and religious liberty. They threaten citizens with penalties and liabilities for alleged 'discrimination' based on purely subjective identities, and not objective, verifiable, and demonstrative traits." Hmm, what if we said his religion was a subjective identity?

He also claimed God's support for HB 2. "Our state stood out as a bright beacon for the entire nation, even the world, because we did the right thing" in passing the law, he wrote. "Our case was never really in the hands of the NCAA, celebrities, corporate groups, equality activist organizations, a Leftist media or Progressive courts; it was in the hands of an Almighty God."

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Oh, the scandal of male service members posting photos of female colleagues, in the nude, online without the women's consent? According to the far-right sites, it's not only because the military allows women to serve with men (who get excused for bad behavior because they supposedly can't control their urges), it's because of those bad LGBT people.

World Net Daily contributor Greg Corombos turned to Elaine Donnelly, a longtime anti-LGBT activist who opposed the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," as an expert on the matter. The repeal, she told him, opened a "Pandora's Box" of sexual activity in the military.

"The military is now a libertine institution," Donnelly said. "There are very few limitations on sexual conduct other than being consensual. If any kind of sexual expression in the military is now OK, how do you draw the lines? There are no lines anymore." Oh, maybe "being consensual" is a line?

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WND also gave major play to an activist who opposes the nomination of Kristin Goodwin to be chief of cadets at the Air Force Academy. Goodwin happens to be a lesbian, and that does not sit well with Kayla Moore, head of a group called the Foundation for Moral Law, and the wife of Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who's in danger of losing his job because he urged state officials to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court's marriage equality ruling.

WND columnist Bob Unruh approvingly quoted Kayla Moore's letter to Secretary of Defense James Mattis: "I oppose this nomination because Col. Goodwin does not set a proper moral example for youth. The person responsible for the education of cadets at the academy is a role model and an exemplar of proper deportment and conduct. Col. Goodwin, as a lesbian who is 'married' to another woman, not only demeans the institution of marriage but contradicts the divine basis for marriage revealed in Scripture and evident in nature."

Moore continued, "By nominating an open lesbian who proclaims that she is married to another woman, the Department of Defense states its disregard for the fundamental moral order established by God, thus breaking trust with the millions of Christians who voted for the new president in hope that the ungodly policies of the previous administration would be repudiated."

Moore ignores the fact that there are many Christians (and members of other faiths) who support LGBT equality, and that in any case the U.S. is not a theocracy. But she doesn't get that any more than her husband did, when he refused to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building.

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Among the contributors to BarbWire is a wingnut The Advocate has followed for a long time, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association. In the past few years the AFA has tried to downplay his role with the organization, but he still works there, spewing hate on the AFA site and elsewhere.

In a recent column posted on BarbWire, Fischer wasn't railing against LGBT people for a change, but was taking Donald Trump to task for not being tough enough in defense of his immigration policies.

"A third-tier judge, without any constitutional or legal warrant, has taken total control of America's immigration policy from President Trump," Fischer wrote, about a federal judge's injunction against Trump's most recent travel ban. "And the president is letting him do it."

The judge's decision "is an appalling, alarming, and Constitution-destroying act of judicial hubris and overreach," commented Fischer, who further contended, "The law gives the president unquestioned, unilateral, and unreserved authority to block entry into the United States to any persons or group of persons he 'deems detrimental to the interests' of the country. And he can simply do it 'by proclamation' and entirely on his own authority."

Well, not exactly. "Another section of the law, however, states that 'no person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person's race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence,'" CNN reports. Trump's executive order, in naming six countries, would certainly seem to run afoul of this. Oh, but CNN's fake news, right?

Later in his column, Fischer got in some anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric. "Who knows how many acts of terror will be committed by these Muslim migrants this judge has foolishing [sic], recklessly, and wrongly allowed into our country?" he asked. By the way, it's been pointed out by mainstream conservatives as well as liberals that immigrants, regardless of faith or legal status, are no more likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans -- and may be less so.

We'll be back next week with another roundup of what we've found out reading the far right so you don't have to.