OPINION:
Burlington, Vermont, Mayor Snowy Van Snowflake, also known as Miro Weinberger, has issued an executive order banning officials from traveling to North Carolina on any business-tied endeavor, in protest of the state’s transgender bathroom policy.
What a terrific use of taxpayer dollars — using a mayoral seat to stretch across state borders to demand a completely independent body of government comply with a personal political will. No shock here, but Van Snowflake’s a Democrat, party of the petulant.
North Carolina, facing widespread pressure from business and the LGBTQ movement, repealed and replaced the controversial House Bill 2, which mandated boys had to use the public restrooms that corresponded to their sex at birth, and girls, likewise. The new House Bill 142 took out the bathroom mandates in House Bill 2, but then prevented localities from passing their own laws on bathrooms unless they were in compliance with the ones approved at the General Assembly level.
Right now, the state doesn’t have a law that outright bans transgenders from using whatever bathroom they want — nor does it have one that allows transgenders to make the choice. So pragmatically speaking, what that means is local businesses could take it on themselves to require boys to be boys and girls to be girls, and for each gender to use the bathroom that corresponds to their sex at birth — no matter what outfit they happen to be wearing that day.
Transgenders violating those local business decisions could be arrested for trespassing.
State business, right?
Nope. Leftists around the nation are up in arms about the fact that North Carolina’s legislature has taken it on itself to exert its 10th Amendment rights and — gasp — pass legislation that doesn’t take into consideration, say, the mayor of Burlington’s feelings about HB2 and now, HB 142, which is still being criticized as anti-LGBTQ.
Burlington Mayor Van Snowflake has some company.
Government executives in California, Washington State and in Chicago have all issued similar travel bans on public servant employees.
Fine. But two can play that game. Now what North Carolina needs to do is to issue statewide travel bans on public employees going to Chicago, until that city’s gun control laws are relaxed; on California, until that state’s vehicular emission standards are relaxed; and on Washington State, until its governor loosens land use restrictions based on environmental reasons.
Maybe a little trading, a little bartering, of laws and regulations is what’s more in order. Maybe a bit less holier-than-thou finger-pointing, and more recognition of and respect for a state’s 10th Amendment right to claim all “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states.”
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