"It was never about bathrooms"

[kpete]

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/25/11490498/north-carolina-bathroom-law-transgender

[Initech]

1. Same shit, different decade.

[NCjack]

2. It's RW GOTV to keep the DEMs from repealing hate laws. /nt

[maxrandb]

3. This is a "recurring" theme in everything the GOP does!

It was NEVER about "trickle down"!

It was NEVER about "right to work"!

It was NEVER about "religious freedom"!

It was NEVER about "safe abortions for women"!

It was NEVER about "voter fraud"!

It was NEVER about "weapons of mass destruction"!

It was NEVER about "saving and preserving Social Security"!

It was NEVER about "preventing unwanted pregnancies"!

It was NEVER about "repealing and replacing"!

It was NEVER about "free-market solutions"!

It was NEVER about "lifting all boats"!

In fact, if we had an actual free press doing some basic research into their lies, you wouldn't be able to find two Republicans to rub together in a Public Men's Room.

[Akicita]

8. Totally disagree!

I bet that Republican senator from Washington state with the wide stance could still find another Republican to rub against in a public mens room.

[Wounded Bear]

16. When we elect a Republican man to the Senate...

I'll let you get away with that one.

Patty Murray
Maria Cantwell

[Akicita]

18. I'm talking about the old one who was caught playing footsie with an undercover agent

in a Minneapolis airport rest room. Don't remember his name but I thought he was from Washington.

[HubertHeaver]

31. Idaho

[Dont call me Shirley]

36. Larry Craig

[Beartracks]

40. That's Larry "Wide Stance" Craig to you! n/t

[Dont call me Shirley]

60. Not me, Im hetero female.

[geardaddy]

17. He was from Idaho

Larry "Wide Stance" Craig

[Akicita]

19. I stand corrected. Thank you.

[Botany]

21. Idaho or Washington what is the difference?

both are states in the northwest ..... both have mountains, both have cold deserts, both
have a border w/Canada, both grow sugar beets, and both make some good wine.

[Wounded Bear]

27. The difference is about 50 shades of red...

[2naSalit]

55. Ding ding ding!!!

As a former Idaho resident, I totally agree!

But I am proud to say that senator wide stance sees me, presonally, as an enemy... so does Dink Kempthorne the former Gov, Sen, SoI. They give me the stink eye whenever they see me, I love to make them squirm too.

[Wounded Bear]

56. Keep up the good fight...

I love that as a Washingtonian with two not only Democratic Senators, but two women as well, pretty much thumbs our collective state nose at the Repub Party, at least nationally.

We have some deep red, and deeply disturbing, areas in Washington, though. Hard to root them out.

[2naSalit]

57. Yeah, I know

we have that in Montana too.

[Bluenorthwest]

48. In NC Five Democrats voted for that hateful law, so it is not just 'the GOP' but also a portion of

this Party. All five Democrats who voted for increased discrimination are Hillary endorsers and she has embraced their endorsements and failed to disavow their votes nor to clarify her associations with them. It's very wrong to claim it is just one Party when our own is playing that same hate game and those who play it are touted as important endorsements by one of our contenders for the nomination. She boasts of those endorsements.

[Scuba]

4. There was a graphic here yesterday. Something like ...

If you're offended by transgender people in the rest room, just look the other way like you do for war, corruption and homelessness.

[oldandhappy]

23. yes!

[nil desperandum]

49. Yeah

that's a spot on assessment of how most of our fellow Americans manage to pass through every day of their lives...self imposed blinders.

[maxrandb]

5. I'd like to add that

racism, discrimination and segregation was NEVER a North-South thing, nor a Republican-Democrat thing

It's ALWAYS been a CONservative-Liberal thing.

[-none]

7. Too many do not want to understand that.

Too much thinking involved.
Closed primaries are based on this kind of thinking too. Really it is. Think about it.

[TexasBushwhacker]

13. There are legitimate reasons for closed primaries

It s to prevent party raiding, ie. GOP voters voting in the Democratic primary (or vice versa) to support the Democrat they perceive as the weakest opponent. While I'm not aware on any concerted efforts to do this in presidential elections, it's not uncommon at the state and local level. That being said, I prefer open primaries because they have the potential to include more voters.

[Shrike47]

32. Rush Limbaugh's "operation chaos" in 2008 was exactly that in the Democratic primary.

[-none]

34. "They" are using closed primaries to disenfranchise voters.

And then there are the party changing on the voter rolls to disenfranchise even more people.
Keeping the GOP out in closed primaries only works at the local level. Not so well at the state or national level, because of the number of voters involved. Closed primaries are more for control of who wins, over keeping any GOP out. All one has to do is look at this latest round of primary voting in the various states to see that. Election fraud is blatant and in your face for anyone even halfway paying attention. And yet it takes law suits to get anyone to do anything?
It is so out there that the local election officials themselves should be checking into it.

[Akicita]

12. Woodrow Wilson was very liberal and also a virulent racist. FDR was very liberal and had

American citizens of Japanese descent forcibly removed from their homes and placed in concentration camps. Both Clinton and Obama opposed equal marriage rights until recently. Obama is certainly liberal and Clinton claims to be a progressive.

[scscholar]

28. Bullshit. I never saw it in the north or the west

It's those people in the south that be that way.

[FrodosPet]

46. You forgot the sarcasm thingie

Click the "Smilies" button, then click the triple dots (...) button, and the "Dripping Sarcasm" graphic will pop into your message.

Otherwise, some "sarcasm challenged" people might take you literally.

[hunter]

61. Sundown towns...

According to author Kate Kelly, "there were at least 10,000 'sundown towns' in the United States as late as the 1960s; in a 'sundown town' nonwhites had to leave the city limits by dusk, or they could be picked up by the police or worse. These towns were not limited to the South—they ranged from Levittown, N.Y., to Glendale, Calif., and included the majority of municipalities in Illinois."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

[Beartracks]

41. True. A century ago I think the party's roles were reversed...

... and the conservative Democrats were the pro-slavery party, for example, and the liberal Republicans (think Lincoln) led the charge against it.

I'm generalizing big time, btw.


===================

[Heidi]

6. Kick!

[bigwillq]

9. K and R (nt)

[Gothmog]

10. Great Meme

[Dustlawyer]

11. K&R!!!

[TalkingDog]

14. And if you read the bill, it was never about trans people either.

They were a convenient red herring. It was really about stripping away legal recourse for discrimination law suits (for everybody) and suppressing wages (for everybody).

The trans community, however, were chosen as the distraction and "whipping boy".

Even if they walk that part of the bill completely back, (which they probably will) the wage suppression will remain on the books. They've already tempered the discrimination section.

[Populist_Prole]

26. Bingo

It's pro-business / anti-worker at its core and raison d'etre.

All the other stuff was just hunks of red meat for the republican "base" to disguise it.

[Akicita]

15. Many of the laws currently being proposed or passed are discriminatory in that

they set up special rules that only apply to transgenders. Gender neutrality, on the other hand, is equal rights for all.

[Hekate]

20. Kicktoon

[Proud Liberal Dem]

22. They are trying to figure out a way to keep the rubes distracted

while they continue to push their anti-progressive policies. After all, HB2 in NC did MUCH, MUCH more than discriminate against Transgender persons in terms of their bathroom usage. I would also add that this spate of "religious liberty" laws we're seeing are their attempt to legally keep up discrimination against LGBTs even though there are diminishing means for them to prevent full LGBT equality (even though I don't think that these laws are going to hold up in Court).

[oldandhappy]

24. It is about people

[Bad Dog]

25. Whenever I go to London I'm more concerned about Americans using the toilets.

We just don't have the room.

[SoapBox]

29. Exactly.

[PatrynXX]

30. Seeing that there's already an incident involving someone being punted

for not showing the manager her parts and because she looked like a guy this could get ugly quick. I pointed this problem out to the opposing side among friends and that shut them up fast. Okay before you can use this rest room if your ugly please show us your parts. smh So even Straight Women or Men might get nailed with this , thus if you look like a woman your forced into the girls restroom if you don't show your man parts and vice versa if you look like a man, your forced into the mens restroom for not showing your lady parts. Nothing like bring up BIG government in on a conversation with people on small government oops

[allan01]

33. shoving the blue (or jim crow ) laws down our throat again

[Eleanors38]

35. I don't know. There's that smell thing the RW finds so... Invigorating.

[elleng]

37. Right, it's about FREEDOM,

and some are just not entitled to it.

[Albertoo]

38. While the pic is fun, it is potentially misleading

I see one important difference: nature vs nurture

• Racism is a remnant of reflexes which are biologically coded inheritance:
group survival based on identification markers like skin color.
Later it can be intellectualized and generalized (color of the uniform)

• Anti-LGBT bias is probably more artificial, a nurture construct = religion's fault.
By genetic coding alone, society would probably be far more tolerant than religious influences have made it. After all, didn't Freud call humans 'polymorphous perverts'? (the sexual partner range would be far greater, if the society's moral codes were not so imposing; sometimes for good -incest-, sometimes not)

[chervilant]

47. What?!?

"...group survival based on identification markers like skin color"?!? I am so very glad I can use my IL to hide crap like this. (And, supporting racist "intellectuals" by repeating their racist "conclusions" is really disgusting.)

[Albertoo]

52. I was not condoning racism; merely explaining its origin.

[jcgoldie]

50. wut?

• Racism is a remnant of reflexes which are biologically coded inheritance:
group survival based on identification markers like skin color.
Later it can be intellectualized and generalized (color of the uniform)

That's bullshit man.

[Albertoo]

53. There was an interesting study made very few years back

The university which tested that (forgot which) tested people who had no conscious racial bias or even had conscious anti-racist attitudes. The sample included whites and blacks, don't know about Asians.

Result: even people with no intention or even consciousness of racial bias displyed some degree of it. The origins are most certainly the in-group/out-group mechanism which is so powerful and harnessed for all the wrong reasons: nationalism, religion, etc.

That's where the anti-LGBT bias is different in my opinion: it's conscious, and its origin can be traced most of the time to religion. By inherited genetic propensity alone, the prevalence of bisexuals would be far greater than observed.

[jcgoldie]

54. It doesn't have to be conscious

To be a learned behavior which isn't necessarily tied to any universal mechanism. I mean I believe we are all at least a little bit racist due to the culture we have been raised in and we have to fight those unconscious stereotypes in ourselves absolutely. What I don't believe is that it's always due to some psychological mechanism like what you are describing. It's due to history and its different in different cultures. Black and white isn't always the dichotomy its just our own based on our own peculiar history. I mean if all you are saying is that human beings have a tendency to fear people who aren't like them, then I guess that's a little obvious but it doesn't mean racism is always necessary. What makes people link in and out groups to something arbitrary like skin color? Only history and power relations.

[Albertoo]

58. Oh yes, racism can be cultural too

But to summarize my point, amending it with your remark:
• racism = nature + nurture
• anti-LGBT = nurture only, probably against nature

[ananda]

39. In my childhood Jim Crow city ...

... whenever I went to the public library, the water fountains
labeled "Colored" were always run down and broken; but the
"White" ones were always clean, shiny, and working.

We iived in such an ugly world then, and it looks as though we
still do.

[Cassiopeia]

42. And it wasn't even about what this graphic implies.

HB2 was about protecting and expanding power of corporations over their workers.

This bill intensified the right to work laws in NC and that's all that mattered.

[King_Klonopin]

43. Yup. Also, there's another layer to this, I believe...

It's election season! ... so the GOP has to manufacture some phoney outrage,
divisiveness, fear-mongering, and anger-based motivation to "get out the vote."
The GOP bosses know there is a huge risk of low, republican voter turn-out due
to apathy, disgust, fear and loathing over a Trump or a Cruz nomination

These states have passed these anti-LGBT laws already knowing that they are
unconstitutional and will be overturned.
They also know this is a manufactured issue -- a red herring, just like voter fraud --
both of which they use to cover up their motives (while revealing the purulence of
their festering souls, as well.)
They have no intentions whatsoever of "enforcing" these laws because 1) it can't be done,
and 2) they don't care about who uses a bathroom. They care about a source of red meat
for their bigoted base and a means of manipulating them come November. Remember the
issue of "gay marriage" ? Same bullshit, different day.

The issue will be pumped up from now until November, after which time it will slowly fade
into obscurity after serving it's true purpose which is to whip up the ire of the troglodytes
and get them to the polls.

[Arkansas Granny]

44. You nailed it. Check out this excerpt from "What's The Matter With Kansas".

This is vexing for observers, and one might expect it to vex the movement's true believers even more. Their grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining. _____
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Political/What'sMatterKansas.html

This is how they get their followers to vote.

[meow2u3]

45. It's about subjugating people they don't like

all under the color of authority. Enough said.

[bigbrother05]

51. They claim it's to protect their daughters ...

Maybe they just want to stand at the urinal next to RuPaul?

[sarcasmo]

59. Kick

[Rex]

62. It's always about keeping us divided and at each others throats.

That is the GOP plan, it never changes.