Turns Out, Pat McCrory Has Been Using His Office to Battle LGBT Civil Rights Since 1991

From City Councilman to Mayor to Governor, Pat McCrory Has Been Fighting Against Basic Civil Rights for LGBT People for Decades

Governor Pat McCrory‘s lawsuit against the federal government demanding the State of North Carolina be legally allowed to discriminate against transgender people didn’t come out of the blue, despite how shocking it was to most on Monday. As it turns out, it came from decades of the 59-year old Republican politician’s battle against the civil rights of LGBT people.

“McCrory has rejected LGBT anti-discrimination measures every chance he’s had in his 25 years in public office,” Jennifer Bendery at The Huffington Post writes. “He voted down a Charlotte ordinance in 1991 as a city council member, opposed another one in 2004 as the city’s mayor, and now, as governor, he just made it illegal for localities to pass these kinds of protections.”

“We have laws in our Constitution which forbid discrimination based on race, gender and religion,” McCrory said after opposing the 1991 measure. “Beyond that, no other group should be given special status, and this community is often wanting special status.”

He added, “I think we’ve got much more serious issues on our plate.” Among those “much more serious issues” would later become his war to defend HB2, but even just a few years earlier Gov. McCrory was discriminating against LGBT people.

The North Carolina governor “had a chance in 2014 to offer protections to LGBT government workers, when he signed an executive order barring discrimination against state employees. But he specifically left them out, keeping the order limited to discrimination based on ‘race, religion, color, national origin, sex, age disability and genetic information.'”

When it comes to gay pride, Gov. McCrory thinks that’s not something to be shown in public.

“As the city’s mayor in 2005,” The Huffington Post writes of Charlotte Gay Pride Festival, “he said it wasn’t appropriate to have the parade in a public place. He suggested the LGBT celebration ‘belongs in a hotel.’ That same year, he refused to write a welcome letter to leaders of the Human Rights Campaign when they hosted a large dinner in Charlotte. He said later that he had the right ‘not to show any visible support‘ for the LGBT rights group.”

Yes, Mayor McCrory’s concern was for his right to oppose a civil rights group, not to support a group whose civil right have always been marginalized.

Perhaps not shocking, Gov. McCrory’s anti-LGBT battle even extends to the arts.

“The governor has even gone after local theater productions,” HuffPo reports. “In 1996, as mayor, he pressured the Charlotte Repertory Theatre to tone down the nudity and gay themes in its production of ‘Angels in America,’ the Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the AIDS crisis. ‘The Pulitzer Prize does not give you license to break the law,’ McCrory said at the time. The theater had to obtain a court injunction to continue with its show.”

 

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr and a CC license