It’s a watershed year fraught with turmoil for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. Across the American South, queer, trans and gender-nonconforming people are facing wave after wave of legislation that threatens our safety, well-being and very existence.
From “bathroom bills“ to ordinances that permit discrimination, this battle is in many ways a backlash to all of the victories our community has seen recently —including last year’s nation-wide legalization of same-sex marriage — and it serves a multitude of political and social purposes for the religious and political right.
In this new series, HuffPost Queer Voices Deputy Editor JamesMichael Nichols, who hails from North Carolina himself, talks to some of the leaders, movers and shakers of the fight for queer and trans liberation in the South about their own personal experiences as activists, the current political and social climate for the LGBT community in these states and the action that we, as a community, can take to help. Check out the previous interview with Pamela Raintree.
When North Carolina legislators passed anti-queer House Bill 2 earlier this year and Governor Pat McCrory signed it less than 24 hours later, the state invalidated the rights of nearly every minority group in North Carolina. While the conversation has largely been reduced to transgender bathroom rights in the mainstream political arena, everyone from seniors to the disabled to gay people lost the power of anti-discrimination ordinances at the state level.
This article was originally post here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/lawana-mayfield-north-carolina_us_576da928e4b017b379f60928