Suck it, bigots:
The National Basketball Association announced Thursday that it would not hold the 2017 All-Star Game in Charlotte, N.C., in a reaction to state legislation passed earlier this year that eliminated specific anti-discrimination protections for lesbians, gays and bisexuals. The legislation also mandated that transgender people use bathrooms that match their birth gender.
This is a very big deal.
And it’s important to remember that North Carolina didn’t just attack the LGBT community with it’s stupid and hateful — and increasingly costly for North Carolina — law banning anti-discrimination protections regulating bathroom use. The law also banned cities in North Carolina from raising the minimum wage and it also made it harder/impossible for people discriminated against in North Carolina on the basis of their race, faith, or gender to sue. The bill was a great big rightwing hate sundae with a giant OMG TRANS PEOPLE IN TOILETS! cherry on top.
So this news good for trans people — the NBFuckingA is sticking up for trans people! — but it’s also good news for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, women, people of color, and people struggling to get by on the minimum wage.
Good on the NBA for doing this.
On a related note, BAD on the WNBA for fining the teams that wore antiracist shirts during warmups. They had no right to punish their players for making a statement of conscience.
And a second belated “good on them” for doing the decent thing and backing off on the fines. There was no good reason to appease the racist police departments who made a stink about the shirts, and the WNBA realized that.