“If we want to preserve the proud heritage of North Carolina, it is time for our leadership to consider a substantial and immediate repeal of HB 2.”
–North Carolina State Sen. Tamara Barringer (R-Cary), the first Republican to call for the repeal of the state’s anti-LGBT HB 2 law, which restricts transgender people’s access to restrooms and repeals local LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances.
Although Barringer has called for repeal of the law, she insists she still doesn’t want biological males to use women’s locker rooms or bathrooms.
“Whenever legislative bodies rush to judgment on important public policy decisions, there are unintended consequences,” Barringer said in an emailed statement to The News & Observer. “With the most recent announcements impacting our state, there are simply too many examples of very sad and unfortunate ramifications and unintended effects of HB 2.”
“I did not realize the consequences of this bill, that it would have worldwide consequences, and they just keep piling up,” Barringer told WRAL. “So, at this point, I’m willing to stand up and say, ‘Let’s put the brakes on it. Let’s get together and find a common solution that we call can live with and move forward.”
Barringer represents one of the more competitive districts in the state senate, and faces a strong challenge in November from Wake County school board member Susan Evans. A spokesman for Evans issued a statement saying her last-minute conversion won’t help Barringer save her seat.
“When she voted for HB 2 in March, Sen. Barringer knew what she was doing,” said Evans campaign spokesman Dustin Ingalls. “She knew the legal and economic consequences her constituents would experience. Only now that she’s in danger of losing her seat does she waffle.
“Her latest change of mind is certainly not a change of heart. It’s a purely political move designed to make voters forget that she is responsible for the loss of jobs and millions of dollars in economic investment in her district.”
Ahead of Transgender Day of Remembrance on Thursday, November 20, Advocates for Trans Equality, a national organization, released a report honoring the 58 known transgender people who have died in the United States over the past year.
First held in 1999, Transgender Day of Remembrance was initially intended to mourn those transgender people lost to violence. The first organizers memorialized Rita Hester, killed in November 1998 in Boston, and Chanelle Pickett, murdered in November 1995 in Watertown, Mass.
Since that first memorial service, cities and regions throughout the world have adopted November 20 as a day to commemorate transgender and nonbinary individuals who have died -- whether due to murder, suicide, or natural causes.
In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), 213 Democratic U.S. representatives, as well as Delegates Stacey Plaskett (Virgin Islands), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.), and Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández (Puerto Rico), are demanding that Johnson rebuke Republican lawmakers for using "demonizing and dehumanizing" language when speaking about the transgender community.
"We write to you to strongly condemn the rise in anti-transgender rhetoric, including from members of Congress, and to urge you to ensure members of Congress are following rules of decorum and not using their platforms to demonize and scapegoat any marginalized community, including the transgender community," the Democrats' letter reads.
San Francisco has named Per Sia, one of the first performers to read at a Drag Queen Story Hour event, as the city's new Drag Laureate.
Appointed by Mayor Daniel Lurie on October 29, the 44-year-old Per Sia is only the second person -- and the first transgender individual -- to hold the title.
D'Arcy Drollinger, owner of the Oasis nightclub, was San Francisco's first Drag Laureate. The position -- one of only two in the country, alongside West Hollywood's -- comes with a $35,000 annual stipend for a three-year term funded by the San Francisco Public Library, which also supports the city's Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate programs.
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