North Carolina House Bill 2 (aka, “HB2”, or the “Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act”, or simply “the Bathroom Bill”), which  among other things prohibits transgender people from using the bathroom designated to the sex of their identity, is going to force another step forward in civil liberties.

Four years ago, in the 2012 gubernatorial election season, the North Carolina General Assembly, controlled by Republicans, passed North Carolina Amendment 1 (aka, “SB514”, or “An Act to Amend the Constitution to Provide That Marriage Between One Man and One Woman is the Only Domestic Legal Union That Shall Be Valid or Recognized in This State”), which called for a public referendum on the issue of constitutionally banning same-sex marriage.

From its inception, this bill was doomed to have no long-term relevance; it was cast in the mold of the polemical 2008 California Proposition 8. Already, the battle lines were being drawn for the national legalization of same-sex marriage: the military’s restrictive “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy had been repealed, and the Department of Defense was permitting military chaplains to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies; President Obama had announced his support for marriage equality; challenges to Prop 8 were wending their way to the Supreme Court; and public polling indicated that a slender-but-growing majority of Americans approved of same-sex marriage. Predictably, in July 2014, the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned an equivalent bill in Virginia, declaring it unconstitutional, thus nullifying NC’s Amendment 1. Why did NC legislators waste so much time, money, and energy on a bill they had to know wouldn’t last?

Because this was about more than just the bill itself. It was a dog whistle, or maybe a bullhorn, to rally conservatives around the state to come to the polls. A well-funded campaign of anti-marriage-equality groups spread across rural NC, especially conservative Christian groups, from the famous evangelical pastor Reverend Billy Graham, to two NC Roman Catholic bishops, to the Christian-funded Vote for Marriage NC, to the pulpit activism of ministers around the state. The message wasn’t just “vote for Amendment 1”, it was “vote for conservatives”; Representative Mark Hilton (R-Catawba) said, “One of the issues [conservative groups] have come to me about is the marriage amendment. It’s important to the conservative groups that we get this passed this year because they need that to be able to get their ground game working to get the maximum effect to get out the vote.” It was a heavily divisive issue, one that played to the deepest emotions of conservatives, and the public debate energized the voters, and helped usher in a new conservative Republican governor, Pat McCrory, after 20 years of fairly progressive Democratic governors (and a longer history of less-progressive Democratic governors before that).

So, is it really a coincidence that 4 years later, in the 2016 gubernatorial election season, the North Carolina General Assembly, controlled by Republicans, passed a bill that limits the rights of a gender minority? Or that some of them are calling for a public referendum? Or that they diverted $500K from the state’s Emergency Response and Disaster Relief fund to defend the fore-doomed HB2 in court against the U.S. Department of Justice, maintaining the controversy and the press for the next several months until the November election? I don’t think it will have the saving grace for Pat McCrory that it did last time, however; it’s already cost the state millions of dollars in revenue, and it’s made us an international laughing-stock.

Like Amendment 1 before it, HB2 is destined to be overturned, a footnote in history. But in the meantime, it’s causing real harm to real people; phone calls to Trans Lifeline, the nonprofit transgender crisis hotline, doubled after the passage of HB2; and some bigots feel emboldened to mock or even harm transgender people in the name of this law. This must have been profoundly disappointing for the human rights activists in Charlotte who’ve spent years working to make NC more inclusive, and who scored a victory with the Charlotte City Council with the passage of Charlotte Ordinance 7056 (aka, “An Ordinance Amending Chapter 2 of the Charlotte City Code Entitled “Administration”, Chapter 12 Entitled “Human Relations”, and Chapter 22 Entitled “Vehicles for Hire””), only to have it struck down at the state level by HB2. So, why am I praising HB2, rather than Charlotte Ordinance 7056?

Because, as good as the intention was behind Charlotte Ordinance 7056, if left unopposed, it would have had minor and purely local effect, rather than the transformative societal effect of HB2.

California’s Prop 8, banning same-sex marriage, was the critical event that made same-sex marriage legal across the entire US, in three notable ways:

1. The public debate forced people to form an opinion on the issue, and when pressed on it, most people decided that either they were in support of marriage equality or that it simply wasn’t their business to dictate what other adults did;
2. It inspired contrary legislation in several other states, legalizing same-sex marriage there;
3. It forced the issue to be resolved in the courts, rather than the timid Congress.

Federal laws are made in two ways in the USA; either they are enacted by Congress; or they are decided as interpretations of the Constitution by the Supreme Court (or its lower district courts). Though same-sex marriage was trending upward in favorability among Americans, it would likely have been decades before Congress would have acted on that; members of Congress are too afraid of strong action on contentious issues, lest it endanger their reelection; and no single party is likely to have a clear mandate to act unilaterally for the next several elections. (A cynical view might assert that controversial issues –like same-sex marriage, gun control, health care, and abortion– are kept unresolved so the parties have strong, emotional differentiators to garner voters, but I prefer to ascribe it to simple inability.) So, the courts brought in marriage equality at least a decade, and probably much longer, than would have been possible from Congress. And this has been a huge step forward in civil rights, positively affecting hundreds of thousands of lives, and giving millions of people their dignity.

And these laws do more than just determine how people are treated by the government. They set a normative expectation among the public. Same-sex marriage is enjoying more popular support now not only because the law reflects how people feel… people feel differently because of the law itself. At their best, laws are a reflection and reinforcement and declaration of shared social values.

So ask yourself, and be honest: Were you concerned about the rights of transgender people a year ago? Were you inspired to march in the streets, attend rallies, or even post on social media about it?

I wasn’t. Sure, if you’d asked me, I would have said truthfully that I thought transgender people should have the same rights as others. But I wouldn’t have felt that strongly about it.

And then HB2 happened. In my state. And I was forced to form an opinion.

And I took to the streets.

Because, who are we, as a state? Who am I, as a citizen? I’ll tell you, clearly, in the face of legal claims by representatives of my state government: “We are not this.”

We are not punching down. We are not petty. We are not oppressive. We are not exclusionary.

Still, if same-sex marriage was yet decades away, how long in the future were transgender rights? How many years and how many lives until we cared?

But now, around the country, around the world, people are defiantly defining themselves by what they are not, on an issue that had not even been on their radar: “We are not this.”

I may not know much about law, but I know what I don’t like.

“We are not this.”

I can’t predict if HB2, this bigoted bill, will help conservatives maintain control of the North Carolina state government for another term. But I do know its one inevitable effect: however hurtful it will be for transgender people in its short life, and though some of those affected may not live to see the long-term benefits, it will give transgender people their legal dignity ever after.

So, self-styled “social conservatives”, keep bringing us hateful, hurtful laws. Keep pushing against the tide of history. Keep forcing us to form an opinion. Please.

Some of my international friends have asked what the recent death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia means for America, for our process, and for the election. I couldn’t fit it into a tweet, so I thought I’d share my understanding and opinions here. I don’t have any great insights or expertise, but I hope this is useful for those who haven’t delved into the peculiarities of US government and law.

The death of Justice Scalia leaves a seat open in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), the third branch of government (the Judicial branch); the other two branches are Congress (the Legislative branch, comprised of the House and Senate), and the Presidency (the Executive branch).

The Supreme Court has 9 Justices, appointed for life. This means that whomever is appointed as a replacement for Scalia will likely affect the tone of American justice for decades after the President who appointed them has left. Scalia was appointed in 1986, by President Reagan, and has been a consistently conservative voice for 30 years, frequently writing scathing and sarcastic dissenting opinions (“minority reports”) for decisions he did not agree with, including the legalization of same-sex marriage, Obamacare, women’s rights to abortion, civil rights, and many other progressive issues. Though he was intelligent, witty, and well-versed in the law, he was not kind in his judgments.

When Scalia was alive, the Supreme Court was almost evenly split between conservatives and progressives, with Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia on the strongly conservative side, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor on the moderate to strongly progressive side; the deciding vote has usually been the generally fair-minded, moderately conservative Anthony Kennedy. The death of Justice Scalia changes that balance. It’s expected that President Obama would nominate a progressive as Scalia’s replacement, and though he hasn’t yet named a candidate, conservative politicians have already attempted to block Obama’s appointment (in the true spirit of ♫whatever it is, I’m against it♫ ), leaving it to the next President to decide.

It’s the duty and right of the sitting President to name replacement nominees to the Supreme Court (and Obama does intend to do so), and the duty and right of the Senate (not all of Congress) to approve these nominations. This has been highly politicized in the past few years, with more and more attempts by both conservatives and (to a lesser extent) progressives to block Supreme Court appointments, drawing out the debate, so there’s some wisdom in nominating a moderate Justice, in hopes of a speedy and non-contentious approval by the Senate. Notably, the nominee doesn’t have to be a current judge, or even a lawyer, but in reality, the Senate would be unlikely to approve anyone who isn’t a law professional (with good reason).

The nominee must get a simple majority in the Senate; currently, with 2 Senators from each of the 50 States, that means 51 approval votes.

The Republicans control the Senate, with 54 senators; the Democrats have only 44 senators; Independents make up the balance, with 2 senators (Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine), who typically vote with the Democrats. While there are a few conservative Democratic senators, it’s likely that all Democratic and Independent senators will vote to appoint Obama’s nominee, whomever that might be. That’s only 46 votes, meaning at least 4 Republican senators will need to cross party lines to vote for the appointee… in an election year. That could be a tough sell for Obama.

But Obama has 342 days left in office, and the longest Supreme Court confirmation process, from nomination to resolution, was 125 days, back in 1916, when nominee Louis Brandeis “frightened the Establishment” by being “a militant crusader for social justice”. (Thanks, Rachel Schnepper!) In today’s sharply divided and fractured political system, I expect that we will set a new record for how long it takes to confirm a Supreme Court Justice, if it happens in the Obama administration at all.

If you did the math, you’ll have noticed that 46 + 4 = 50, not 51; luckily, if there’s a split vote in the Senate, the Vice President casts the deciding vote, and Joe Biden is closely aligned with President Obama.

If Obama can’t get the votes he needs for his nominee (a real possibility), he could wait until Congress adjourns for the year, and make a recess appointment, meaning a judicial selection while Congress is not in session; but this appointment would be temporary, less than 2 years, and the next President would certainly be the one to make the permanent appointment.

I’m reasonably confident (though not certain) that the next Supreme Court Justice will be a progressive, and will be appointed by President Obama, not the next President. But that wouldn’t mean that the implications of this for the 2016 Presidential election are any less notable! Other Justices (including the beloved Notorious RBG and “Swing Vote” Kennedy) may step down or even die during the term of the next President, meaning that the balance might shift yet again. We can’t ignore the fact that Bernie Sanders, a sitting Independent senator, will have a vote in the current Supreme Court nomination, while Hillary won’t, which will likely raise Bernie’s profile (for good or ill). And while the nomination process is underway, all the candidates will talk about who they’d appoint to the Supreme Court (keeping in mind that Obama probably doesn’t want the job), though I dearly hope they don’t get the chance. Finally, there’s the tiny chance that in a close race, the Supreme Court may decide who the next President is…

The Impact of the Supreme Court

It’s easy to underestimate the power the Supreme Court has on America’s domestic policy, and on people’s lives. What is legal or not is often (perhaps usually) decided not by Congress (the Legislative branch, which drafts, proposes, and votes on new federal laws) or the President (the Executive branch, which approves, implements, enforces, and administers those federal laws), but by the Supreme Court (the Judicial branch, which decides if federal laws adhere to the Constitution, and which acts as the final say on the application of federal laws, and on how state laws are affected by federal laws and the Constitution).

Some landmark policies that the average person associates generally with the US government were specifically decided by the Supreme Court:

• the legality of a woman’s right to abortion (in the famous court case Roe v Wade)
• whether states had the right to keep their schools segregated between black students and white students (and much earlier, whether African American slaves were entitled to citizenship)
• whether same-sex couples can get married (and earlier, whether interracial couples could get married)
• whether there is any limit on how much money a corporation or union can spend in elections (under the aegis of free speech)
• the legality of some aspects of Obamacare (aka the Affordable Care Act), which determined if the law as a whole could be implemented
• whether Florida could recount the ballots in the contested 2000 election between George Bush and Al Gore (though this is a rare instance… that usually doesn’t happen)

Some of these are issues that could have specific federal laws about them, but which Congress did not address. For example, Congress has never made a federal law that makes same-sex marriage legal, and it probably would have been decades before that would ever have happened, if it ever did (politicians typically play it safe, because they have to try to get re-elected); but based on the Supreme Court’s hearing of lower (state and district) courts’ rulings on state laws to determine if state laws were legal through the lens of the federal Constitution, and on the Supreme Court’s decision around some federal laws, it became legal for same-sex couples to get married. Congress could still make a law on this, one way or another, to settle details or try to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision (for example, by changing the Constitution itself), but for the foreseeable future, the Supreme court made same-sex marriage legal in every state of the Union, and has all the federal benefits of marriage.

The Supreme Court decides which cases it will try. On average, SCOTUS tries 60-75 oral arguments (what we think of as a court case) per year, and reviews another 50-60 more cases on paper.

Every year, tens of millions of civil and criminal court cases are tried in US state courts; hundreds of thousands of those decisions are appealed to a higher state court; tens of thousands of those are appealed to a federal district court, if the matter is applicable to federal law rather than state law, and district courts are further organized into 11 federal circuits; thousands of these cases are appealed to the Supreme Court, of which they accept a mere 1–2%. In addition, there are court cases of major federal or interstate crimes, and cases of disputes between state governments or between a state government and the federal government, or maritime laws where no state has jurisdiction, or cases of bankruptcy or ambassadorial issues.

So, the chance that the Supreme Court will hear any particular case is very slim, and is typically only the most important cases, but when they do rule on a case, it sets the precedent for the rest of the country, at a state and federal level, and is rarely overturned.

Scalia’s Legacy

While it’s not polite to speak ill of the dead, and while I can mourn Scalia’s death as a person, I’ve long held a very low opinion of him, and I admit that I’m glad of any opportunity to shift the character of the Supreme Court to a more progressive, compassionate, and modern constituency.

Many have painted Scalia as a patriot who’s made America better; here’s my dissenting opinion.

Scalia was clever, and I think it’s even more important for clever people to also strive to be good people; even more so if they are in a position of power. He may have been a good person to his friends and family, but he did not carry that over into how he served this country.

His writings struck me as insincere, and his claim to adhere to “Constitutional originalism” was belied by his whimsical interpretations of the US Constitution, such as his very modern stance that the 2nd Amendment ensured private ownership of guns, rather than the original emphasis on militias for national defense, and the absurd notion that “The Constitution is not a living document”, when the Constitution itself defines how to amend it.

And while he’s perhaps most famous for his dissenting opinions, it’s his majority rulings that have caused the most damage to America and Americans. And even beyond that, he’s used his Judicial authority to step into decisions on lower courts. For example, in 2000’s Presidential election, it was Scalia who personally intervened in the Florida court decision to halt the recount, and later the Supreme Court ruled not to let the votes be recounted, handing the election to George W. Bush.

Beyond his own rulings, his influence and legacy is in giving voice, authority, and credibility to a radical conservatism that influenced a generation of legal thought, carried on in Alito and Roberts, which holds that interpreting the text of the law is more important than the applicability to modern society and technology. In other words, it claims that trying to imagine (in a ridiculous fantasy) the opinions of a person living over two centuries ago, when this country was yet unformed, is more relevant than a view informed by the country as it has since developed. Generously, this is truly “conservative”, preserving the prejudices and ignorance of bygone eras along with any wisdom; more pointedly, this was a convenient way to appear impartial while twisting the result to his own backwards ideological view.

Scalia’s rulings were often specious and inhumane, mere clever arguments based on selective interpretation of the wording of laws and the Constitution rather than attempts at applying justice. In dissenting on a ruling for reopening a death-penalty case, where most of the original witnesses had recanted their testimonies, Scalia said, “Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.” For Scalia, it seems, the law was not a way to achieve social or personal fairness, but a pro-forma game whose rules were both strict and meaningless.

It’s hard to imagine someone as retrograde as Scalia getting nominated or confirmed, so I’m hopeful that we’ll have a more reasonable, just, and progressive Supreme Court in the next few months. This is how the Founding Fathers wanted this country to work… with each generation forging its own vision of a more perfect union, renewing the government to meet their own needs and desires, with the consistent thread of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And, in the end, justice.

I just chimed in to the FCC to request that they stop the merger of Comcast and Time-Warner Cable. I don’t know if my voice will make a difference, but I do know that saying nothing will definitely not make a difference.

Here was my statement to the FCC (flawed, I’m sure, but I hope the intent and sentiment is conveyed):

Allowing the merger of Comcast and Time-Warner Cable will dramatically decrease consumer benefits and choice.

Some mergers can be good, allowing struggling companies to reduce losses; in this case, neither Comcast nor Time-Warner Cable is in a situation that needs this merger for financial stability; both companies are currently thriving in the marketplace.

Innovation and an open market for goods and services is in the best interest of the American people. This was clearly shown when the Bell System was broken up January 8, leading to the emergence of advanced competitive services, including cellular phone service, and lower prices. The FCC should take that as a model, and decrease the monopolistic merger of competitors, which decreases this innovation, price competition, and customer choice. Customer service is already notoriously poor at both companies, and decreasing customer choice is likely to make it harder for customers to receive adequate service.

Without competition, Internet providers have little incentive to provide either improved service or lower prices. The US is already widely regarded as having relatively expensive and slow Internet service compared to other industrial nations, and this merger threatens to make that worse.

In addition to the loss of benefits to the consumer, this merger threatens American jobs. When a merger occurs, service departments also merge, and workers lose their jobs. This is especially true when the mergers are in similar industries; some studies have shown an average of 19% job loss, far above the norm of 7.9% when the industries are unrelated. Comcast currently employs 136,000 people; Time-Warner Cable currently employs 51,600 people; if the average job loss takes place, that could mean approximately 35,644 jobs lost, or more conservatively 14,820 jobs, in a still-struggling employment market; many of these will be unskilled labor, which is even harder to resolve. While no laws in the US take into account the effect of job loss on mergers, this is still a factor that can be taken into account by the FCC; laws are only necessary when systemic problems arise in the behavior of key industry players and regulators, and allowing this merger could necessitate the creation of a law that would otherwise be avoided.

Please take the necessary steps to block this merger.

If you are a US citizen, you have until August 25th, 2014 to file a comment. The FCC seems to have gone out of its way to make this difficult, so here are some step-by-step instructions:

1. Fill out the Free Press petition first just in case. Then, if you want to register your opposition independently…
2. Go to the FCC  Electronic Comment Filing System page
3. Enter “14-57” in the Proceeding Number field; you’ll get no immediate confirmation, but this is the code for the “Applications of Comcast Corporation and Time Warner Cable Inc. for Consent to Assign or Transfer Control of Licenses and Applications”. (Note: this is not arcane at all. That’s just an illusion.)
4. Fill in all required personal information
5. Ensure that the Type of Filing field is set to “Comment” (the default)
6. Write a text document explaining why this is such a bad idea; crib mine if you like, or find a much better rationale, but be sure to be clear in your opposition (or support, if you’re a masochist).
7. Upload your document using the Choose File button. (That’s right, you can’t just leave a comment in a text area, you have to write a separate document. The FCC seems to accept at least .txt and .doc files.) Add your optional description of the file in the Custom Description, so they know your sentiment even if they don’t open your file (which is pretty likely); I labeled mine “Block Comcast-TWC merger”.

Yay! You live in an arguably democratic country!