North Carolina, ground zero for "transgender" revolution...?

Written by Tim Dunkin on . Posted in Guest Articles

Publisher’s Note:  There is a lot of talk these days about “transgender” rights; specifically where such “rights” are stacked up against common sense logic and the rights of the vast majority of “non-transgendered” persons to use gender specific facilities without feeling the need to protect themselves or their children from potentially harmful exposures.

In the following, very carefully crafted article, Tim Dunkin breaks down the prevailing arguments and makes a very salient case of how such measures are put into place against the over-whelming wishes of any constituency.  Mostly due to financial pressure from the federal government.

Since I look at this issue with the same raised eyebrow that I view the targeted attacks by “big gay” on Christian businesses for refusing to provide services for occasions that go against their beliefs, I have asked Mr. Dunkin to be a guest on my regular weekly radio show “A Word To The Wise” this Monday 4/11/16 at 8:00 PM, EST.  You can listen to that show by clicking here and then simply click on the triangle “play” button just below the Blog Talk Radio Icon near the top left.  

Not only will he and I discuss this issue and field calls from the listening audience on that show, I will also be discussing a related issue on the Sunday show that I am currently guest hosting called “Damon Rosen’s Insane Sunday.”  That show, which you can tune into by clicking here and following the same instructions as above, will highlight one of the major evidences of targeting against Christians and their businesses as I discuss a Muslim scholar calling for the death of all gays and lesbians in this video. 

This is hardly the first time I have heard such commentary from a Muslim, but what I find even more appalling than what he actually says is the hypocritical silence of “big gay” and other anti-Christian groups who very often side with Muslims in a show of some sort of solidarity.  

Newsflash to “big gay” and the others, many of us on the Christian right have been warning you about this for years.

My challenge to you is instead of attacking Christians and their businesses to advance your agendas, why not tackle this direct threat…?!  Simply put, because you know that no Christian is going to kill you for what you do, whereas a Muslim very well might.

Tim Dunkin:  Recently, the state of North Carolina has found itself squarely in the cross hairs of the radical gay lobby and its social justice warrior (SJW) allies in business.  The reason is a new law, passed by wide margins in both houses of the legislature and signed by Governor McCrory, which prevents local governments from passing ordinances allowing, among other things, so-called “transgendered” individuals to use bathrooms that do not conform to their actual, biological gender (i.e. would require men to use men's restrooms, and women to use women's facilities, regardless of what they “identify” as).  This was in response to the city of Charlotte, which ignored the wishes of its own people and passed a “non-discrimination” ordinance that would have allowed men who “identify” as women to intrude into the personal privacy of women by using their restrooms.  

Naturally, the radical Left is up in arms about this.  They disingenuously paint the original Charlotte ordinance as nothing more than “equal rights” (since when does the US Constitution, or any constitution for that matter, address bathroom use?) and part of the “new gay civil rights” push. Opponents of the ordinance warned that it would merely pave the way for perverts to legally be able to victimize women and girls.  While the radical gay lobby derides that claim, we should note that the individual who was largely responsible for seeing the Charlotte ordinance pass – a gay man named Chad Sevearance-Turner – is a convicted sex offender who was arrested in 1998 for “committing or attempting to commit a lewd act upon a child under the age of 16.”  The original ordinance's proponents vigorously assert that it would never have resulted in weird, creepy men abusing the system to indecently expose themselves to women (or worse).  They should try telling that to this guy in Seattle, or this other guy in Toronto, both of whom did exactly that.

Nevertheless, all the usual suspects are trying to pressure the state government into rescinding the law – LBGTQ lobbyist groups and large out-of-state corporations steeped in California-style social activism have been alternately cajoling and threatening state leaders.  Now, the Obama administration has begun threatening to take away funding from North Carolina for roads, schools, and public housing.

Federal funding is commonly used as a way of coercing states into implementing policies that the actual people of the state don't want, but which the federal government wants them to follow.  The Feds will hold out the carrot of funding for some program, or block grants for education, or whatever else if the state behaves the way it wants it to.  Conversely, said funding can be cut off should the state step out of line.  If that happens, the state finds itself in a fix because the state budget has most likely already been crafted and includes the federal funding among its sources of income to be used.  The state government will come under attack from the usual sources of left-wing white noise (teachers' unions, social spending advocates, etc.) and from the media, and must either give in to get the funding, or else risk unpopularity by increasing taxes to cover the shortfall.

This is where North Carolina's opportunity to lead a revolution comes into play.  If North Carolina leaders would simply stand strong, they could lead the way for other states whose leaders also value liberty and good government.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a state, faced with such a situation as this, simply decided to not play the game at all, and take a third option – not giving in, but not raising taxes to cover the shortage?  What if a state simply decided to buckle down, cut social spending commensurately to cover the lost federal funding, and streamlined the state government by axing unneeded programs, as well as unneeded bureaucrats?    I call this a “revolutionary” act because I can't think of anywhere in living memory where a state has actually done this, even though all of them should have done so.

Let's explore some possible effects of such a decision.  

First of all, without federal funding, there is also much less in the way of federal strings attached.  For instance, in the area of education, instead of having to conform to a bunch of federal standards and rules – many of which have nothing to do with actual education – the state would be free to reform and streamline its educational system to produce something that works better.  Among industrialized nations, American public education is a pitiful failure.  We routinely get out-scored by most other advanced nations.  This problem does NOT exist because of a paucity of funding.  Indeed, the United States spend more money per pupil than just about every other nation on Earth.  Yet, we have little to show for it.  Why?  Because the current approach to the educational system itself is fundamentally a failure – we see this in everything from Common Core to No Child Left Behind (which encourages test score inflation over and against actual learning) to the maladroit way our political correctness-soaked schools handle “slow” learners and other who don't fall into the 85% of students making up the central ±1 standard deviation on the educational bell curve.  

What if a state were free to say, “Hey, why don't we try this?  And since the federal government isn't attaching strings to us anymore, we can actually do it!”  What if a state was free to start spending education funds more intelligently, instead of just more liberally?  Imagine the benefits that would come from a genuine freedom to innovate and explore policy concepts without interference from overweening federal nannies.  This same argument can be applied across the board to other areas where federal funding is up for grabs – housing, transportation, Medicare, and so forth.

Another thing to consider is that if a state has to make up its budget numbers due to lost federal funding, a good place to start is by pulling funds from social spending, especially those programs which involve transfer payments.  Hence, the overall size of government can be shrunk, and government can be brought back into its proper roles and functions.

Keep in mind that less social spending means that there eventually will be less demand for social spending.  The reason for this is because there are a lot of folks who “go where the money is.”  I grew up around Kansas City, Missouri back in the pre-Newt Gingrich days when Missouri – like many Southern and Southern-ish states – was still dominated by Democrats.  Because of that, welfare benefits at the state and local levels were often very generous.  As a result, we had a lot of folks who moved into the state solely to get on welfare.  You had people in the Kansas City area that had moved in from all over the Midwest, from states which were dominated by Republicans and which didn't pay as much in welfare.   You'd even see this phenomenon out in the country – there were these little farm towns in north Missouri, four or five hundred inhabitants, which suddenly had floods of new people moving into them, all people who came to the state to get on welfare.  Of course, the local sheriffs and other police were ill-equipped to deal with the drugs and violence that they generally brought with them, so the state had to spend even more money on grants and other funds to these local forces to help them cope.  

I strongly suspect that North Carolina has had much the same sort of thing take place, especially since the state, being the “progressive” southern state, was dominated until fairly recently by Democrats, and liberal Chapel Hill and Raleigh-type Democrats at that.  If the state cuts its funding of these transfer payment programs, the folks who've moved here to get the bennies would soon move somewhere else. Couple the cuts with drug testing of welfare recipients and a five-year residency requirement to stop people from just moving in and collecting a check.  North Carolina already cut welfare benefits back during the government shutdown of 2013 in response to the stop on federal funding.  There's no reason similar cuts from state funding couldn't be made more permanent if the funds are needed elsewhere.  

Just think what might happen if all or most of the Red states did this.  There would be a flow of professional welfare recipients fleeing these states and heading back to the Left Coast and the Northeast. State budgets could be shrunk without adversely impacting important state government functions, and the federal government would be left holding strings which no longer attached themselves to the states. Blue states would have to spend more on welfare and other programs if they wanted to keep being “progressive, forward-thinking” states, so they'd eventually go broke.  North Carolina leading the way on rejecting federal funds and shifting its priorities accordingly could end up resulting in a nationwide demonstration of the failures of the “Blue model” in a way that nobody could deny.  

One final area where North Carolina stands poised to lead, if its leaders will choose to do so, is in the area of nullification via anti-commandeering.  I've discussed this principle before, but essentially it means that states can refuse to cooperate with the federal government in the enforcement of federal laws or other actions.  For example, if the Feds were really serious about trying to punish North Carolina for passing a law that is no business of the federal government's to begin with (such as is the law under discussion), then the state could pass another law in return that forbids the use of any state personnel, vehicles, computer or other technological resources, property, buildings, etc. in assisting federal agents in enforcing federal laws within the state.  The state would not be interdicting the federal government in enforcing its laws, it would simply be refusing to provide any assistance – which the state is under no legal obligation to provide anywise.  If the Feds wanted to try to enforce federal firearm laws or drug laws or even IRS enforcement actions, they would have to provide all of the personnel and equipment themselves, instead of commandeering state resources, as is often done now.  

This would be effective, especially if several states joined in on the effort.  As it stands now, federal agencies often rely on state-provided resources and personnel.  If those resources dried up, the Feds would quickly find themselves stretched too thinly to be effective, and would be running over budget trying to provide all the resources they need for themselves.  It would be harder, more time consuming, more expensive, and perhaps even functionally impossible for the Feds to, say, enforce (unconstitutional) firearms laws in the state if state and local police agencies can't provide tactical and logistical assistance, if they don't have access to state records on  pistol or concealed-carry permit holders, and if they have to provide everything from assault vehicles to computer systems to places to sleep at night.  The federal government would quickly find out it was spending more money than it was thinking to punish the state with by withholding, and to less effect.  

This current impasse over the “Bathroom Law” provides North Carolina with a unique opportunity to be a leader not only in standing up to the radical leftist agenda and the bullying of the gay lobby, but also in advancing liberty be returning power from Washington DC back to the states.  If North Carolina led on this, and enough states followed her lead, we could see tremendous strides in restoring liberty and good government to the people of this nation.