NBA pulls All-Star Game from Charlotte over North Carolina’s transgender bathroom policy
The National Basketball Association (NBA) has officially broken its contract to play its 2017 All-Star Game at Time Warner Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina, because the state won’t allow men in women’s and girls’ bathrooms.
Commissioner Adam Silver had threatened the state of North Carolina and the city of Charlotte with moving the All-Star Game, contracted for 2017 in Charlotte, if state legislators did not rescind the March law, a gender-specific bathroom law, HB2, designed to ensure that young girls aren’t forced to shower and change in the presence of men in public facilities.
The professional basketball league announced that it is canceling its 2017 “weeklong schedule of All-Star events and activities” in Charlotte because “we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2.”
photo John Hain
The move will cost North Carolinians an estimated $100 million. To the state’s residents, however, the issue is not about money.
“What is happening in North Carolina is bigger than a basketball game,” Jim Quick of the North Carolina Value Coalition warned in a statement to LifeSiteNews. “Lt. Governor Dan Forest was right when he said, ‘A sovereign state is being blackmailed by a private business, the NBA, who is being threatened by a national LGBT lobbying effort, all to force North Carolina to open female restrooms, showers and locker rooms up to men. North Carolina will never value a dollar over a woman’s or child’s safety and security.’”
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory lashed out at “the sports and entertainment elite” and “the liberal media” for misrepresenting his state’s bathroom privacy law and for “maligning” its citizens “simply because most people believe boys and girls should be able to use school bathrooms, locker rooms and showers without the opposite sex present.”
McCrory has been joined by 21 other states to legally oppose the Obama Administration’s transgender bathroom mandate. McCrory said radical activists should not seek to bully citizens into an agenda against the best interests of their children.
“Left-wing special interest groups have no moral authority to try and intimidate the large majority of American parents who agree in common-sense bathroom and shower privacy for our children.”
The governor warned citizens of other states that big business has become the enforcer of a gay agenda. “American families should be on notice that the selective corporate elite are imposing their political will on communities in which they do business, thus bypassing the democratic and legal process.”
Other North Carolina politicians have gone on record criticizing the NBA’s decision to pull the 2017 All-Star Game. Republican Senator Phil Berger said, “The need for HB2 became crystal clear earlier this month, just steps away from the NBA arena in Charlotte, when a grown man engaged in sexual activity in a women’s public bathroom.”
