Let’s begin, as we always seem to these days, with House Bill 2: “Dear Governor McCrory,” writes Ed Levin of Chapel Hill, “you got me thinking about bathrooms [Soapboxer, April 27]. Admittedly, I have thought about them in the past, often with some sense of urgency. Well, this is urgent, too. Specifically, bringing bathrooms to mind today is what is known as House Bill 2. I am a little uncertain about how this works. I know that birth certificate information is needed to determine which bathroom to use. To whom do I show my birth certificate? Is it before or after I enter? What if I have an urgent need or no one is there or I forget my certificate? If I can’t find it, is it OK to go outside? I think there are other laws about that.”
“In Houston several months back,” adds commenter weshlovrcm, “the militant anti-gay lobby began using a strategy of Bathroom Hysteria to beat a local equal rights ordinance. It worked, and they immediately made plans to use Bathroom Hysteria as a Trojan horse to rescind all legal protections for LGBT Americans throughout the nation. It worked (again) in North Carolina, but fortunately, millions of patriotic Americans have seen what the radical anti-gay lobby is up to. If predatory heterosexual males sneaking into women’s restrooms in NC is really a problem, common sense tells you that you don’t solve it by firing/evicting/refusing to serve gay people and/or banning cities from increasing the minimum wage.”
TheOtherBarry, meanwhile, says you should be wary of Moogfest’s economic-impact projections [“Headliner Status,” April 27]. “Be very very careful before believing any of this. While pushing for greater taxpayer subsidy in 2014, Moogfest predicted that they would generate $30 million for Asheville/Buncombe County. A study paid for by them afterward scaled that down to $14 million, but that received [so much] skepticism when it came out that the entity that did it for them basically washed their hands of it.”
Kristen K Hernandez calls BS on the Orange County Living Wage Project’s assertion [Triangulator, April 27] that waiters and waitresses make decent money. “I’m sorry, but no, waiters and waitresses do not make sufficient money from tips to amount to a living wage. Especially considering that they must pay taxes on that money, and in some places, pool their tips to cover non-tipped staff’s salaries.”
Finally, a correction: a Triangulator entry last week referred to Mark Marcoplos as an Orange County commissioner. While Marcoplos won the Democratic primary in March, he has not yet taken office.
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