Cutting Off Their Own Noses

Legislation like North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” and Mississippi’s more elaborate legislation have been introduced with increased frequency since the supreme court legalized same-sex marriage last year. In most cases, businesses have been public in their disapproval. In some cases, including Georgia and North Dakota, state governors have simply refused to sign the statutes into law.

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[S]tates are actively looking to poach business from rivals with anti-LGBT legislation. Last week, New York and Vermont banned non-essential state-funded travel to Mississippi. In Connecticut, lawmakers pitched Bank of America to relocate its head office from North Carolina to a state that it says shares it values.

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In North Carolina, PayPal canceled a $3.6m investment for a new global operations centre that would have employed 400 people; Nissan, the largest single employer in Mississippi, quickly reiterated its support of the LGBT community, and Duke Energy, the state’s largest power company, has come out strongly in opposition to discrimination, but has not taken a position on the law itself.

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“These assholes talk about gay women and gay men using the exact same language they were using in the 50s and 60s for segregationist purposes,” said the award-winning chef John Currence, owner of several restaurants in Oxford, Mississippi. He warned that Mississippi’s HB1523, known as the Religious Liberty Accommodation Act, would put businesses off from setting up in the state.

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Last week, Dow Chemical, HP and Alcoa joined civil rights groups in urging Tennessee law-makers to abandon legislation similar to North Carolina’s affecting the state’s estimated 10,000 transgender students.

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[I]n North Carolina, [...] Bank of America is joining with HRC to try to force the repeal of the law, known as HB2.

  Guardian

They already receive the most federal welfare from taxes gleaned from northern states, while screaming the loudest about welfare. Now poor southern states are making their states poorer still.