Pearl Jam against homophobia in North Carolina, USA


This music video is called Pearl JamMTV Unplugged 1992.

From the site of rock band Pearl Jam in the USA:

Pearl Jam Cancels 4/20 Raleigh, NC Concert in Opposition to HB2; Official Band Statement

April 18 2016

It is with deep consideration and much regret that we must cancel the Raleigh show in North Carolina on April 20th.

This will be upsetting to those who have tickets and you can be assured that we are equally frustrated by the situation.

The HB2 law that was recently passed is a despicable piece of legislation that encourages discrimination against an entire group of American citizens. The practical implications are expansive and its negative impact upon basic human rights is profound. We want America to be a place where no one can be turned away from a business because of who they love or fired from their job for who they are.

It is for this reason that we must take a stand against prejudice, along with other artists and businesses, and join those in North Carolina who are working to oppose HB2 and repair what is currently unacceptable.

We have communicated with local groups and will be providing them with funds to help facilitate progress on this issue.

In the meantime we will be watching with hope and waiting in line for a time when we can return.

Perhaps even celebrate.

With immense gratitude for your understanding,

Pearl Jam

Link to image of statement here.

What is HB2?

North Carolina’s HB2 legislation targets the basic rights of transgender people and strips many nondiscrimination protections from the state’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. In addition to harming LGBT North Carolinians, the law limits the ability of municipalities to provide living wages above what the state provides, closes the door on state courts as a recourse for employment nondiscrimination claims, and imposes the values of Raleigh lawmakers on local elected officials and the people they serve.

What Needs To Be Done:

Please join us in signing this petition to repeal HB2.

17 thoughts on “Pearl Jam against homophobia in North Carolina, USA

  1. Friend,

    North Carolina just passed a bill that has no other purpose than to encourage discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community. HB2 is couched as a privacy measure, but we know better.

    Worse yet, other states like Mississippi and Tennessee have already passed similar laws that specifically target this community and open them up to unjust discrimination. We have to fight back. No one should face discrimination in this country, so I need your help, friend.

    Stand on the right side of history. Add your name and join me in denouncing the Republican’s hateful agenda against the LGBTQ community!

    Currently, 29 states have no statewide laws to protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations. No one should face discrimination because of who they love.

    You and I know that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

    Let’s send a strong message that Michigan will not be silent during these LGBTQ attacks. Stand with me and call for action now.

    Thanks for standing up for what’s right,

    John [Conyers]

    Like

  2. Hundreds march to reject anti-LGBT law

    UNITED STATES: Hundreds of supporters of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights protested on Sunday in Mississippi against a new discriminatory state law.

    The law, taking effect on July 1, will let religious groups and some private businesses deny services to same-sex couples and transgender people.

    More than 300 people marched to the governor’s mansion in Jackson to put pressure on Governor Phil Bryant and other state leaders who back the law.

    http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-35dc-World-in-brief-Tuesday-May-3-2016#.VyjSa-QYMdU

    Like

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  5. Yesterday, I addressed the “Great American Bathroom Controversy” on the House Floor. Now I want to know your opinion. Please read what I said below, and then let me know what you think, by submitting a comment >>

    “I rise today to address the Great American bathroom controversy. This is a picture, on my right, of someone who may or may not be recognizable to many Americans today. I’ll say her name; the name may be more recognizable to some. Her name is Christine Jorgensen. y or may not be recognizable to many Americans today.

    Christine was born in 1926; she grew up in the Bronx like I did. She went to Columbus High School, near the public housing where I grew up in the Bronx. In fact, my father taught history at Christopher Columbus High School. I don’t know whether he taught Christine or not. But it is possible.

    In 1945, Christine was drafted and served in the U.S. military. Now that may be a puzzle to some of you listening to me right now, who say, ‘I didn’t realize that women were drafted in the 1940’s.’ Well, at that time, Christine’s name was George. George Jorgensen. That’s the name she was born with. She was, in fact — on her birth certificate — male. Something she struggled with greatly all through the time she was growing up, being a male. Something she struggled with, being in the military.

    And then after leaving the military service in 1951, she heard about the possibility of changing her gender, so she went to Denmark and underwent three or more surgeries, plus a very substantial amount of estrogen treatments; she came back to the United States, and then forever thereafter, after 1953, was known as Christine Jorgensen. Christine Jorgensen was “out,” she was well known in America as someone who was transgender.

    I knew about her story when I was growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s. She made no effort to hide it. She didn’t feel any shame about it. She was proud of the fact that she’d been able to take advantage of what medicine had to offer, and live the life that she felt she would have been able to have, if at the beginning, she had had the proper gender.

    She had some degree of fame. Republican Vice President Spiro Agnew referred to her once in a speech to mock one of his opponents. She performed both as a singer and as an actress all through the 1950’s, through the entire 1960’s, and well into the 1970’s. She was the most famous transgendered person in America, probably to this day.

    Now, I have to tell you, I don’t know exactly where she went when she “had to go.” I don’t know exactly whether she went into a men’s room or ladies room, but here’s the interesting thing: Even though this was something new under the sun, even though America never had to address this issue before, no one ever even bothered to ask. I don’t remember anybody saying, ‘Christine Jorgensen, she ought to go to the men’s room, she was born a male.’ Or for that matter, ‘Christine Jorgensen, she identifies as a female, she should go to the ladies room.’ Isn’t it odd that America in the 1950’s seems to have shown a lot more maturity than America is showing today, with our great bathroom controversy right now — where the cisgender people of America try to dictate to the transgender people of America where they can go to the bathroom. Or at least, frankly, the more bigoted among us.

    We had a law pass recently in North Carolina. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it passed almost exclusively with cisgendered Republican votes. They tried to dictate to which bathroom Christine Jorgensen would have to go, if she were alive today and had to relieve herself. And amazingly enough, they decided in their ‘wisdom’, that Christine Jorgensen, if she were alive today, like all other transgender brothers and sisters, Christine Jorgensen would have to go to the bathroom she didn’t identify as, but instead, the bathroom on her birth certificate.

    This is particularly ironic. There was one form of discrimination that Christine Jorgensen did face in her lifetime. She was not allowed to get married. Not allowed to get married to a man because her birth certificate said that she was a male, and she was not issued a marriage license on account of the fact that a male was trying to marry a male.

    My goodness! Here in America, just in the past 12 months or so, we finally managed to solve that problem, and Christine Jorgensen could get married today to her lover. Now we have a whole new problem. Now, thanks to Republicans, bigots in North Carolina, we have a law that would require Christine Jorgensen to go to the men’s room.

    Think about that. Think about that.

    In fact, the natural consequence of that law is what I’m about to show you right here.

    So you folks in North Carolina who are obsessed with where the transgender people go to the bathroom, this is the result you’ve come up with.

    People who self-identify as women, people who look like women, people who act like women, they somehow are being driven into the men’s room. And the same thing is true of transgender people who identify as men. You’re going to force people who look like men, act like men, you’re going to force them into a ladies room.

    My God, what’s wrong with you? That doesn’t make any sense at all.

    Now, let me tell you something. If I had been, back in the day, growing up in New York, and Christine Jorgensen happened to walk into the men’s room — never happened, but let’s say it did — I would have thought, ‘that’s odd,’ but I wouldn’t have said a word about it. I wouldn’t have gone over to her and said, ‘excuse me; I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.’ On the contrary, I would have made an appropriate mental note, assume she probably found herself in the wrong room, and would have let it go.

    I would not have felt any fear. I would not have felt hatred. I would not have felt anything that would indicate to me that somehow I should discriminate against this person. I just would have thought it was odd.

    What this [North Carolina] law does is guarantee that experience, or worse. Have people who identify and look and dress and act like women, forced to go into a men’s room. Have people who identify and look and act and dress like men forced to go into a ladies room. Are you nuts?

    Listen, I have heard that the Republican Party is the party of small government. I’ve also heard that on the issue of abortion, the party of small government wants government small enough to fit into a woman’s uterus. Now it turns out the party of small government wants a government small enough to fit underneath the toilet seat. Can’t we all be adults about this? Can’t we all be adults about this the way we were in the 1960’s and 1970’s and 1980’s?

    Do we need a new law on this subject, much less a stupid law, a bad law, a ridiculous law? Now, you know, I understand that it’s possible, even with the absence of this law, that there might be some conceivable problems about this kind of situation. I’m not sure exactly what they are. I’m pretty sure if everybody acted as an adult that we could get beyond them, without having to litigate over it. And I’m wondering, how do you even enforce a law like this? What are we going to do, have to give saliva samples every time we go to the bathroom, to see what gender we were born with?

    Bear in mind, there’s a law against loitering. A law against wide stances in a bathroom — a Republican Senator learned that a few years ago. There’s a law against disorderly conduct. There’s a law against voyeurism. There’s a law against indecent exposure. In fact, in a really bad situation, there are laws against assault and even rape. So why do we need a law to dictate that people who identify as men have to go to the ladies room, and people who identify as ladies have to go to the men’s room?

    We had laws like that once. We used to say that we didn’t want white people to have to be uncomfortable going to the bathroom with black people. I represent part of the state of Florida. I can remember that when we had laws like that. And then somehow or other we pulled ourselves together, and realized how ridiculous that was. How is this any different?

    Thank goodness, the Attorney General recognizes that people who are cisgender who have no right to dictate where people who are transgender urinate, any more than people who are white have the right to dictate where people who are black do it. That’s not America. Let’s show some common sense.

    Now, if we did actually want to deal with real problems, we could deal with this one. A little boy and a little girl, both looking into their diapers. And the caption is, ‘oh, that explains the difference in our wages.’

    Now, if we want to talk about gender in America in the early 21st century, we could start with that. Why is it that women still make only 79 cents for every dollar that a man makes, in countless occupations and professions, even today? Why is that? If we want to get to the heart of what’s really going on between the sexes in America today, why don’t we do something to address that problem?

    And if we want to be more dramatic about it, let’s remember the fact that in America today, 91% of the victims of rape are women. Could we take our legislative energy, and possibly apply it toward dealing with that problem — which actually is a problem that affects countless women across the country.

    Let’s not ‘protect’ them from having to go to the same bathroom as a transgender person by insisting that people who look and act and identify as men, go to the bathroom with them. Let’s instead try to pass wise laws that would equalize pay between men and women — oh, and if we possibly could, reduce the incidence, the terrible incidence of rape.

    But getting back to this North Carolina law, there is a deep legal principle that this law offends. It offends me; it offends a lot of people with a good conscience. And that deep legal principle is this: It goes by four letters. MYOB. That’s an even higher law than the law that was passed by the North Carolina legislature.

    MYOB. Mind Your Own Business.”

    Let me know what your thoughts are on my speech, and on the Great American Bathroom Controversy, by submitting your comments, right here and right now >>

    Courage,

    Rep. Alan Grayson

    Like

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