North Carolina Republican officials, including the governor, are desperately trying to cram a bogus “compromise” into law to resolve the economic hit the state is suffering for its law legalizing discrimination against LGBT people. (It’s a law with little functional difference from anti-LGBT laws passed in Arkansas and supported by Gov. Asa Hutchinson.)

If only Charlotte will drop its civil rights ordinance, they say, they PROMISE the legislature will then repeal the state bigotry law. Maybe they will; maybe they won’t. But even if they do, that only means Arkansas will be a state, like Arkansas, with no protection for LGBT people at any level, from a city ward on it.

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The Charlotte mayor recognizes baloney when she sees it and says the Charlotte City Council won’t take up the bad deal as the governor is demanding. The Republicans claim SHE is engaging in political theater. The theater of the absurd is all on their side.

Some day, national interests will discover that little ol’ Arkansas has a law just as bad. And while some cities in Arkansas have moved to pass modest anti-discrimination ordinances, they generally have not gone so far as Charlotte went with full protection for citizenry based on gender identity and sexual orientation (this would protect the small number of transgender people desiring to use facilities hat comport with their identity). Little Rock, for example, simply approved non-discrimination in city personnel and purchasing.

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In the meanwhile, Republican Attorney General Leslie Rutledge is trying to strike those ordinances down so the world will know Arkansa doesn’t tolerate civil rights protection for gay people of any sort, anywhere.