WASHINGTON – Illinois Senator Mark Kirk – who is seeking re-election in November – is among six senators calling on the NBA to move the league’s 2017 All-Star game out of North Carolina due to the state’s new law that bans one sex from using the opposite sex's public bathrooms, locker rooms and showers.
While Kirk's PR staff kept the development quiet, D.C. circles were well aware of the letter sent this week to the NBA commissioner. Politico reports:
In a letter to NBA commissioner Adam Silver, the senators – five Democrats and one Republican – argue that the league should take the forceful stance to rebuke HB2, the controversial law that the senators say gives local governments and businesses a “license to discriminate.”
“We hold no ill-will towards the people of Charlotte, who passed an antidiscrimination measure that HB2 overturned, or towards the people of North Carolina,” the senators wrote in the letter. “However, we cannot condone nor stand idly by as North Carolina moves to legalize and institutionalize discrimination against the LGBT community. Nor should the NBA allow its premier annual event to be hosted in such a state.”
Senate Democrats who signed onto the letter are Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Patty Murray of Washington and Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay lawmaker elected to the Senate.
Kirk is the only Republican that endorsed the letter.
“Put plainly, HB2 provides businesses, government contractors, hotels, and other institutions with a license to discriminate, and no city council or county government can do a thing about it,” the senators wrote Tuesday. “This is just wrong.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/senators-nba-should-move-all-star-game-out-of-north-carolina-221854#ixzz45v8VI5Tm
