On Tuesday, North Carolina’s governor, Pat McCrory (R) signed an executive order reversing part, but not all, of an earlier bill that many have criticized as “legalizing discrimination” against members of the LGBT community. The bill was criticized for two big reasons: It required transgender people to use public bathrooms and school locker rooms that correspond to the sex on their birth certificate, and it opened the door for employers to fire LGBT members based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The original bill is complicated, and layers of opinions have since gathered around the hot-button issue. To better understand this controversy, it helps to review how these events unfolded.
Originally, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, had an ordinance outlawing discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, color, age, biological sex and handicaps. Then, in February, the city added two more items to that list: sexual orientation and gender identity. These additions were designed to prevent discrimination in sex-segregated spaces like public bathrooms and school locker rooms. This meant that no person could be stopped from using a public space based on any of these identifiers. So, just as you cannot prevent someone from using a public restroom because they’re not Americans, so you cannot keep a person from using a public restroom because they are gay or transgender.
But these changes also had another implication: It meant that job wages and employment qualifications could not be based on any of these markers. So, just as you can’t fire someone for being old, you also can’t fire them because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Responding to this a month later, the North Carolina state government overrode Charlotte’s local ordinance. The legislature excluded sexual orientation and gender identity from that list of reasons you could keep someone out of a public bathroom or school locker room. However, that exclusion also applied to the employment aspect, which meant that people could potentially be paid less or get fired for being gay or transgender.
On Tuesday, North Carolina’s governor, Pat McCrory sought to rectify the employment issue while leaving the bathroom requirement in place. He signed an executive order to protect state employees from being fired for their sexual orientation or gender identity. He also promised forthcoming legislation that would allow LGBT members to sue if their rights were violated. The “bathroom bill” remains otherwise intact, requiring transgender people to use the public bathrooms and school locker rooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificate, regardless of the gender they identify with today. For this reason, “House Bill 2 (HB2)” remains controversial.
The Bible is no stranger to the complexities of discrimination like this. It recounts numerous stories of how discrimination led to unjust treatment. God showed how he sympathizes not just with his own chosen people, but how intimately he cares for others around them as well.
Throughout the Bible, we discover just how intimately involved God is in resolving discrimination. He shows by his actions how deeply committed he is to rectifying the injustices we endure, not just in societies at large but in personal relationships between individuals. In Genesis, we see God at work for a slave-woman named Hagar under harsh treatment from her mistress, Sarai.
Genesis 16:1-14; 21:9-21
Sarai, Abram’s wife, hadn’t yet produced a child.
She had an Egyptian maid named Hagar. Sarai said to Abram, “God has not seen fit to let me have a child. Sleep with my maid. Maybe I can get a family from her.” Abram agreed to do what Sarai said.
So Sarai, Abram’s wife, took her Egyptian maid Hagar and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. Abram had been living ten years in Canaan when this took place. He slept with Hagar and she got pregnant. When Hagar learned she was pregnant, she looked down on her mistress.
Sarai told Abram, “It’s all your fault that I’m suffering this abuse. I put my maid in bed with you and the minute she knows she’s pregnant, she treats me like I’m nothing. May God decide which of us is right.”
“You decide,” said Abram. “Your maid is your business.”
Sarai was abusive to Hagar and Hagar ran away.
An angel of God found her beside a spring in the desert; it was the spring on the road to Shur. He said, “Hagar, maid of Sarai, what are you doing here?”
She said, “I’m running away from Sarai my mistress.”
The angel of God said, “Go back to your mistress. Put up with her abuse.” He continued, “I’m going to give you a big family, children past counting.
From this pregnancy, you’ll get a son: Name him Ishmael;
for God heard you, God answered you.
He’ll be a bucking bronco of a man,
a real fighter, fighting and being fought,
Always stirring up trouble,
always at odds with his family.”
She answered God by name, praying to the God who spoke to her, “You’re the God who sees me!
“Yes! He saw me; and then I saw him!”
That’s how that desert spring got named “God-Alive-Sees-Me Spring.” That spring is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
. . . .
One day Sarah saw the son that Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham, poking fun at her son Isaac. She told Abraham, “Get rid of this slave woman and her son. No child of this slave is going to share inheritance with my son Isaac!”
The matter gave great pain to Abraham—after all, Ishmael was his son. But God spoke to Abraham, “Don’t feel badly about the boy and your maid. Do whatever Sarah tells you. Your descendants will come through Isaac. Regarding your maid’s son, be assured that I’ll also develop a great nation from him—he’s your son, too.”
Abraham got up early the next morning, got some food together and a canteen of water for Hagar, put them on her back and sent her away with the child. She wandered off into the desert of Beersheba. When the water was gone, she left the child under a shrub and went off, fifty yards or so. She said, “I can’t watch my son die.” As she sat, she broke into sobs.
Meanwhile, God heard the boy crying. The angel of God called from Heaven to Hagar, “What’s wrong, Hagar? Don’t be afraid. God has heard the boy and knows the fix he’s in. Up now; go get the boy. Hold him tight. I’m going to make of him a great nation.”
Just then God opened her eyes. She looked. She saw a well of water. She went to it and filled her canteen and gave the boy a long, cool drink.
God was on the boy’s side as he grew up. He lived out in the desert and became a skilled archer. He lived in the Paran wilderness. And his mother got him a wife from Egypt.