Slipknot Join the Fight Against North Carolina’s Discriminatory LGBTQ Law

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard about HB2, the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act. But in case you do live under a rock: the highly discriminatory law, which was passed in March, requires people to use public restrooms according to the biological sex on their birth certificate — not the gender with which they identify.  The law even goes so far as to make illegal local ordinances which allow transgender folks to use the rest room of their self-identified gender (such as one that was being utilized in Charlotte, NC).

In other words, when Mina Caputo (Life of Agony) or Marissa Martinez (Cretin, Repulsion, etc.) are in North Carolina, they will be legally obligated to use the men’s room. Which is. Y’know. FUCKING RIDICULOUS. I’m not even sure what criminal act the law is meant to prevent. If you’re really homophobic, I imagine you’d have an issue peeing in the stall next to a transgender woman, so it’s not “protecting” those people. I’ve heard some stupid assholes say it will prevent pedophilia, but that’s dumb, because a) it implies that all transgender men and women are pedophiles, which is obviously not true, and b) it completely ignores pedophiles’ long and storied history of molesting children outside of bathrooms. I mean if keeping pedophiles out of public restrooms is really a priority, North Carolina should probably just build an entirely separate shitter for Catholic priests, right?

So kudos to Slipknot for speaking out against the law… even if I think they could have done even more.

First of all, here’s Slipknot’s message regarding HB2:

So: I understand their point about not wanting to let fans down, but I also think that cancelling the concert would have been the best way to mobilize all the North Carolina maggots into telling their local government that they’re not gonna stand for this shit. A long list of artists, ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Pearl Jam to Duran Duran, have already cancelled shows in the state, and the film studio Lionsgate even moved one of their productions out of the state. It would have been great for a metal as prominent as Slipknot to take similar action.

That being said… this is certainly better than nothing. Hopefully it encourages at least some maggots to take a stand.