Nikki Haley Slams The Door On Planned SC Bathroom Bill (WITH VIDEO)

Nikki Haley with former lieutenant governor Yancey McGill in 2015 (image courtesy Haley's Flickr feed, part of public domain)
Nikki Haley with former lieutenant governor Yancey McGill in 2015 (image courtesy Haley’s Flickr feed, part of public domain)

You may recall that on Wednesday, a Republican state senator in South Carolina introduced a bill that is a carbon copy of the monstrosity passed last month in North Carolina. Well, within less than 24 hours, Governor Nikki Haley all but assured that bill won’t become law. As she sees it, South Carolina doesn’t need such a law on its books.

Haley made her views on this bill loud and clear at a press conference on Thursday. The (Columbia) State got a clip.

The bill’s author, state senator Lee Bright, claims this bill is needed in order to prevent people’s religious liberties from being trampled in the name of “tolerance.” However, Haley begs to differ. She said that “there’s not one instance I’m aware of” where a transgender man has engaged in criminal activity in a women’s bathroom. She also said that she doesn’t know of any instances of anyone’s religious freedom being violated by a transgender person wanting to use a particular bathroom.

Haley pointed out that in 1999, South Carolina passed a religious freedom law that protects business owners’ right to exercise their beliefs. While she acknowledged that a number of people see transgender people having the option of using the bathroom of the gender with whom they identify as “very much” a religious liberty issue, she doesn’t think it’s something “that we see citizens asking for.”

I know what a lot of you are thinking–Haley is only delaying the inevitable. After all, the GOP more or less owns the South Carolina General Assembly. However, if Haley vetoes this bill–and it certainly sounds like she will if it makes it to her desk–the Republicans don’t have enough votes to override it. There are 28 Republicans in the state senate, two short of the needed two-thirds supermajority. And there are 78 Republicans in the state house–four short of the needed supermajority.

Haley’s sane and measured response contrasts sharply with how her counterpart in North Carolina, Pat McCrory, handled the now-infamous HB2 bill. He initially said that he didn’t think a special session was needed to pass the bill. When state legislators called one on their authority, he hinted that he wouldn’t sign anything that came out of that session because he thought it would go too far. However, in a craven failure of leadership, McCrory signed the bill into law only 12 hours after it was passed.

You would think that with South Carolina being a crimson-red state with a strong social conservative tint, there would be a hue and cry for Bright’s bill to be passed quickly. However, apparently there isn’t one. I haven’t been able to find any grassroots groups drumming up support for this bill. Indeed, Haley thinks it won’t get out of the state senate by the May 1 deadline for bills originating in one chamber to cross over to the other.

Haley could have joined her fellow Republican governors, McCrory and Mississippi’s Phil Bryant, in bowing down to hate disguised as protecting public safety. But she had the good sense not to do so. Let’s give credit where credit is due.

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.