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I know you are all fed up with politics but unfortunately politics affect our daily lives and we should be aware of what is going on in the world of politics. So…

Down in Louisiana the governor is taking action,

Gov. John Bel Edwards to Rescind Bobby Jindal's Horrific Anti-Gay 'Religious Freedom' Order
Democratic Governor Also Plans Measure Protecting LGBT State Employees
The New Civil Rights Movement
by John Wright
March 29, 2016

On Monday the press secretary for Democratic Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced he will rescind the sweeping anti-LGBT executive order signed by his predecessor, former Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal last May. Jindal's order, which resulted in a lawsuit from the ACLU, allows businesses and state agencies to turn away LGBT people based on their “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Back in December, after defeating Republican David Vitter in the race to replace Jindal, Gov. Edwards had said he also plans to sign an executive order extending nondiscrimination protections to LGBT government employees and contractors.

“Governor Edwards will issue the executive order, but it is in the drafting stage,” his press secretary, Shauna Sanford, told Deadline Hollywood Monday. “As far as Jindal’s religious liberty order, the governor intends to rescind it in the near future.”

Then down in North Caroline a number of civil rights organizations is suing the state over their new anti-LGBT law.

North Carolina attorney general won’t defend transgender law: It’s a ‘national embarrassment’
Yahoo News
By Michael Walsh
March 29, 2016

One day after civil liberties groups filed suit to fight a controversial “bathroom bill” in North Carolina that they say discriminates against the LGBT community, state Attorney General Roy Cooper announced that he would not defend its constitutionality.

“We should not even be here today, but we are. We’re here because the governor has signed statewide legislation that puts discrimination into the law,” Cooper told reporters in Raleigh Tuesday.
[…]
“House Bill 2 is unconstitutional,” he said. “Therefore, our office will not represent the defendants in this lawsuit, nor future lawsuits involving the constitutionality of House Bill 2.”

Meanwhile the governor is crying crocodile tears…

NC Gov. Pat McCrory on Anti-LGBT Bill: We’ve Been ‘The Target of a Vicious, Nationwide Smear Campaign’
Towleroad
by Sean Mandell
March 29, 2016

In a video released on Tuesday, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory alleged that his state has been “the target of a vicious, nationwide smear campaign” since he signed an anti-LGBT bill into law last week.
[…]
Condemning those who have spoken out against the bill, McCrory said, “they demonized our state for political gain.”

McCrory added, “Some have called our state an embarrassment. Frankly the real embarrassment is politicians not publicly respecting each other’s positions on complex issues…North Carolina has been the target of a vicious, nationwide, smear campaign. Disregarding the facts, other politicians from the White House to mayors and city council members, and yes, even our attorney general have initiated and promoted conflict to advance their political agenda even if it means defying the constitution and their oath of office.”

Well governor maybe they are right? The law is draconian and punitive and should be repealed.

Then we head north to Indiana where their legislature doesn’t want to be left behind in the race in who can pass the most repressive law but in Virginia the bill gets struck down.

Virginia defeated own transgender bathroom bill in February
The Roanoke Times
By Andrew Cain Richmond Times-Dispatch
Posted: March 29, 2016

RICHMOND — Virginia lawmakers helped avoid the firestorm that has roiled North Carolina over LGBT rights by defeating a bill with similarities to the measure North Carolina’s governor signed last week.

On Feb. 9, a Virginia House of Delegates committee defeated a bill that would require transgender students at Virginia public schools to use the restroom and locker room of their “biological sex.”

Virginia lawmakers scuttled the bill, in part, to wait for an appeals court ruling — now expected any day — in the case of Gavin Grimm, a transgender student who is fighting to use a boys bathroom at his Gloucester County school.

“I do think our legislature showed admirable restraint and made the right decision,” said Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia, which is helping Grimm in court. The ACLU also considered the Virginia measure unnecessary and discriminatory.

It sounded like a bright spot but looking deeper it looks more like the legislature is just waiting for the court case to play out.

The British Newspaper The Guardian had this to say about all the anti-trans bills being introduced around the country.

From Jim Crow to transgender ban: the bathroom as battleground for civil rights
North Carolina’s ban on transgender people using public bathrooms matching their identity is the latest in a history of contention over a very private space
By Maria L La Ganga in San Francisco
Wednesday 30 March 2016

Tar Heel State lawmakers are just the latest proscribing transgender use of public facilities. Bills have been introduced in 16 state legislatures in the past four months alone, with calls for justice and access bumping noisily up against arguments about safety and privacy.

But transgender people are hardly the first to be embroiled in a very public bathroom brawl. The commode has been at the center of civil rights battles since the first modern public lavatory with flushing toilets opened in Victorian London.
[…]
In the segregated south, Jim Crow laws banned black people from public “whites only” bathrooms until the 1960s, in perhaps the most elemental form of segregation. People with disabilities were not promised access to public lavatories until the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law by then-president George W Bush in 1990. Homeless people still struggle to find restrooms they are allowed to use.
[…]
“People are afraid because they’re exposed,” says Anthony, author of Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession. “There’s a vulnerability we feel in public restrooms we don’t feel in other places.”

The article goes on to say where the real problem is,

But a 2014 report by the US Department of Justice said transgender people are the ones most at risk of sexual assault. Citing recent studies of transgender experiences, the report said one in every two transgender individuals are sexually abused or assaulted during their lifetimes.