Let it go

You know that amazing song titled “Let It Go” from the Disney animated children’s movie Frozen? Well, I’ve decided that Elsa was really onto something.

I’ve been watching, in fascination and horror, as conservative America has latched onto a surprising social issue: gay rights. As a Duke student, this issue hits close to home given the recent passing of the HB2, the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, in our home state of North Carolina. N.C. Governor Pat McCrory recently signed this legislation, which prevents cities from allowing transgender individuals to use the public restrooms of the gender with which they identify. The American Civil Liberties Union calls it the “most extreme anti-LGBT measure in the country.” If the content of the legislation isn’t troubling enough, there is the added factor that a special early session was called just to pass this bill. That’s right. North Carolina’s legislature was so eager and desperate to get this passed that they called an early session, a measure that they weren’t willing to take to raise teacher salaries.

The animosity toward the LGBTQ+ community isn’t isolated to North Carolina. I am genuinely baffled by this newfound obsession over limiting gay rights, with states like North Carolina seeming to go out of their way on their crusade. For instance, Mississippi’s HB 1523 is being hotly contested by the Human Rights Campaign since it would “allow individuals, religious organizations and private associations to use religion to discriminate against LGBT Mississippians in some of the most important aspects of their lives, including at work, at schools, in their family life and more.”

I’m starting to notice a trend here, and it has to do with relentless discrimination against gay Americans, even though almost a year has passed since the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalized gay marriage throughout the nation. The conservative response to the opinion certainly wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but there were a few key players that seemed to go out of their way, with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal instructing court clerks to hold off on distributing marriage licenses for at least 25 days, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton informed state officials that they had the right not to issue licenses as a form of their free speech.

Now folks, these are not irrelevant people we can simply write off as people who just didn’t get the memo. These people are governors and attorney generals of U.S. states who seem to have taken irrational and extreme measures on an issue that the majority of Americans have dramatically shifted their opinion on. According to a Pew Research Poll in 2001, 57 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, but by 2015 it had a 55 percent approval rating. This represents one of the quickest and most dramatic shifts in public opinion in American history on a social issue. It is even more confusing, then, why the backlash on gay rights seems to intersect at the exact moment in history when Americans seem to collectively be moving on from this issue.

By continuing to launch petty assaults on gay Americans in various states and cities, this movement will only continue to demonize and isolate itself. Not only do the majority of Americans now support the rights of gay Americans, but millennials are by far the most fervent supporters, with 70 percent supporting gay marriage. If conservative groups continue to fixate over the issue of expanding rights to gay Americans, they will lose support not just in the current election, but supporters for generations to come.

The gay rights movement is one of the fastest ideological shifts that Americans have ever made and will likely continue to gain momentum. It has evolved as a human rights issue, and thus those against the movement are perceived as hateful, ignorant and “on the wrong side of history.” I cannot possibly imagine the net benefit for conservative groups to continue to wage this anti-gay war. America has arrived at a crossroads in the face of an international power vacuum. We have hard-hitting domestic issues to address: crumbling infrastructure, a failing education system and the loss of our economic competitiveness. Thus, it seems irrational for politicians to continue to obsess on this single issue.

This is a call for conservative Americans to start talking about real issues and put aside this bizarre obsession over limiting the most basic rights of gay Americans. Liberal Americans may relish watching conservative America dig its grave while it fights tooth and nail against the “gay agenda,” but ultimately their ignorance is bad for all of us. We have real issues to solve and only diversity of thinking and problem solving that will ultimately bring about the progress we so desperately need as a country.