CROSSviews: The NBA Canceled All-Star Game in Support of LGBT Agenda

Taken from http://www.wsj.com/articles/nba-pulls-all-star-game-from-charlotte-over-north-carolina-bathroom-law-1469138932

Basketball is a big thing in the Philippines, especially the NBA. I'm not a fan myself, just a casual and occasional spectator. But there was an interesting and important development earlier this month, when the NBA decided to pull its all-star game from Charlotte in North Carolina, due to the state's bathroom law.

No, that wasn't a typo.

If you haven't been following the unfolding of the moral revolution in the U.S. in recent years, you might be wondering, What in the world does the NBA have to do with bathrooms? And what's a "bathroom law"?!

In order to understand what's going on here, we need to take a quick peek at the big picture.

The Moral Revolution in the U.S.

There has been a strong, well-funded, politically powerful, and hugely successful movement in the U.S. to reject all vestiges of Christian influence in the government and other public institutions. This is part of the secularization of their society. In a totally secular state, religion would have absolutely no place in the public square, because it would be dismissed as an entirely private thing. Europe has led the way in this, and America has been heading down that path at frantic speed.

Part of the moral revolution is the promotion of the LGBTQA+ agenda (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer-androgenous-???), which is forcing American society to reinvent itself in order to accommodate the demands of a very small minority of its citizens (about 3%). Here are some examples of what's been happening.

In April 2014, the U.S. Department of Education issued a statement that LGBT students would be protected from "discrimination" under Title IX of the Education Ammendments of 1972. It is a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in all educational institutions that receive federal funding.

In June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage to be legal in all 50 states.

In March this year, big business firmly took a side when it formed the Business Coalition for the Equality Act -- a group of about 60 companies including Apple, Microsoft, Nike, Google, Amazon, Best Buy, Pepsi, Coke, Accenture, and Facebook -- which seeks additional federal protection for LGBTs.

House Bill 2

One of the recent developments in the moral revolution has to do with public bathrooms. The proponents of the LGBT agenda are now determined to outlaw the traditional assignment of bathrooms as being for either "males" or "females".

Of course, they failed to consider how difficult it would be for, say, 18 girls to use the ladies' locker room in a New York recreation center after they saw a bearded man in the changing room.

To protect its citizens from such situations, the government of North Carolina issued in May this year law called "House Bill 2". HB2 requires people to use the public bathroom that accords with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Immediately, the Department of Justice warned North Carolina that its "discriminatory" law violated the civil rights of LGBTs and could mean the loss of millions of dollars in federal funds.

The NBA's Boycott

The NBA has recently made clear that it supports the LGBT agenda and opposes HB2. As early as April, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called the legislation "problematic". Consequently, it decided to boycott and humiliate North Carolina by canceling its all-star game in the state's largest city. The league issued this statement,

While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2.

The move is estimated to have cost the state $100,000,000 in potential revenue, a significant loss for any state. This is a clear signal to all those who oppose the pro-LGBT agenda: "Surrender unconditionally, or suffer the consequences."

What's more, the NBA is actually being inconsistent with its own sex and gender policies. Tami Fitzgerald, the Executive Director of the NC Values Commission, issued this critique:

The League has decided that advancing a political agenda that embraces allowing grown men into the bathrooms and showers of young girls is more important than protecting the privacy and safety of their fans. ...

20 years ago this year, the NBA recognized the innate biological differences between men and women and created the WNBA to provide opportunities for women to play a sport they love with other women.

Today, the NBA denies these biological differences and seeks to force women to compromise their privacy and safety in the stadiums in which their leagues play.

This is hypocrisy at its worse and yet another example of the bullying and deceitful tactics opponents of privacy and freedom are making.

The NBA should be ashamed of itself for using North Carolina--particularly its young girls--as a political pawn for an out-of-touch agenda that compromises both dignity interests and privacy rights. The NBA issued guidance last year that teams and leagues must invest more in family-friendly sponsorships and activation campaigns to make their events more family-friendly.

And let's remember that all this fuss has come about because of the insane demands of the moral revolution to turn its society upside-down so that 3% of its population wouldn't feel bad when 18 teenage girls can't use the women's changing room for fear of running into a bearded man.

How Should Christians Respond?

Evangelicals can't condone the stance that the NBA has taken against religious freedom in favor of LGBT “rights”. But what would that mean, in practical terms? I don't think there's any one response that all Christians, everywhere, should take. Since the Bible doesn't address this situation directly, it's up to us to inform ourselves and decide according to conscience.