SB 6 does more harm than good

This is going to sound a bit repetitive, but with the recent editorial by Senator Lois Kolkhorst penned, I felt it necessary to yet again talk about Senate Bill 6 also known as the Texas Privacy Act or, as I’ve called it, the bathroom bill.

By writing the editorial, Sen. Kolkhorst would like readers to believe that going against the bill is going against human rights.

“Let’s remember that parental rights and women’s rights are indeed human rights,” she writes.

Except there are already laws in place that indeed protect their rights. As I referred to in my column at the beginning of the year, Houston Chronicle’s Phyllis Randolph Frye has already explained in thorough detail all the laws that prohibit people from entering restrooms to harass someone. I’d go check out the piece titled “The real bathroom laws” that Frye wrote on May 11, 2016.

One example is Texas Penal Code Section 21.15 where it states that someone would be in violation of said penal code if a criminal enters the “wrong” restroom “in order to take pictures through the crack in the stall door.”

So I ask, like I did months ago, what’s the point of SB 6?

I wrote about the discrimination against transgender people, to the point where I feel it’s unnecessary to repeat myself. Just go back and read my column.

But what I did not talk about is the economic impact.

Sen. Kolkhorst made a reference to North Carolina and their version of the bathroom bill, House Bill 2.

“…look at North Carolina, which posted a $425 million budget surplus and announced 5,000 new jobs after addressing the issue,” Kolkhorst wrote.

Except that’s only partially correct.

In late 2016, a top economic official in then-North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory’s administration claimed that their “bathroom bill” did nothing to impact the state’s economy. House Bill 2 “hasn’t moved the needle one iota.”

Except those numbers don’t take into account the money and jobs lost due to HB2. PayPal and Deutsche Bank canceled 400 new jobs in Charlotte and 250 new jobs in Cary, respectively, according to fact-checking website politifact.com. Given the average salaries they had promised, the jobs would have paid workers in those cities nearly $42 million every year.

Meanwhile, no major companies have said they came to North Carolina because of the bill. So saying that the state announced all these new jobs after HB 2 is misleading, because it leads us to believe that it is because of the bill that those jobs have been posted.

Then there is the entertainment industry. As an alum of the University of North Carolina in Greensboro (go Spartans), I understand the economic importance of having the ACC Tournament in Greensboro. HB 2 forced the ACC pull out of postseason games out of North Carolina, which means taking the tournament out of Greensboro. The NBA and NCAA have done the same.

In the long run, the amount of money represents a small amount in the state’s overall GPD, but where it is felt the most is at the local level.

Kolkhorst writes that Texas is the 10th largest economy in the world. That implies that whatever impact SB 6 would have against Texas would be negligible.

I admit that I’m not an economist, though logically speaking I’m willing to argue that just like North Carolina, the economic impact would be felt at the local level.

All that money Houston made from the Super Bowl that Kolkhorst referred to? Not happening if the NFL indeed pulls out of Texas as they have threatened.

Let me give you an example here in Gonzales. If our city council was to pass a discriminatory ordinance that rodeo folks are against and in turn they pull all rodeo events from JB Wells, such as the state-wide finals that occur in the summer, we’d think twice on passing said ordinance.

Now imagine that on a much bigger scale with other forms of entertainment.

I understand the feeling of not wanting to be bullied into doing something that supposedly goes against your morality. Except SB 6 doesn’t address any problems that need solutions nor does it address anything “immoral.”

For those who’ve just skipped to the end of the column, I’ll say again, there are already laws in place that address issues of deviancy or abuse in the restrooms.

If the bill does more harm than good, then what is the point of passing it?