Hypocrisy, its theory and practice.

The word "hypocrisy" is being tossed around a lot by North Carolina politicovangelicals these days, and by their pressure group allies, even as they denounce feeling pressured by other groups over HB2.

It's an easy option, intellectually lazy at best. At worst- as practiced by Franklin Graham, North Carolina Values Coalition's Tami Fitzgerald, and Governor Pat McCrory in their daisy chain of soundbites- it's scabrous. They posit a false dichotomy- to define a reprehensible power local power grab (dressed up in the lurid sexual fantasies of elderly white men, egged on by a spiteful woman lobbyist who does business out of a broom closet, using her legal training to strip others of the access to, and protection of, the law in a vicious zero-sum game) as mild compared to some existential threat elsewhere that critics of the local law haven't similarly boycotted.

Paypal's position, in effect, is that I may be denounced for living in a state that contains child molesters and not demanding that they all be exported to a more licentious jurisdiction. That doesn’t mean I can’t refuse to buy a house next to one because that I prefer different neighbors.

And that’s the right’s rap on Pay Pal. Because it is headquartered in a state with an active strain of antigay animus running through its politics, North Carolina Republicans say Pay Pal is hypocritical to say it won’t open a big operation here.

Worse yet, the Republicans complain, Pay Pal does business in other lands with worse antigay laws- whose leaders can practice hate for their LGBT citizens at levels NCGOP pols can only salivate over when reading of them. It's an odd form of moral high-horsery from members of the party that has never supported a gay equality measure, and whose state legislative members across America have introduced over one hundred separate measures to discriminate against LGBT people this year alone. And the NC General Assembly does not convene until April 25!

By the Republicans’ logic, Pay Pal needs to leave the United States because there are so many antigay laws still being enforced, never mind all the new ones they are piling on to pile up.

As I noted in another post today, politicovangelist Franklin Graham does business in virtually all the nations he says it’s hypocritical for Pay Pal to do business in. Thank goodness the use of hypocrisy doesn’t mean one has to believe, oneself, the ideas one criticizes others for insufficiently supporting.