Don’t take advantage of the poor just because you can. Don’t take advantage of those who stand helpless in court. The Lord will argue their case for them and threaten the life of anyone who threatens theirs.
(Proverbs 22:22-23)
Dear Caldwell,
As we travel from Sunday to Sunday this week, aren’t we in need of the Easter promise that God wins in the end, that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice? As reassuring as that is, this isn’t a time for resting on its promise.
Our state General Assembly and governor have provoked a wide cross section of North Carolinians with HB2, which strips away protections of LGBT brothers and sisters in the workplace, among other things. We have heard voices across the country weigh in with outrage, including the senior official of our denomination. Click here to read the statement from our stated clerk. On Tuesday, I will stand with other members of the Charlotte Clergy Coalition for Justice in calling for the bill’s repeal.
But there is far more to HB2 than just its injustice against LGBT people. The bill also ties local governments’ ability to set their own minimum wage. Why is this so important? Because it affects the millions of North Carolinians whom we call the working poor, those who work but do not earn enough to make ends meet.
Economists and business people will debate what a fair, living wage ought to be. That’s a worthy debate. But the presumption of the General Assembly to prohibit preemptively local communities’ discretion over what people can earn cannot stand. As immoral as the LGBT-related statutes are, HB2 goes on to oppose our Lord’s command to help the least among us, all at a moment of historic, crippling gaps in the U.S. between the rich and the poor.
Once again, our state Republican henchmen have sided with the rich and the powerful, or at least tried to. They thought that tying local governments’ hands on wages might appease those parts of the business sector that might not be comfortable with HB2’s discrimination against LGBT people. Given the enormous backlash of major corporations and the increasing pressure on the governor, it looks as if they missed their bet.
In Christ,
John