Here’s how your NC town or city ranks in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality
More than five years after HB2’s inception, North Carolina municipalities finally seem to be catching up to other states’s LGBTQ+ rights standards.
The 2021 Municipal Equality Index from Human Rights Campaign is an annual benchmark of how municipalities across the United States are doing when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights in their laws and practices. In the tenth anniversary edition, North Carolina municipalities averaged a 16-point increase over their 2020 scores.
Since the sunset of HB142’s ban on nondiscrimination ordinances last winter, more than 30 percent of North Carolina residents are offered protection in 15 jurisdictions (since the time they compiled this data, Davidson became the 16th jurisdiction to amend their nondiscrimination ordinance).
Chapel Hill, Durham and Greensboro received the highest scores this year. If it weren’t for a max score of 100, Greensboro would have been the highest-ranked municipality across the state, thanks to the number of public services they provide to LGBTQ+ people, like services for people living with HIV/AIDS and older LGBTQ+ adults.
In the upper half of index scores are Winston-Salem (87), Charlotte (86), Carrboro (84) and Raleigh (69). Raleigh’s score does not include its nondiscrimination ordinance, approved in October, presumably because it won’t be in effect until 2022. The capital city also lost 10 points off of its score because it doesn’t have an LGBTQ+ liaison within its police department, something that every municipality with a higher score has.
The municipalities with the lowest scores are Fayetteville (39), Wilmington (36), and Cary, which received a whopping 12 points.
Cary’s sole points only exist because the town’s police department reports hate crime statistics to the FBI; there are no non-discrimination protections (Wake County’s go into effect in 2022), no public services for LGBTQ+ folks within the town, no police liaison and no leadership with declared stances on LGBTQ+ rights. It is also the only Triangle municipality listed without an openly LGBTQ+ member of its town council.
Each municipality improved over the previous year, but Durham is notably the “most improved” with an increase of 35 points in 2021. But despite the strides made in urban and suburban parts of the state, there’s still work to be done.
LGBTQ+ folks live everywhere, even in rural, more conservative parts of the state. We still need legal protections against discrimination at the hands of the private business sector, and we have yet to ban conversion therapy across the state.
This year, trans people in particular have been the target of attacks from the right through attempted restrictions on sports, attempts to prohibit people under 21 from medically transitioning, and attempts to get books written by trans people banned from public schools.
The Human Rights Campaign’s 2020 state scorecard listed North Carolina as a “High Priority to Achieve Basic Equality,” based on multiple discriminatory laws and chasms in policy that would provide equity to LGBTQ+ people living across the state through better Medicaid and state health care, more focus on LGBTQ+ youth in education, and stronger protections against hate crimes.
As we head into 2022 elections, here’s hoping that more North Carolinians add LGBTQ+ rights to their list of priorities.
This story was originally published November 29, 2021 at 1:31 PM.
