About 40 preachers, mostly African-American, rallied on the State Capitol grounds on Tuesday to take offense at comparing the fight for LGBT protections to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
The idea for the rally crystalized after Clarence Henderson, one of the students who participated in sit-ins at the Woolworth’s diner in Greensboro in 1960, wrote an op-ed piece in last week’s Charlotte Observer saying it was a gross exaggeration to compare the two issues.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in announcing a lawsuit against North Carolina over the new law, described the controversy as part of an arc of history related to discrimination in all its forms. The Obama administration followed by ordering public schools to make accommodations for transgender students.
“We are here to debunk and dispel the fallacious ideologies that many have attached to HB2, which is simply common sense,” said John Amanchukwu of the Upper Room Christian Academy in Raleigh. “Our president and our attorney general have made some inflammatory comments that are erroneous at best.”
