On Sunday, April 10 close to 600 Orange County residents attended the national award winning 19th Annual Community Dinner in Carrboro celebrating our community’s cultural diversity through food and entertainment. The ongoing support for this annual event bears testimony to the fact that so many of our local residents think that our diversity is worth celebrating.

It is therefore troubling to see legislators in Raleigh headed in another direction with the passing of House Bill 2 under the assumption that they are acting in our community’s best interests.

Nothing can be gained by initiating laws based on exclusion, discrimination and hatred. Indeed a simple lesson can be learned from those gathered at the Community Dinner. Just sit down with a stranger and see that as fellow human beings you will have a lot more in common with that person sitting next to you than you will have differences.

Nerys Levy

Nerys Levy

Fear of the other breeds discrimination. Might I recommend that the legislators in Raleigh acquaint themselves with some of the people adversely affected by HB2. They might then learn about the complexity of life and, in turn, see how many lives they are on the verge of destroying by enacting their hostile legislation. As it  stands now this law is providing a trajectory for the State which could take it right back to the early eighteenth century. Do we want that?

I don’t think so.

— Nerys Levy