Publicly, companies like Coca-Cola don’t mind giving North Carolina and Mississippi a hard time. But privately, the tirades are taking their toll. The price of coddling LGBT activists is a steep one, especially for CEOs who rely on the very leaders they’re condemning for robust state economies. For most companies, the tension between checking the gay-friendly box and protecting their bottom line is at the tipping point. And it won’t be too long before more companies realize that in the battle between cultural bullies and state conservatives, businesses have the most to lose.

Sure, CEOs saved themselves from being called the names their companies are now calling Governors Pat McCrory (R-N.C.) and Phil Bryant (R-Miss.) — but for now, they’re just being used. The relationships they think they have with liberal activists are as one-sided as the Left’s definition of tolerance. When these same CEOs are at the statehouse door fighting high taxes, regulation, and government intrusion, their partners from this debate will be long gone. There’s a presumption of corporate loyalty from the Left that’s never repaid — and yet still, the business community is willing to go along, getting nothing in return except a gold star on the annual “equality index.”

To Governor Phil Bryant, who made sure that these same companies have the right to live and work according to their own moral code, that’s baffling. [Wednesday], in a conversation with me on “Washington Watch,” the governor talked about his disappointment with these CEOs — who, he agrees, have nothing to gain from their opposition to conservative lawmakers. “Each time companies need our help in reducing taxes and improving the environment for the companies and corporations in workforce training, they come to those of us who are also very socially conservative. And they need to understand that if they’re going to continue to go against our social conservative positions, it’s going to be hard for us to support them in the energetic manner we have in the past.”

Bryant, who’s added 47,000 jobs in Mississippi since he was elected, knows who truly holds the power in this debate — and it isn’t the cultural bullies. “When the Left is waiting as a lion to pounce on [businesses] — to do what Bernie Sanders was saying: to raise their taxes to the 90th percentile, to make sure they’re forced [join] unions, that they have transgendered restrooms. You go down the list of the leftist agenda and force that on the corporations and see how long they will last.” What’s more, this radical agenda was a bridge too far even for Democrats a few short years ago. Now, Bryant points out, “[Businesses] say they’re not going to North Carolina because men who are defining themselves as females shouldn’t go into a bathroom with little girls? They’re pulling out of North Carolina because of that? Where on earth have we come to? … And we’re berated and attacked and criticized for that? Strange times.”

But just because these CEOs are blasting North Carolina and Mississippi in statements doesn’t mean they’ll follow through with their wallets. Reporters at BuzzFeed contacted almost two dozen businesses that denounced North Carolina’s law to give companies the right to set their own bathroom policies — but who were also frequent donors to the Republican Governors Association (RGA). Not one company said they’d be changing their political donations. In other words, this was all posturing — painful posturing, certainly, for the conservatives on the receiving end. “Large businesses would be wise to be very careful,” GOP consultant Brad Todd warned.

Based on the latest rankings, North Carolina has the second-best economic climate in the entire country — and it benefits local companies to keep it that way. These CEOs, who are starting to look like puppets for radical activists, need to keep in mind that voters — who also happen to be consumers — agree with these laws! It doesn’t take an M.B.A. to recognize that alienating the 96 percent of the buying population who don’t identify as homosexual or transgendered isn’t the smartest (or most profitable) policy.

“Of course we want to create an environment that’s competitive and conducive to business,” Governor Bryant explained. “But at the same time, we cannot abandon our conservative social principles to be able to have corporations that flee from us at the first leftist email that comes out. They’ve got to learn that the two go together.”

Originally published here.

Bevin Is for Real

It’s been seven months since Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis was released from jail for beliefs on marriage. But today, thanks to Governor Matt Bevin (R-Ky.), she’s finally free. After a long, public struggle, Kim and clerks like her celebrated the accommodation they’d been seeking since the Supreme Court radically redefined marriage last June. In his first act as governor, Bevin issued an executive order protecting county officials from complicity in marriage licenses that violated their faith. In the meantime, the state legislature was working on a parallel track to make the exemption official.

This week, they succeeded, sending S.B. 216 unanimously to the governor’s desk — where he immediately signed it, to the cheers of men and women across the country. Under this law, county clerks will no longer have to have their names listed on marriage licenses that contradict their deeply-held beliefs. As for couples, they’ll be able to choose for themselves how they’d like to be identified: as “bride,” “groom,” or “spouse.” “We now have a single form that accommodates all concerns,” Governor Bevin said. “Everyone benefits from this common sense legislation.” What’s more, “there is no additional cost or work required by our county clerks. They are now able to fully follow the law without being forced to compromise their religious liberty.”

Governor Bevin, who probably owes his election to his support of Kim Davis, can now hold his state up as a model of a way forward under the current Supreme Court decision on marriage. We rejoice with Kim, who’s been an inspiration to so many Christians, that her nightmare is finally over.

Originally published here.

STDs: Cause and Infect

Pop culture tells us to pursue satisfaction at any cost — even if that cost is about $16 billion in treatments! Unfortunately, that’s just the economic side-effect of the “if-it-feels-good-do-it” approach. The mess of sexual liberalism is hitting home in a nation that’s spent the last eight years — not just encouraging, but funding — messages of irresponsibility.

Now, we’re paying for it with unprecedented cases of disease, including syphilis. According to the CDC’s latest report, these infections are skyrocketing to levels “not seen since the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.” Men who have sex with men, experts say, account for a whopping 83 percent of male cases. And while the rates are increasing for women too, “men account for more than 90 percent of all primary and secondary syphilis cases.” But the problem doesn’t end there. “Available data,” the CDC warns, “indicate than an average of half of men who have sex with men who have syphilis are also infected with HIV.” Sadly, the worst outbreak is among young men, 13-19 years old, who make up as many as 93% of all diagnosed HIV infections that were from male-to-male sexual contact.

Now, faced with yet another crisis of the sexually unrestrained, the medical community is asking for another $8.1 million in federal funding to fight back. Instead of ignoring the problem, it’s time for liberals to join conservatives in urging America to stop engaging in risky sex. Unfortunately, in this age of sexual “freedom,” that’s a message no one wants to deliver — especially since it doesn’t reflect well on the Left’s gospel of promiscuity. Pop culture wants to encourage intimacy with anyone at any time with complete disregard for the physical toll. It’s as if sex were the new constitutional right. But empowering people to pursue sexual satisfaction at any cost has left the nation in a position of vulnerability from which it might never recover.

The government has spent years (and even more taxpayer dollars) trying to clean up a mess it helped make. How many more will we spend ignoring the real solution: restraint?

Originally published here.