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In late February 2016, social media users began sharing links and memes affirming that the leader of opposition to a North Carolina bathroom ordinance was a registered sex offender: On 7 March 2016, the web site Breitbart published an article (titled Convicted Sex Offender Leads Transgender Rights Effort in North Carolina) which held that the leader of efforts to allow men to use women's bathrooms was a convicted, registered sex offender. The article reported that an individual named Chad Sevearance had spearheaded opposition to an ambiguously referenced ordinance involving transgender people and bathrooms: That article went on to explain that Sevearance was arrested in 1998 at the age of 20 for engaging in sexual acts with teenaged boys: The details of that piece of information is verifiable: Sevearance's sex offender registry page is accessible here, and details of the ensuing court case were published in a July 2000 article. However, the Breitbart piece offered little context regarding the effort Sevearance purportedly headed and whether he was truly the primary opponent of the (unreferenced) legislation in question. The online rumor involving Sevearance mentioned a boys-in-girls-bathrooms bill while simultaneously describing homosexual acts between teenaged male minors and a 20-year-old man. At the time of the rumor's circulation, a cluster of controversies were occurring in North Carolina over gender, sexual orientation, and bathrooms (leading to confusion among viewers who spotted related memes on Facebook). The most nationally prominent of the controversies was one surrounding a law known as HB2 (or the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act), which the Charlotte Observer described as a sweeping law that reverses a Charlotte ordinance that had extended some rights to people who are gay or transgender: Sevearance was not mentioned or referenced in that newspaper article, which described opposition to HB2 as broad: On 24 March 2016, The Atlantic explained that HB2 was drafted in reaction to a local Charlotte ordinance that had failed to pass in 2015, but was approved in 2016: We contacted a reporter credited for that comprehensive article, who had never spoken to Sevearance about HB2. We asked whether Sevearance was a key opponent of HB2, and the reporter said opposition was led by groups such Equality NC (but didn't mention the Charlotte Business Guild). However, Chad Sevearance was one of several individuals quoted in a Charlotte Observer article about the defeat of Charlotte's proposed non-discrimination ordinance, but that article was published in 2015, not 2016: On 12 April 2016, the Washington Post reported that North Carolina governor Pat McCrory had signed an executive order walking back portions of HB2, but McCrory cited Charlotte's ordinance as overreach and left the bathroom provision of HB2 intact: Chad Sevearance and the controversy surrounding him were not major threads in the ongoing story of HB2. Bruce Springsteen made national news by cancelling a show in protest of the bill, a sign spotted in a Georgia Kroger went viral in its wake, and inaccurate rumors about mixed-gender restrooms at a Pilot Travel Center in the state blanketed social media during the controversy. In response to our inquiry, Equality NC's Director of Operations, Shawn Long, clarified who was primarily responsible for leading the efforts against HB2 —namely multiple large in- and out-of-state groups: It is true Chad Sevearance was charged with and convicted of sexual contact with teenaged boys when he was 20, and he was quoted as opposing HB2 (because someone can ask me to leave a restaurant because I’m presumed to be gay or transgender) on 3 March 2015, but to term him the leader of opposition to HB2, or even a major player in the Charlotte ordinance that inspired it, is an exaggeration. In March 2016, following heavy criticism from conservative groups, Sevearance stepped down from his position as president of Charlotte's LGBT Chamber of Commerce, rendering the claims about his role in the opposition to HB2 even less accurate.
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