Companies, travelers and performers have backed out or steered clear of business investments since the law was passed. Four conventions have decided not to meet in Charlotte. Asheville’s chamber of commerce announced last week that a firm that could have brought 500 technology jobs to the area had pulled out of talks. Bruce Springsteen canceled a concert in Greensboro. Entertainment companies, including 21st Century Fox, Turner Broadcasting and the A&E Network, have warned that the law puts future projects in the state at risk.

Some lawmakers have suggested that they would be open to modifying parts of the law. Gov. Pat McCrory, when he signed the legislation, said it included provisions that “should have waited until regular session.” And there is some precedent for a course correction: Last year, faced with pressure from activists and major corporations, elected officials in Arkansas and Indiana softened proposals that were promoted as religious freedom measures but were criticized from the left as anti-gay.

But in North Carolina these days, neither liberals nor conservatives seem to be in much of a mood to compromise.

“This, what we’re seeing going on now, is the old Southern strategy, where ‘gay,’ ‘trans’ and ‘homosexuality’ is the new bad word,” Mr. Barber said Saturday morning at a news conference at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh.

In Guilford County on Saturday, members of the local Democratic Party voted to temporarily appoint one of the state’s most prominent gay-rights activists to an open State House seat.

The appointee, Chris Sgro, executive director of the group Equality North Carolina — one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging the law — will take over the seat of Representative Ralph Johnson, who died last month. Mr. Sgro will serve the remainder of Mr. Johnson’s term, through January, and join the Democratic minority.