In 2004, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry was in a bind about same-sex marriage, an issue increasingly supported by the Democratic base but still unpopular with the public at large. Kerry walked a political line, saying he personally believed marriage was between a man and a woman, but was OK with civil unions for gays and lesbians.

Three presidential campaigns later, that line has shifted to underscore lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. GOP nominee Donald Trump made no mention of gay marriage or transgender bathroom access when he spoke to the Values Voters Summit earlier this month. A Republican congressman got an angry response from his GOP colleagues when he said he didn't want to contribute to the national Republican Congressional Committee because it aided gay candidates. And even in once-conservative North Carolina, a governor could lose his job over the transgender bathroom issue, perhaps inflicting collateral damage on the GOP incumbent Senate candidate and Trump as well.

"Unlike in any other presidential election, it's a liability to be anti-gay," says Jay Brown, spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT rights group. The Supreme Court's 2015 decision making same-sex marriage the law of the land removed a major organizing issue for anti-gay rights advocates. And the newer issue of transgender rights does not appear to be a political plus for those opposed to laws banning discrimination allowing transgendered men and women to use the public bathrooms of their choice. (Kerry, too, came out for same-sex marriage years later and has since backed pro-LGBT policies at the State Department he now heads.)

In North Carolina, the transgender bathroom issue "could be all it takes to decide an election," says Jason Husser, director of the Elon University Poll in the north-central part of the state. The most likely casualty is Governor Pat McCrory, who in March signed legislation not only requiring individuals to use the public restroom that matches their birth gender, but also bans North Carolina localities from passing their own laws protecting LGBT people. That second provision was in response to an anti-discrimination bill approved by lawmakers in Charlotte. A deal was floated last weekend to repeal the state law, called HB-2, if Charlotte would get rid of its anti-discrimination ordinance, but the Charlotte mayor refused.

Leading social conservative groups support the law as a way to protect people from predators and businesses from government interference. The KeepNCSafe Coalition released a statement saying the state had an obligation to protect the "privacy and safety of businesses, women, and children to live and work in accordance with their deeply held beliefs." Polls suggest a majority of the public is not in agreement, with nearly 50 percent opposing the law (and 40 percent supporting it) in an Elon University poll, and 43 percent opposing and 30 percent approving the law in a Public Policy Polling survey.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, says it's not just about the policy, but "the way it's been characterized and mischaracterized" to demonize those who oppose the law. He blamed the public backlash against it on the messaging. "I wouldn't say conservatives are on the defensive. The activists on the left pushed politicians out further than where they wanted to be." The state would not have needed to act at all, Perkins adds, if Charlotte had not gone ahead with its own LGBT bill.

GOP Senator Richard Burr and Trump are not as closely tied to the issue. Burr avoided talking about the law until May, when, after a slew of businesses and sports institutions threatened to boycott the Tar Heel State, Burr said the law was "too expansive" and needed to be reined in. Trump in April said people should use the bathrooms they think are appropriate, but at a July rally in Raleigh, said he stands with the state in passing HB-2.

The danger for those Republicans, expert say, is that Trump and Burr – both of whom are in dead heats against their respective Democratic opponents, Hillary Clinton and Deborah Ross – will suffer from the tainting of the Republican brand and increased turnout from voters who believe the issue has tarnished the state's national reputation. A majority of voters disapprove of the law, and 60 percent believe it has given North Carolina a bad name, according to an Elon poll.

"It's not just about bathrooms. It's about how we're perceived," says Stephen Greene, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina. The state "has always been one of the most progressive of Southern states. We're not Alabama, and we're legislating like we are," Greene adds.

Major businesses, including Paypal, have abandoned plans to expand in North Carolina; performers including Bruce Springsteen have refused to hold concerts there, and several states and localities have banned official government travel there. But it is the slap-down from the athletic community that has really stung: Not only has the NBA pulled its 2017 all-star game from Charlotte, but the NCAA pulled seven championships out of the state. Most recently, the Atlantic Coast Conference announced it would pull its neutral-site 2016-17 championships from North Carolina, the state where the ACC was founded in the 1950s.

"When the ACC, that was born and bred in this state, makes such a strong statement against a public policy issue, that's when the North Carolina cultural factor weighed in heavily," says J. Michael Bitzer, a politics and history professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina.

Meanwhile, the state's changing demographics make politics more challenging for Republicans, Bitzer says. President Obama won the state in 2008 largely through a very aggressive ground game, he says (Obama did not actively campaign in 2012 in North Carolina and lost it narrowly to Mitt Romney). The state is also getting more urban, he adds – of North Carolina's 100 counties, 13 account for 50 percent of the vote – and younger. Millennials are likely to comprise the same portion of registered voters in November as baby boomers, and the younger voter group is more likely to oppose HB-2, he says.

Most state legislators are from safe, gerrymandered districts and needn't worry about losing their jobs, Green says. But two Republican state senators recently came out in favor of repealing or reining in the law. And McCrory has quietly dropped a counter-lawsuit against the Department of Justice, seeking to halt the department's civil rights suit against North Carolina. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, a North Carolina native, likened the bathroom bill to Jim Crow laws and other racially discriminatory policies in the South's past.