Last fall, California’s Legislature stood in solidarity with the LGBT community, voting to prohibit publicly funded travel to states that discriminate against gay and transgender individuals.

They stood on principle to bar the expenditure of California tax dollars in states that had implemented bathroom bills that ban people from using public restrooms that do not correspond to the biological sex listed on their birth certificate.

They stood in unity to speak out against laws that undermine basic human rights on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

And then last week, they quietly sat down.

Last weekend, the fine UCLA men’s basketball team won its first two games in the NCAA basketball tournament and qualified for a Sweet 16 matchup against perennial power Kentucky with a possible game against tournament favorite North Carolina. For fans of March Madness, this is as good as it gets.

However, this weekend’s games are being played in Memphis, and the state of Tennessee last year passed a bill that would allow mental health counselors to refuse to serve gay and transgender patients based on religious objections. While the Tennessee law does not deal specifically with bathroom access, it clearly meets the standard set by California lawmakers when they passed their nondiscrimination legislation. There’s no question that the law would prohibit a California state government worker from traveling to Tennessee on public business.

The bill applied to the University of California and the California State University system, and when the law was passed, the attorney general’s office ruled that the ban extended to athletic competitions in the designated states, and that California student-athletes would no longer be permitted to travel to those states for contests scheduled after Jan. 1 of this year.

Because the UCLA and University of California football teams had scheduled games for this fall in Tennessee and North Carolina before the Jan. 1 deadline, those games will be allowed to take place. But UC and CSU schools have been advised against scheduling future competitions in those states. Since this weekend’s basketball games could not have been scheduled last year, as they were the result of the outcomes of games that took place last Sunday, California state law says the Bruins should not have been permitted to travel to Memphis for their tournament games. But the legislators who voted for the ban simply looked the other way and pretended it didn’t exist at all.

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting for a moment that the UCLA team should have been prohibited from playing. These young men have worked too hard and overcome too many challenges to be denied the opportunity to measure their skills against the next level of competition. They didn’t pass the Tennessee bill, and there’s no evidence to suggest that any UCLA player or coach supports it. While sports shouldn’t — and can’t — take place in a cultural and societal vacuum, it’s difficult to argue that the cause of transgender rights would be advanced by forcing these young men to forfeit their place in the tournament.

But when California legislators voted to boycott states that enact discriminatory policies, they didn’t undermine their outrage by carving out exceptions for young, tall people. The legislators achieved significant public and media attention — and reaped significant political benefit — by enacting the ban, and although they quietly allowed exceptions for state tax officials and certain public safety needs, they otherwise made a strong symbolic statement to register their disapproval of the actions taken by those other states.

It’s easy to take a principled position when there’s no tangible downside. Telling anonymous state bureaucrats that they can’t attend a conference in another state is fairly painless. Upholding those same principles at the height of one of the nation’s most popular and widely watched sporting events is much more difficult.

The message of a hunger strike, in other words, is undermined if you eat as soon as you get hungry.

Laws that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity are reprehensible. But it doesn’t accomplish very much to stand on principle only when it’s convenient. It’s not clear what a loophole-ridden travel ban can accomplish, but those who believe in the power of such boycotts shouldn’t make exceptions for basketball.

If you’re going to take a stand, then you have to keep standing even when you’re tired and your feet hurt. But if you’re only going to stand up when it’s easy, then maybe it’s best just to stay in your chair.

Dan Schnur, who has worked on four presidential and three gubernatorial campaigns, teaches political communications at USC and UC Berkeley. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at http://bit.ly/SFChronicleletters.