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A friend has shared the most recent Newsletter from Micah Clark’s Indiana Family Institute, and the hysteria is getting palpable. An (annotated) excerpt follows.

The 2014 Indiana General Assembly begins next week.   The issue of marriage protection will likely dominate much of the session, as the media seems to want to cover some sort of angle on the issue almost daily. (That pesky media…why would it be covering a major public policy issue? And why is the coverage so sympathetic to the gays?)

Yesterday, I received calls from two legislators from opposite ends of the state. They confirmed for me that the opposition to the marriage amendment is very subjective.  (“Subjective” opposition is clearly illogical and unbiblical.  “Objective” support comes from people who agree with me.)

It is true that liberal activists have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to prevent a vote on the amendment. They have hired 11 lobbyists from large Indianapolis law firms and have 91 field directors in place working up opposition to the amendment and creating the perception that Hoosiers now believe moms and dads are irrelevant, that gender is interchangeable, and marriage can be whatever anyone wants to make it. (Marriage has always been between one man and one woman! Not like in the bible or in all the countries that still recognize plural marriage…)

However, it was this legislator’s belief that this wave of opposition to natural marriage is entirely manufactured and distorted. (There’s a factory out there somewhere, with an assembly line turning out opponents to “natural” marriage!)  He said that he announced early on, months ago, that he would vote for the Amendment again in order to preserve marriage and to allow the people to decide this, not the activists, unelected judges or Hollywood.

I’m not quite sure where Hollywood comes into the Hoosier picture, but let’s ignore that. Let’s also ignore interesting locutions like “natural” marriage. (Hate to point this out, Micah, but no civil marriage is “natural”–the decision of government to acknowledge partnerships for the purpose of allocating legal rights and responsibilities is pretty much a man-made phenomenon.)

The inconvenient truth of the matter is that the “manufactured and distorted” opposition to constitutionalizing second-class citizenship for GLBT folks is neither manufactured nor distorted: it is the very genuine position of capitalists who want to keep Indiana open for business and citizens who believe that it isn’t government’s job to enforce religious doctrine.

Here’s the thing: you keep insisting that “the people should decide.” Actually, the entire premise of the Bill of Rights is that We the People don’t get to vote on other people’s fundamental rights–that’s why the Bill of Rights is called a “counter-majoritarian” document. We don’t get to vote on who is entitled to free speech or freedom of religion or the equal protection of the laws. No one voted on my marriage, or yours.

No one got to vote on whether Adam should have married Eve, and no one should get to vote on whether Adam gets to marry Steve.

But let’s be honest, Micah. What really has your panties in a bunch is your (well-founded) suspicion that even if HJR6 passes the legislature and goes on the ballot, you won’t win. Your time has passed. Deny it as vehemently as you like–sputter about “nature” and “children” and “interchangeable genders” (whatever that means) and “biblical truth” all you want.

You and your theocrats have lost this one.

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In a column right before the end of the year, Brian Howey shared statistics about Indiana. They’re revealing.

Hoosiers rank 39th in per capita income, with residents making 87.2 percent of U.S. income at $38,119, and 33rd in household income at $46,974, down from $47,399 in 2011 (32nd). In 2002, we ranked 24th at $53,482. That is a 13.6 percent decline in the last decade, ranking us 48th.

The Indiana General Assembly passed and then-Gov. Mitch Daniels signed right-to-work legislation in February 2011. Union membership declined from 11.3 percent of the workforce in 2011 (302,000 workers, or 15th in the nation) to 9.1 percent in 2012 (246,000 workers). Only 10 percent of the workforce is represented by a union, ranking us 15th, down 2.4 percent from 2011.

Indiana ranks 10th in bankruptcies over time in 2012, and sixth in the rate per 1,000 people.

Apparently, the folks who opposed Right to Work were right when they characterized the measure as “Right to Work for Less.”

Howey’s long list also included these interesting numbers: Indiana ranks 17th in college enrollments–we are educating lots of students in our colleges and Universities. But we rank 42d in the percentage of Hoosiers holding Bachelor’s degrees, and 44th in the percentage of Hoosiers with any sort of degree.

We educate them and they leave.

Maybe our intrepid legislators should ask why it is that educated folks don’t stay in our state. Could it be that those low taxes translate into poor public services and a low quality of life?

Today is the start of a shiny new year. Wouldn’t it be nice if those we elect to office would decide to work together this year to improve Indiana’s dismal numbers, and the quality of life in the Hoosier State?

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Ameica’s love affair with the suburbs began after World War II, and has thrived for most of my adult life. I’ve never really understood the desire for a tract house on a quarter-acre lot, or a McMansion set even farther away from the nearest neighbor. I’m a congenitally urban person–and I’ve always been a bit envious of European cities, where those who could afford it live in the center of well-maintained and loved cities, and those who are less fortunate are relegated to the suburbs.

Only in America does such an enormous percentage of the middle-class live in such low densities on so much land.

I have always chalked up this predilection for grass to the “to each his own” category, and assumed my own urban preferences would always mark me as a minority. But if two books I read last week are to be believed, we may be seeing a welcome shift–an increased appreciation for the many charms and conveniences of city living.

In The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream is Moving, the authors point to several significant signs that times are changing. The most recent census data suggests that–after 50 years of pretty constant growth–the suburbs have stalled. Recently, cities and high-density suburbs have grown twice as fast, with the largest cities growing faster than their suburbs for the first time in a hundred years.

Meanwhile, home values have inverted. During the Great Recession, housing values held up much better in urban centers than in suburban ones. And construction activity has reversed, with higher percentages of building permits being issued for “walkable, urbanized” locations and for multi-family developments than for traditional suburbia.

Poverty, too, has migrated. As of 2010, a record 15.3 million suburban residents were living below the poverty line, up 53% from 2000. Crime, of course, often follows poverty; new crime data shows that homicides have fallen sharply in cities while rising in the suburbs. (Indianapolis is an exception–as I’ve noted previously, our murder rate is substantially higher than New York’s.)

What’s driving the changes?

Household size has been steadily shrinking. People marry later, or not at all, and women wait longer to have fewer children. The suburbs were built for families with children, but Ozzie and Harriet have moved to an assisted living facility, and their grandchildren, according to the data, “hate the burbs.” Seventy-seven percent of Millennials express a preference for urban living.  They also don’t care about driving: in 1980, 66% of all seventeen-year-olds had a driver’s license. In 2010, the figure was 47%. According to the data, they don’t want cars and they don’t want cul-de-sacs. Meanwhile, the price of oil continues to rise, and concerns about the environment have sparked an “anti-stuff” revolution.

Finally, the authors note that suburbs were poorly designed. They spread people far from each other, from their routine destinations, and from their jobs, making residents totally dependent on cars that get more expensive to operate every year. The suburbs’ low density complicates efficient provision of services, and fails to generate enough tax revenue to pay for the infrastructure needed to support them.

This book, together with The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy, provided plenty of thought-provoking data, and I’ll continue to share some of it in subsequent posts. Perhaps the most compelling finding, highlighted in both books, was the importance of public transportation in attracting new residents, jobs, and young people–and enabling economic development.

Both books shared lots of success stories. The common threads running through those successes included visionary leadership, collaborations between governments,  nonprofits, universities and the business community, and good public transportation.

It won’t surprise you to find that Indianapolis wasn’t mentioned.

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