Morality or Bigotry?

How did the song go? You say “potato” and I say “po-tah-to?”

 

Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi triggered a modern version of the old standard when he adopted a new office policy providing that employment decisions would be made only on the basis of job performance, and that no one would be discriminated against on the basis of skin color, gender or sexual orientation. From my perspective, this was an entirely appropriate confirmation of the value Americans place on equal treatment before the law. According to Micah Clark and the American Family Association, it was a cowardly acquiescence to the “homosexual agenda” and a “slap in the face” to citizens of Marion County.

 

Whatever views people hold on the far more volatile issue of same-sex marriage, if polls are to be believed, most Americans are deeply committed to fairness in the workplace and equal treatment before the law. Because it is so difficult to argue that employers ought to be able to fire people just for being gay (or black, Jewish or Christian), those objecting to equal civil rights for gays have asserted that they aren’t really against equal rights—they are against “special rights.”  But it has become quite clear that what they define as “special” is equal rights for gay people.

 

A couple of weeks ago, the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the sort of law that the American Family Association feels is proper. Kansas had adopted a statute prescribing penalties for statutory rape—consensual sex between two individuals, one of whom is under the age of consent. For heterosexuals, the maximum penalty under the statute is fifteen months. Matthew Limon, a gay teenager convicted of having sex with a younger gay teenager, had already served five years of a seventeen-year sentence.

 

Let me be very clear: if every single other fact of the offense had been identical, but Matthew had been arrested for heterosexual conduct, he would have served at most fifteen months. He got an extra fifteen years and nine months because he was gay. When the Kansas court ruled that this amounted to unconstitutional discrimination, the decision was met with predictable accusations of “judicial activism.” In language quite similar to Micah Clark’s, a Kansas pastor decried the ruling as “a victory for supporters of a creeping gay-rights agenda.”   

 

To his credit, the Kansas Attorney-General, a Republican, has said the state is unlikely to appeal, and pointedly noted that when he had served in the legislature, he had voted against the law.

 

The bottom line in these debates—and in the ongoing City-County Council struggle to include gay people under the City’s Human Relations Ordinance—is quite clear. On one side are those who may or may not approve of homosexuality on religious grounds, but who nevertheless believe that every American should be treated equally in the workplace and by the law. On the other side are those who believe that laws preventing them from punishing or harassing gay people are somehow an “endorsement” of homosexuality.

 

Potato—po-tah-to.

  

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Revolutionary Fervor

Maybe it’s because we are a country born out of a revolution, but Americans have a decided preference for dramatic change, and little interest in the boring details of our governmental processes.

 

I thought about that aspect of our national character earlier this month, as I listened to a variety of presentations at the annual Howey Political Forum. The focus was on economic and administrative challenges facing Indiana and proposals for meeting those challenges.

 

In a forceful speech, Governor Daniels emphasized his commitment to thoroughgoing change, and he ticked off a number of those he intends to pursue: continuing to close underused BMV license branches, privatizing prisons, consolidating school corporations, turning some state highways into toll roads, and several others. He added that “no one should be surprised” by his determination to enact sweeping changes in Indiana’s government, because he had run a campaign in which he’d promised to do just that.

 

Governor Daniels was absolutely right; he did campaign on a promise of sweeping change. And I suspect that the mantra of change was a very important element in his victory. “It’s time for a change” is a powerful and time-honored theme of American political life. Rather than analyzing what the proposed change will accomplish, and how it will be implemented, Americans have an unquenchable optimism that the new idea will be better than the one it replaced, and the bigger, the better.

 

This is not to speak to the merits of any of the Governor’s proposals. I agree with some, and disagree with others. But it was hard not to hear in his enthusiastic speech some disquieting echoes of former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who was often quoted as saying about city government, “If it isn’t broken, break it. Then fix it.” I guess I just want to be sure that what we are undertaking to fix is really already broken.

 

I also think it is interesting that Republicans and Democrats alike prefer sweeping new measures to the sorts of admittedly boring, incremental improvements that everyone familiar with government thinks we need. During a later panel, Pat Kiely, a former Republican legislator widely respected on both sides of the aisle, talked about one of the enduring frustrations companies encounter when they do business with state government. Most state agencies are organized into regions. This makes sense: why should people in Northwest Indiana, for example, have to come to Indianapolis to deal with a government agency? But as Kiely noted, there is no consistency in either the number of regions or their number. The Indiana Economic Development Commission has six, Workforce Development has eleven, Tourism, six, the State Police, seventeen. There are nine Education Service Centers, four Indiana Housing and Community Development Offices, and three air quality regions. And so on.

 

Perhaps, before we embark on the really revolutionary changes—like turning our prisons and roads over to corporations—we could rationalize the haphazard mess through which we deliver state services. It wouldn’t be as sexy, but it’s already broken.

   

 

 

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Revolutionary Fervor

Maybe it’s because we are a country born out of a revolution, but Americans have a decided preference for dramatic change, and little interest in the boring details of our governmental processes.

 

I thought about that aspect of our national character earlier this month, as I listened to a variety of presentations at the annual Howey Political Forum. The focus was on economic and administrative challenges facing Indiana and proposals for meeting those challenges.

 

In a forceful speech, Governor Daniels emphasized his commitment to thoroughgoing change, and he ticked off a number of those he intends to pursue: continuing to close underused BMV license branches, privatizing prisons, consolidating school corporations, turning some state highways into toll roads, and several others. He added that “no one should be surprised” by his determination to enact sweeping changes in Indiana’s government, because he had run a campaign in which he’d promised to do just that.

 

Governor Daniels was absolutely right; he did campaign on a promise of sweeping change. And I suspect that the mantra of change was a very important element in his victory. “It’s time for a change” is a powerful and time-honored theme of American political life. Rather than analyzing what the proposed change will accomplish, and how it will be implemented, Americans have an unquenchable optimism that the new idea will be better than the one it replaced, and the bigger, the better.

 

This is not to speak to the merits of any of the Governor’s proposals. I agree with some, and disagree with others. But it was hard not to hear in his enthusiastic speech some disquieting echoes of former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who was often quoted as saying about city government, “If it isn’t broken, break it. Then fix it.” I guess I just want to be sure that what we are undertaking to fix is really already broken.

 

I also think it is interesting that Republicans and Democrats alike prefer sweeping new measures to the sorts of admittedly boring, incremental improvements that everyone familiar with government thinks we need. During a later panel, Pat Kiely, a former Republican legislator widely respected on both sides of the aisle, talked about one of the enduring frustrations companies encounter when they do business with state government. Most state agencies are organized into regions. This makes sense: why should people in Northwest Indiana, for example, have to come to Indianapolis to deal with a government agency? But as Kiely noted, there is no consistency in either the number of regions or their number. The Indiana Economic Development Commission has six, Workforce Development has eleven, Tourism, six, the State Police, seventeen. There are nine Education Service Centers, four Indiana Housing and Community Development Offices, and three air quality regions. And so on.

 

Perhaps, before we embark on the really revolutionary changes—like turning our prisons and roads over to corporations—we could rationalize the haphazard mess through which we deliver state services. It wouldn’t be as sexy, but it’s already broken.

   

 

 

Comments

Revolutionary Fervor

Maybe it’s because we are a country born out of a revolution, but Americans have a decided preference for dramatic change, and little interest in the boring details of our governmental processes.

 

I thought about that aspect of our national character earlier this month, as I listened to a variety of presentations at the annual Howey Political Forum. The focus was on economic and administrative challenges facing Indiana and proposals for meeting those challenges.

 

In a forceful speech, Governor Daniels emphasized his commitment to thoroughgoing change, and he ticked off a number of those he intends to pursue: continuing to close underused BMV license branches, privatizing prisons, consolidating school corporations, turning some state highways into toll roads, and several others. He added that “no one should be surprised” by his determination to enact sweeping changes in Indiana’s government, because he had run a campaign in which he’d promised to do just that.

 

Governor Daniels was absolutely right; he did campaign on a promise of sweeping change. And I suspect that the mantra of change was a very important element in his victory. “It’s time for a change” is a powerful and time-honored theme of American political life. Rather than analyzing what the proposed change will accomplish, and how it will be implemented, Americans have an unquenchable optimism that the new idea will be better than the one it replaced, and the bigger, the better.

 

This is not to speak to the merits of any of the Governor’s proposals. I agree with some, and disagree with others. But it was hard not to hear in his enthusiastic speech some disquieting echoes of former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who was often quoted as saying about city government, “If it isn’t broken, break it. Then fix it.” I guess I just want to be sure that what we are undertaking to fix is really already broken.

 

I also think it is interesting that Republicans and Democrats alike prefer sweeping new measures to the sorts of admittedly boring, incremental improvements that everyone familiar with government thinks we need. During a later panel, Pat Kiely, a former Republican legislator widely respected on both sides of the aisle, talked about one of the enduring frustrations companies encounter when they do business with state government. Most state agencies are organized into regions. This makes sense: why should people in Northwest Indiana, for example, have to come to Indianapolis to deal with a government agency? But as Kiely noted, there is no consistency in either the number of regions or their number. The Indiana Economic Development Commission has six, Workforce Development has eleven, Tourism, six, the State Police, seventeen. There are nine Education Service Centers, four Indiana Housing and Community Development Offices, and three air quality regions. And so on.

 

Perhaps, before we embark on the really revolutionary changes—like turning our prisons and roads over to corporations—we could rationalize the haphazard mess through which we deliver state services. It wouldn’t be as sexy, but it’s already broken.

   

 

 

Comments

Checks and Balances

Every high school government class begins with a lesson on “checks and balances.” We usually think of checks and balances as the three branches of government—executive, legislative and judicial—but there are other mechanisms, notably federalism and the Bill of Rights, that were intended to serve the same purpose.

 

Checks and balances grew out of the central preoccupation of those charged with creating a new government: limiting the exercise of government power. That concern was so overwhelming that it had undermined the first attempt to craft a federal system; the Articles of Confederation had so attenuated central power that the resulting government was too weak to be effective.

 

As James Madison memorably explained, dividing government into branches and levels having different responsibilities would set “faction against faction” and force deliberation and compromise. In the American system, the first question to be asked when the state proposes to act is: who decides? Is this a question that government has been empowered to get involved with in the first place? If so, which part of government?

 

With all the posturing and pontificating about “activist” courts, what we sometimes forget is that the judges are the ones who are supposed to say “no” when other parts of government overstep their authority—when the constitutional checks and balances are threatened. And efforts to extend government power beyond what our system permits are everywhere—and growing.

 

Here in Indiana, in the Executive Branch, the Governor has decided that he knows better than local school corporations what sorts of buildings they should build with their own local tax dollars.  In the legislature, Representative Pat Miller has introduced truly surreal legislation that would make criminals of women engaging in “unauthorized reproduction.” Women who want to become pregnant using artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, or similar reproductive techniques would have to apply to the state for a permit, and only married women would be granted such a permit. (I am not making this up! What’s next, forced abortions for unmarried pregnant women?)      

 

At the federal level, we have a Congress that passed the Patriot Act without hearings (or even, in several cases, reading it), a Congress unwilling to check executive authority by insisting on its own prerogatives to declare war, or to meaningfully examine the qualifications of Presidential appointments. Our Imperial Presidency operates in virtual secrecy, crafting energy policy with favored lobbyists, detaining people without due process, and ignoring state laws with which it disagrees.  

 

Ultimately, this is the context within which we must analyze the President’s Supreme Court choices. While public debate has centered on nominees’ positions on abortion, or the politics of this or that nomination, it is much more likely that the real reason for choosing John Roberts and Harriet Miers had nothing to do with Roe v. Wade, or Presidential weakness, or gender politics. Whatever other beliefs either may hold, these are first and foremost individuals who favor reducing the constitutional checks on Presidential authority.

 

This isn’t about abortion—it’s about power.

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