Audacious in Chicago

This morning’s New York Times reports that Rahm Emmanuel will announce a 7.1 billion-with-a-b infrastructure improvement plan for Chicago. Improvements will be made to everything from the water system to the airport, from public transportation to parks. The improvements will be financed primarily through a public-private investment trust, details of which Mayor Emmanuel is supposed to announce later today.

I found this paragraph particularly interesting:

Some public-private partnership projects have been criticized as giveaways to the private businesses that take them over — including two prominent cases in Chicago itself, the privatized Chicago Skyway and the city’s parking meter system, which obligate the city to leases that span generations. Mr. Emanuel says that the city has learned an important lesson, and that “I am not leasing anything,” or selling off the city’s assets, he said in an interview. “I’m using private capital to improve a public entity that stays public.”

Great cities are places people want to live. As former Mayor Hudnut repeatedly reminded us, livable cities are first and foremost “cities that work.”

Most of us don’t want to live in housing that is unkempt and run-down, but we also understand that we aren’t improving our situation if we sell the stove to pay for new carpet.

In order to build a great city–especially in these days of fiscal hurt–its leaders need vision, and the audacity to insist that investment in the public square is both necessary and important. The audacity to refuse to sell off public goods to private profiteers.

The audacity to defend and maintain great urban spaces for the generations of citizens who will enjoy them.

Why Voting for the Man, Not the Party, Doesn’t Work

A few years ago, after choosing between two particularly uninspiring candidates on election day, I told my husband that I would no longer vote for the lesser of two evils. Instead, I would vote for the candidate who was pandering to the least dangerous constituency.

It sounds snarky, but I would argue that it isn’t a bad rule to follow.

Take Mitt Romney, the likely GOP Presidential nominee. My guess is that beneath that wooden exterior, he’s probably a capable enough manager–and not nearly as asinine as he sounds on the campaign trail. The problem is, if he were to be elected, he would still be beholden to the Tea Party crazies and Good Ole Boy racists he is frantically trying to woo during the primaries. Etch-A-Sketch or no, the systemic realities of our political system would operate to prevent moderation or compromise or evidence-based decision-making.

Here in Indiana, we have two major-party candidates for Governor, both of whom are well to the right of center. Pence, of course, is entirely a creature of the extremist Christian Right–if he’s ever had a truly independent idea, he’s hidden it well. Gregg is a conservative Democrat from Southern Indiana. If Pence wins, he won’t skip a beat: his policies will be tailored to his base, which is fundamentalist Christian, exploitative capitalist, and allergic-to-taxes Tea Party. If Gregg wins, however, he will have to moderate his positions in order to satisfy the Democratic base, which is far more diverse and progressive than he is. (As my youngest son likes to say, your vote for Governor will depend upon whether you want to return to the 1960s or the 1690s.)

Of course, if Rupert the Libertarian wins, all bets are off.

Candidates are captured by their political parties in a number of ways; they are not unembedded political actors no matter how much they’d like us to think they are. In some ways, that’s comforting; we rarely know what we need to know about the candidates themselves, so there is some logic in casting your vote for the person who belongs to the party with the philosophy closest to your own. Party affiliation is one among many “markers” that allow us to shortcut the decision-making process.

On the other hand, when one party goes “off the rails”–when the only people who can get nominated are those prepared to grovel to the basest of the base–average voters are deprived of the benefit of sound policy debates between serious candidates.

When elections devolve into battles between the bumper stickers, when candidates endlessly parrot  focus-group tested pieties, it isn’t possible to vote for the “best candidate.” It isn’t even possible to figure out who that is.

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Sausage-Making at Work

There’s an old saying that the two things you should never watch are sausage-making and law-making. Good as that advice is, it can be very enlightening (if somewhat nauseating) to be present as the democratic process unfolds.

Yesterday, I accompanied the President of Indiana Equality to South Bend, where the Common Council was to deliberate (for the third time) on a proposal to amend that city’s Human Rights Ordinance. The existing Ordinance allowed the Human Rights Commission to mediate complaints of discrimination in employment, public accommodations and housing based upon race, gender, national origin and religion; the proposal being debated was to add sexual orientation and gender identity to that list.

I was there to offer “expert” testimony–my status as an expert by virtue of an imposing title and the fact that I live more than 50 miles away. Opponents insisted that the city had no legal authority to enact the changes, and that the Ordinance was so poorly drafted that enforcement would be impossible. Since the language was identical to that in the Indianapolis Ordinance–which has been in effect for seven years without challenge or problem–that wasn’t exactly a winning argument.

The most audacious claim made by those who opposed the new language, however, was that the standard religious exemption–specifying that the provision would not apply to churches and religious institutions–was inadequate because it would not protect “religiously motivated” discrimination. This is similar to other arguments we’ve been hearing lately: that allowing female employees access to contraception violates the religious liberty of Catholic employers, or that anti-bullying legislation infringes the “free speech” rights of the bullies. The argument is apparently that I should be able to pick on gay people—or black people, or women, or Jews–if my motivation is religious. This is an argument one occasionally hears from those who still believe that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a violation of their individual rights.

There were two hearings: a committee meeting that began at 4:00 pm and the Council meeting, which began at 7:00–and lasted until 1:00 a.m. (And you wondered why there was no blog post this morning!) The hearings were Democracy In Action. (Please note capitals!)

I’ve been to similar debates before, and I fully expected that the conservative churches would bus in lots of their parishioners in order to dominate, if not fill, the chamber. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the “good guys”–wearing big blue paper buttons provided by Indiana Equality–vastly outnumbered the folks wearing red stickers emblazoned with “No Special Rights.”

I was also impressed with the testimony of the very long line of supporters–beginning with the young Mayor, Pete Buttigieg, who began the public testimony portion of the hearing with a brief but powerful speech about the importance of being an inclusive community and doing what is fair and right.

There was a tall, elderly African-American woman who identified herself as a grandmother, and told the councilors they needed to “do what’s right.” There was a representative of the AFL-CIO, who delivered an impassioned plea for inclusion and equality. A young service-member back from two tours in Afghanistan looked straight at the members of the council and said,  “I’m sitting in the front row, right there.” (He pointed to his seat.) “If you vote tonight to tell me that I am not entitled to the same rights I fought to protect for all Americans, then I want you to come look me in the face and tell me why.” There were several ordained ministers, and a bible scholar from Notre Dame, all contesting the notion that being “Christian” meant opposing equality for GLBT citizens.

Those who testified were young and old, black and white, gay and straight. (A surprisingly large number, in fact, were straight.)

The response by opponents was predictable–and much as they tried to argue on legal and policy grounds, the inevitable ugliness soon emerged to discredit them. It was the parade of the “usual subjects”–this is a “Christian Nation,” sexual orientation is a choice, same-sex relationships are “disordered” and “immoral,” protecting GLBT people from discrimination will increase the incidence of AIDS. A nurse graphically described  medical problems she attributed to anal sex (the “ick” factor). Several people asserted that the measure would “promote” homosexuality and the dreaded “gay agenda.”

And I’ve never heard so much talk about who will use which restrooms.

Virtually all of the testimony from opponents was based upon religion: the grandmother who assured the council that a “yea” vote would be a vote against the will of God (she evidently talked to him recently…), the used car salesman/pastor (I am not making that up!) who quoted selected bible verses, and the concluding litany by the self-described “Good man of God” who threw the kitchen sink at the issue: gays cause disease, sin and early death, and they need to repent. Reparative therapy works. It’s a choice. And repeatedly, that prohibiting him from firing gay people, telling him he couldn’t refuse to rent an apartment to a gay person, would deprive him of his constitutional right to  religious liberty.

The council voted 6-3 to amend the Ordinance. I’m not sure who was more persuasive–those of us who supported the measure, or the homophobes who demonstrated why it was necessary.

Democracy worked.

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Our Fictional President

Saturday, I opened my IBJ to read a truly paranoid rant from Greg Morris, the publisher, who has a weekly opinion column. Mr. Morris is clearly one of those Second Amendment folks who views his right to bear arms with religious fervor, and his embrace of “one nation, armed to the teeth” was unsettling enough. But what really set the warning bells off was his full-throated embrace of one of the many conspiracy theories that have persisted since the election of Barack Obama: “they’re coming for our guns!”

Mr. Morris was unable to point to a single fact supporting this fantasy. It was the usual “everyone knows” and “someone said” rant–the Obama administration is “just waiting for the second term” and then they’ll confiscate your weapons!

I was shocked to see this garbage in the staid IBJ, a publication focused on the business community, and one of the few media outlets that still fact-checks and reports.But it reminded me of an observation someone made about the Republican primary–that the GOP candidates are running against a fictional President.

The criticisms of Obama from the left–and there have been plenty of them–tend to fault him for specific policy decisions. He has failed to dismantle Bush’s security apparatus; his administration defended the killing of an American citizen working with the terrorists, without a trial or other due process. Agree or not with those criticisms (and I do), they are specific and tangible.

The criticisms from the Right, however, rarely focus on something the President actually did. Other than the hated “Obamacare” (which very few people who want it repealed seem to understand) and pious hand-wringing over the national debt (inconveniently created by George W. Bush), most of the accusations seem to be the products of fevered imaginations: Obama is a “socialist” who wants to make the U.S. into Europe; Obama hates white people; Obama is a Kenyan Muslim fascist; Obama wants to confiscate our guns….

I read “The Audacity of Hope” during the 2008 campaign. I agreed with almost everything in it–because the positions outlined were very much the same positions I held (and continue to hold) when I ran for Congress in 1980 as a moderate Republican. If there is one mistake today’s Left and Right hold in common, its the belief that Obama ran as some sort of raging liberal. He didn’t, he wasn’t, and he isn’t.

The absolute hysteria on the Right can’t be explained by Obama’s actual policies. Unlike the situation with George W. Bush, who didn’t arouse intense animosity until he’d actually done things, the irrational hatred of Obama began the day he was elected.

We seem to have two Presidents, the actual man we elected, and a fictional “boogeyman.” And while race doesn’t explain all of that, it explains a hell of a lot.

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Defining “Religious Liberty”

Tomorrow, the South Bend City Council will consider amending its Human Rights Ordinance to include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

HR Ordinances–while relatively toothless in Indiana–express a municipality’s intent to discourage some people from picking on other people based solely upon their religion, race, gender and other markers that are irrelevant to the question whether those people can pay the rent or perform the duties required for the job.

I’ve agreed to serve as a sort of “expert witness” at the Council hearing, and as a result, over the last week or so I’ve been copied with the various arguments being made in opposition to the proposal. As often happens when I find myself immersed in indignant justifications of homophobia, I’m increasingly feeling like an inhabitant of the Twilight Zone.

One example is the “legal memo” submitted by the Alliance Defense Fund. I’ve seen most of its arguments before–it’s pretty much a retread of similar arguments made when other Indiana cities passed similar measures. The ADF insists that Indiana municipalities lack the authority to pass such ordinances–despite the fact that over the past decade or so several have done so, and none have been challenged. The memorandum mis-characterizes court cases, and engages in the other tactics lawyers resort to when they find themselves on the losing side of a legal argument.

I understand those tactics; at one point or another, we all find ourselves desperately trying to find a legal basis for what are really policy arguments.

The jaw-dropping argument, however, and the most ridiculous claim in the entire 30+ page “brief,” is a claim that the religious exemption is inadequate because it does not protect “religiously motivated” discrimination.

Let’s think about that for a minute.

The proposal before the South Bend Council contains an exemption for religious organizations. This exemption, in my opinion, is entirely appropriate–if your religion disapproves of gay people, or unwed mothers, or atheists, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment forbids government from forcing your church or other religious organization to employ such people. The law requires that we accommodate even beliefs that are at odds with basic American values.

Apparently, however, protecting the right of religious organizations to follow the dictates of their faith–even when those dictates are inconsistent with civil rights laws–isn’t sufficient. According to the ADF argument, if I truly believe gay people are sinners, that belief alone should allow me to discriminate with impunity–If I can’t fire employees I discover are gay, if I can’t refuse to rent to GLBT folks, the government is denying me religious liberty.

This is similar to the argument that anti-bullying legislation infringes the “free speech rights” of the bullies. The argument is apparently that I should be able to pick on gay people—or black people, or women, or Muslims–if I say my motivation is religious.

There’s a yiddish word for that argument: Chutzpah.

Obviously, an exemption for “religious motivation” would eviscerate the law. But this is part and parcel of the worldview of those who oppose equal civil rights for GLBT folks. Stripped of the “legalese” and rhetorical devices, that argument is simple: legislation that is inconsistent with my particular religious beliefs is a denial of my religious liberty.

The religion clauses of the First Amendment require government to be neutral between religions, and between religion and non-religion. To use a sports analogy, government is supposed to be an umpire, not a player. But there are citizens who simply cannot abide the notion of a neutral government–who experience “live and let live” and civic equality as affronts to the primacy to which they feel entitled. In that peculiar worldview, a government that insists on fair play for gay people is a government that’s denying them religious liberty.

I can hear the theme from “Twilight Zone” as I type…..

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