What’s happening in Gainesville?
This piece was submitted by Sultan Shakir, Regional Field Director for the Human Rights Campaign.
[This election, on March 24th, is] sort of like back in the Cold War, when the U.S. and the old Soviet Union would pick out a small country to duke it out in. That way, each side could test the other’s resolve and vulnerabilities without things getting totally out of hand.For the past few weeks, I’ve been working in Gainesville. My normal job is working as a Regional Field Director for the Human Rights Campaign, and I’m sure I’ve seen some of the readers of this column out and about in DC. So what has me in Gainesville?
Dan Smith, UF political science professor who has done extensive research on ballot initiatives, says: “This is typical in terms of initiative politics. What we are seeing is Gainesville being on the front lines of a national debate over gay and lesbian issues. We’ve become a national focal point for both the right and the left.”
If Amendment 1 passes, Smith says, “it sends a signal to the right that protection for gays and lesbians are up for grabs, even in little, liberal Gainesville.
Well… In 1998, the Gainesville City Commission passed a law adding protections based on sexual orientation to the Gainesville Human Rights Ordinance. In 2008, they added Gender Identity, thereby protecting the entire LGBT community from discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, and credit extension practices. Basically, it says that if a man walks into his job and starts talking about his boyfriend or informs his manager he’s going to begin a gender transition, his boss can’t fire him, his landlord can’t kick him out, the waiter can’t refuse to serve him, and his bank can’t deny him a loan solely because of that. No big deal, right?
Well… Not three weeks later, conservatives sent a firestorm of hate, scare tactics, spin, and fear mongering straight into Gainesville, all designed to find out if a whole lot of Haterade* could scare a small liberal town into voting to discriminate against our community.
*In the last financial report, the opposition raised $12,000, $10,000 of which came from Gatorade heiress Mary S. Cade. You know what not to drink, right?
Conservatives gathered signatures and quickly put a question on the ballot. The question, if passed, would do two things. The first would be to ban Gainesville from adding any other classes to the Human Rights Ordinance. The argument? If Gainesville is going to do something as crazy as protect LGBT people, then they clearly shouldn’t be empowered with the right to protect anyone. The second thing the question would do would be to repeal the protections for LGBT people. So come March 25th, that guy or girl mentioned above could be fired, kicked out of his apartment, denied service, or even credit, just for being LGBT.
Could this really pass?
Well, conservatives sent TV commercials showing a small girl being followed into a restroom by a man and sent mail to absentee ballot recipients claiming non-discrimination laws would “allow men – even sexual offenders – to use women’s public facilities.” We’re sure they’re flipping through the archives of the far right playbooks right now looking for anything that would make someone want to discriminate.
Considering that this is just a test case, we know they’ll try anything and everything to get this to pass. The drafters of the amendment don’t live here and neither does the chair of the opposition’s committee. But, hundreds of LGBT people do, which is why we’re asking you to get involved. We know this is just a test case, or, as Ron Cunningham so aptly points out, is like the Cold War, where both sides duke it out in a test of resolve.
Our side is asking for people to get involved now, before voters in Gainesville buy into the kind of scare tactics we saw in Prop 8 about children being at harm and traditional values falling to pieces; the kind of scare tactics we see levied against us in each of these fights.
Even if you’ve never fought in one of these fights before, we still need you to show up. We have trainings before each event and a very friendly organizer named Karl who’ll stand right by you as you talk to voters about why supporting fairness and equality won’t harm their children.
Can we count you in?
To get involved, email me at Sultan@equalitygainesville.com or join the phonebank at HRC by emailing Karl.Bach@hrc.org.
I hope to see you on the front.
Below are samples of the most recent mailers the opposition has sent out. This is what we are working against:
2 comments:
I think it is important to remind people that while "gender identity and expression" protects trans folks, it is also very important for the rest of the LGBT community.
Much of what identifies someone as queer to a straight person could be described as "gender expression". If a butch woman is fired from her job for presenting as butch (whether or not she is actually a lesbian), she is being persecuted for her gender identity.
Get involved to protect all of our community.
My following comment in an award-winning GLBT blog was the highest-rated in this thread: http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9193
This older straight guy has some good news: your suffering in the public arena is bearing fruit, as it did for blacks, only faster and with much less violence. See this Newsweek Poll: http://www.newsweek.com/id/172399
Ballot initiatives, with all their flaws, get issues on the table and relentlessly expose ignorance and prejudice. As the poll shows, everyone now knows gay people (growing up in the 50s and 60s I knew of none) and it's hard to hate your friends and cohorts for long.
Let me tell you my experience. Colorado in 1992 voted narrowly for Amendment 1 , banning gay rights laws like Boulder (where I live), Aspen and Denver have. (1 never went into effect, all courts ruling it unconstitutional.) Due to all the publicity, I examined my vague avoidance of gays, who I knew were all around Boulder. And i remembered where it came from: the first people I knew were gay had picked me up hitch-hiking around San Francisco when I was an 18-year old vagabond, and had their hands all over me, dumping me on the highway when i resisted. I realized few gays were like that, relaxed, and now enjoy hanging out with all kinds. (Living in a student area helps.)
One of my gay friends (since 1995) is now also my Congressman, Jared Polis, the first male elected to Congress as openly gay. Jared last month announced on radio that he will introduce a bill for BETTER and NATIONAL ballot initiatives later this year. Don't worry! Congress will protect their absolute federal legislative power from being shared with citizens, as they did in 1907 and 1977. But it will start another important and educational conversation. (Jared was the youngest to serve as Chair of the Colo. Board of Education.)
Jared is wicked smart, and calm as Obama. He's thought about this since before I met him in 1995, which was because we share an interest in government BY the people. More about him and this issue at http://spryeye.blogspot.com/20...
Of course the initiative process needs improvement, and solutions have been generally agreed for decades. But Legislators NEVER implement them, only making the process harder (some gays here tried to start an initiative to repeal Amend. 1 but realized they didn't have the $ and organization). You can see some of the accepted reforms needed at http://HealthyDemocracyOregon.org and http://cirwa.org and http://Vote.org
Ballot initiatives are the origin of most reforms, such as women's suffrage (passed in 13 states before Congress went along), direct election of Senators (4 states), publicly financed elections (passed by initiative in 6 of 7 states with them), medical marijuana ( in 9 of 13 states) and increasing minimum wages (in all 6 states that tried in 2006). See http://Vote.org/initiatives for more examples and references. The media have seized on the problem initiatives. They generally kiss up to politicians.
Switzerland has had national initiatives since 1891 and vote 3-7 times a year. One result by now is that the Swiss read more newspapers than any other country. Empowering people gives an incentive to educate oneself! You could complain that the Swiss didn't get women's suffrage until the '70s, but they then quickly passed their version of the Equal Rights Amendment, which still hasn't passed here.
Please recall that it was representative government which made sodomy and oral sex a criminal offense. Checks and balances are good. So most people want direct AND representative democracy. Except politicians, the people who buy them, and the lobbyists between.
"The cure for the ailments of democracy is more democracy." -John Dewey
"Participation, that's the salvation of the human race." -Pete Seeger.
I signed Pete up last year as an endorser of the National (ballot) Initiative for Democracy, led by famed former Senator Mike Gravel. YOU can participate at http://Vote.org
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