Memphis Sides With Anti-discrimination

Coverage by the news media about the passage of the anti-discrimination resolution by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners suggested to some that yesterday's vote was a Pyrrhic victory.

That's not true.

The shift from an ordinance to resolution was irrelevant in the application and enforcement. They both have the same force of law and the same impact on county policy, according to Shelby County Attorney Brian Kuhn.

And while the language in the resolution may mirror wording in the county personnel policies book, there's a big difference now.

There is the legislative intent, and clearly, the intent of the county commissioners was to apply anti-discrimination to people of different sexual orientations or identities. That means that someone filing a complaint can cite the intent of the board of commissioners in passing the resolution and a judge can rely on that intent to decide a case. Even more, the county attorney can be called as a witness about intent.

It's a clear victory, not the one we had wanted, but one nonetheless. More to the point, it was a tribute to democracy. Board of Commissioners Chair Deidre Malone guided through the controversial shoals with care and dignity to all sides of the debate, and her decision to substitute "thumbs up, thumbs down" as signs of support rather than raucous cheering and clapping was brilliant, bringing the kind of somber deliberation that the issue needed rather than the environment of a pep rally.

More to the point, except for Commissioner Wyatt Bunker, whose bellicose and demagogic rants have now almost destroyed any veneer of patience toward him on the board of commissioners, the comments during the hearing were thoughtful, heartfelt and sincere.

We admire anyone who's willing to stand before a packed room and tell their public officials their personal feelings, so we salute speakers from both sides. In particular, we found the one-minute comments by gay, lesbian and transsexuals to be moving and courageous. The cause, our passion for it, became real in their words and its importance of it became clear to their lives.

Finally, for those of us who cared deeply about this issue and what it says about our city, we want to commend the nine commissioners who made the decision to stand for fair play, equity and equal rights. (Remarkably, we didn't see their names in this morning's Commercial Appeal.) They are Commissioners Mike Ritz, J.W. Gibson, Henri Brooks, James Harvey, Sidney Chism, Joe Ford, Matt Kuhn, Steve Mulroy and Deidre Malone.

The breakdown of the vote was reported in yesterday's blogging by CA reporter Alex Doniach, who now works the digital desk for our daily. It was an outstanding introduction to the power of instant reporting by a professional newsperson, and we look forward to more from her.

Anti-Discrimination Vote Is Good Business

Memphis has no margin for error.

Because of it, decisions like the one today on a county anti-discrimination ordinance are much more than parochial controversies.

To the contrary, all that we do now is amplified and magnified, and a vote by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in favor of the fairness could become a much-needed positive national headline about our city.

At a time when tolerance is a selling point for cities, a vote against the ordinance would stake out our claim to intolerance and sanctimony. It will chill efforts to recruit young professionals and immigrants to Memphis, and make no mistake about it, the success of cities today are directly related to both.

We are at a seminal point in Memphis history. Everything matters.

Already, our economic development officials are hobbled by our reputation as a race-conscious city racked by conflict. Their sales pitches are shaken by crime statistics and corruption.

If you add to that the need to explain why guns are needed here in parks and restaurants and why discrimination would win in a vote by our county legislators, the Chamber is left to push a large boulder uphill with potential businesses.

We can only hope that our county elected officials do what is right. They will if they remember that they are public officials, not religious officials.

While their private religious beliefs are important in defining who they are, it should not define their votes today. In truth, their votes are about our future and the chance to break from past prejudices and to reject the brand of politics that would treat some of our citizens as “less than.”

It’s a historic vote today, and its ripples will reach far beyond our county borders and define us as a people. If we are to stand for anything as a city, surely it is for fairness, equal rights, and our common humanity. We can only hope that our county commissioners will do the same.

Here’s our earlier post about the economic consequences of today’s vote:

Memphis is like the actor looking for the chance to take a role against type.

We need something dramatic to send the message that we’re not your grandfather’s Memphis, that we’re not stuck in time and that we’re not a group of Bible-thumping, intolerant bigots.

That’s why the vote by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners on an ordinance promising non-discrimination against gays, lesbians and transgendered persons is a crucible for our community.

It’s not often that a legislative body has a chance to do something so right. Or so smart.

Starring In A New Role

That’s because the ordinance gives us a powerful opportunity to act against type and send the message that this old river city is shedding a reputation that we’ve had too long and that we now find repugnant.

In a city that has suffered from the bitter fruit of bigotry and discrimination, it would seem self-evident that we should jump at the opportunity to be on the side of fairness and equality. But despite the lessons that we should have learned, we remain a place where intolerance flourishes on occasion.

As a result, the new ordinance – which only applies to county employees and companies working for county government – is a welcome development, and Commissioner Steve Mulroy deserves a commendation for the political courage to advance it to a board of commissioners’ agenda, but we’re sure that some commissioners will instead opt to vote for discrimination, but such is the lingering brand of prejudice cloaked in the flag and Scripture verses to hide its ugliness.

Despite this, we’re hopeful that a majority of our county commissioners will understand the importance of this moment in history for our community. You see, while voting for this ordinance is morally right, it is also economically wise.

That’s because tolerance is no longer a virtue. It’s essential to compete in the knowledge economy.

Prima Facie Case

Here’s how the dots connect: the presence of talent in a city today determines its economic success, the percentage of 25-34 year-olds in a city is the key determinant and these crucial members of the workforce are looking to work and live in cities that are clean, green and safe and that are places where they can live the life they want to live.

In other words, they want a city open enough to accept them as they are, welcoming enough to offer ways to plug in with others like themselves and accepting enough to reserve their judgments.

In this way, gays are the canaries in the coal mine. It’s been said that cities with significant gay populations are more successful, but it’s not just because gays have been key to neighborhood revitalization, development of the cultural and arts scene and to a city’s vibrancy.

More to the point, if a city is welcoming to gays, it is prima facie evidence that it is diverse and welcoming to everyone, and it is the presence of that level of tolerance and acceptance of others that is a magnet for talented young people looking for place where they can live the life they want to live.

Undervalued Tolerance

Tolerance as a selling point is vastly underrated and misunderstood in Memphis. But more and more, it is becoming a priority for cities that understand how it helps to attract and retain knowledge economy workers.

In our work in developing talent strategies for a half dozen large cities, it’s a common and compelling theme. It’s not simply something that comes up as a footnote in interviews, focus groups and research. To the contrary, it is uppermost in the minds of the young, college-educated people as they decide where they will work and live. It’s not that they are asking if cities have a vibrant gay culture. Rather, they ask about ways in which the city welcomes their opinions and accepts their choices, and there is no more telling indicator that the presence and acceptance of gays and lesbians.

It is in this way that the gay population is an indicator of the fundamental character of a city and serves as a foreshadowing to other indicators of economic success. To prove the point, Memphis’ rank at the bottom of the list of cities with gay populations is also where it is ranked on variety of other economic measurements.

The need for the ordinance is a sad commentary on the discrimination and bigotry still directed at gays, lesbians and transgendered people in our nation, but already, cities that are seen as open-minded are on the right side of the great national migration of young, talented workers.

A Better Image

Memphis and Shelby County are way on the wrong side of this migration. Since 1990, Shelby County has lost 33,300 25-34 year-olds, and we’ve already lost more of this group in the first six years of this century than in all of the 1990s. We’re in the process of determining how many of these had college degrees, but based on the preliminary numbers, it’s doesn’t look promising.

It’s worth remembering that two out of three of these people – the gold standard for the knowledge-based economy – pick where they live before they pick where they work, and they say that they want to live in a city where each can “live the life that I want to lead.”

Here’s the thing about the Board of Commissioners’ vote. If it fails, it’s a devastating blow to our already faltering national image through a toxic display of intolerance that will undoubtedly garner national media coverage. The good news is that if it passes, it will garner even more.

Maybe, before it’s over, we can actually attract some national attention for our ability to transcend our differences and abandon the bomb-throwing judgmental behavior that defines us too much nationally.

Setting The Future Context

As we said, voting for the county ordinance is much more than simple decency (although that would be reason enough). Rather, it’s an exercise in economic necessity.

In a world of multitudinous ethnic groups, an assortment of religions, different sexual orientations and collections of cultures, a city that can’t respect its own differences can never connect - or compete - in a world whose overwhelming characteristic is its diversity.

Or put another way, a city that is open, inclusive and tolerant has the best chance of competing for the kinds of jobs – and workers - that matter most in a knowledge-based economy.

WWJD? Surely Not Discriminate Or Hate

It’s tempting to dismiss Shelby County Commissioner Wyatt Bunker and his fundamentalist preacher friends as merely the latest incarnation of the flat earth society.

Surely, it’s hard to identify a group in recent memory that has so cavalierly dismissed scientific evidence, that has so conveniently picked and chosen selective Bible verses, that has calculatedly misstated our national history and that has so graphically missed the lessons of the civil rights movement.

What would Jesus do?

What would Dr. King do?

Standing Up For Prejudice

We imagine that they both would have stayed as far away from today’s pro-discrimination demonstration by Mr. Bunker and his colleagues outside the Shelby County Administration Building, where our community’s first anti-discrimination resolution protecting gays, lesbians and transgendered persons will be voted on in coming days.

In fact, if an unmarried man in his early 30’s who spent most of his time living and traveling with 12 other men talking about love had shown up outside the county building, he probably would have been condemned rather than worshiped by the gaggle of religious demagogues purporting to represent the essence of his gospel.

Here, we believe that when these anti-gay people arrive at the Pearly Gates, God will be there with two questions: “What were you thinking? How in my name did you get what you thought out of anything I said?”

Of course, Commissioner Bunker and the others would immediately say that we have no idea what God is thinking and that we are misrepresenting His teachings. That too is our response to them.

No Joking Matter

There’s nothing quite as disconcerting as the spectacle of Christians when they are so defiantly and proudly unChristlike. If those without sin should cast the first stone, we seem blessed in Memphis with an awful lot of people with a firm sense of their own perfection.

In Shelby County Government, there’s a popular joke punctuated with a punch line featuring a closet, Commissioner Bunker and former evangelical leader Ted Haggard. But in truth, this isn’t funny. It isn’t entertaining. It’s simply appalling, especially when members of the majority race of the majority religion should have so little regard for the foundational principles of our society – fair play, equality, brotherhood and tolerance.

In a way, however, we owe these misguided African-American ministers our thanks for their honesty about their gay bigotry (which isn't unlike the anti-Semitic bigotry shown to Congressman Steve Cohen), because for just a few minutes listening to them all of us got a sense of why most African-American gays and lesbians live their lives deeply in the recesses of the closet.

It’s absolutely impossible to imagine a scenario where Dr. King would have stood with his fellow Baptists on this issue. We can only imagine that he would have updated one of his many statements about the cancer of prejudice to include gays, lesbians and transgendered people. “Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at (gays) in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them. Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”

God Told Us Something Totally Different

Just as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson mistakenly believed that God takes sides in presidential elections, many fundamentalist ministers of both races mistakenly believe that He takes sides in the political wars. To most of us who become spectators to these kinds of events and the regular pronouncements about “family values,” we end up feeling like our faith is being stolen and it’s time to reclaim it.

As a result of the kind of behavior that took place outside the county building downtown and the anti-gay vitriol spewed by these Christian leaders, there is a misperception by the news media that somehow these views represent Christianity and that these people are typical of our faith. The truth is they are uniformly 180 degrees from what our faith means to us.

That’s the striking irony of this discussion. Commissioner Bunker says he opposes the anti-discrimination ordinance because of his religious beliefs, because of his sense of morality and because of his commitment to a life of faith.

Funny, those are the same reasons that lead us to support the ordinance.

What Gives Him The Right?

That in a nutshell sums up the danger of injecting private religious viewpoints into public policies that govern all of us. After all, why should Commissioner Bunker’s definition of sin trump ours? To him, homosexuality is a sin. To us, intolerance and sanctimony are. Why does he think his version of Christianity trumps those of us whose Christianity leads us to a totally different destination in our lives, most notably away from those who see their religion as a hammer to bludgeon anyone who is different?

As a school board member, Mr. Bunker thought that stickers should be put on biology books saying that evolution is only a theory and creationism deserves equal stature. That lack of respect for science and lack of basic understanding of scientific theory surfaces yet again in the midst of this debate as he picks up the fundamentalist refrain that homosexuality is a choice.

We won’t even dignify it with the obvious answer, but here’s the question: even if it is a choice, why does Commissioner Bunker believe that it gives him the right to discriminate against other Americans?

We’d like to think that the essence of Christianity (not to mention our common humanity) calls on us to support equal treatment and love for all of God’s children, regardless of their private lives and the legal options they choose for themselves.

Power Politics And Rules As Religion

As George Lakoff points out in his book, Moral Politics, the Religious Right is based on a “strict father” metaphor of morality, in which a wise father (whether church or political leader) sets the rules and the children (the people) do what they are told. These black-and-white moral values exist, in the father’s view, not just to help people behave morally but to maintain social order and discipline.

Adherence to these rules implies the legitimacy of the “father,” who often is treated or sees himself as speaking for God. As a result, the people who move away from that established order are doing much more than misbehaving or acting immorally. More to the point, they are threatening the rules by showing that other paths are possible and calling into question the “father’s” authority.

We don’t do the theory justice here, but clearly, Commissioner Bunker and his preacher supporters are so invested in this father-child view of the world that even an ordinance outlawing discrimination becomes a threat. It’s too bad, because in the end, anytime we strengthen the rights of every one in society, we strengthen our own. In fact, there’s no greater lesson from the civil rights movement than that.