Remember when the Pharisees came to Jesus dragging a woman
(presumably kicking and screaming) whom they had allegedly caught in the act of
adultery (presumably because they were peeping) to ask him what they should do
with her, and he handed them a shovel, had them bury her up to her waist, then
threw the first stone?
Yea, me neither.
Oh, wait, now I remember, it was a gay man that Jesus had
the Pharisees bury up to his waist then threw out the first stone.
No, sorry, that was in Uganda. Or was it Russia?
One segment of HBO’s drama “The Newsroom”, opens with Jeff
Daniels’ character Will McAvoy starting his newscast with the story of Dorothy
Cooper, the 96 year old Chattanoogan initially denied her right to vote because
of the legislature in the “greatest state in the land of the free” passing a
$COTU$-approved voter suppression law.
The one that says you have to pay the poll tax of getting a government
issued picture ID to prevent voter fraud that never existed.
At the end of this report, McAvoy calls the Tea Party the
American Taliban. If you think that’s an
exaggeration, the financial backers of the law in Uganda prescribing the death
penalty for gays came from Tea Party members who want to create over there the
twisted version of the kingdom-of-God-on-Earth that they can’t create here, at
least for the moment.
This American Taliban not only sits in our governor’s seat, controls
both houses of our legislature, and makes up most of our Congressional
delegation, it has come to Chattanooga.
They recently tried, and failed, to recall one of our city commissioners
because he’s gay and not in the closet and they don’t like that. It didn’t matter that his district (St. Elmo
and Alton Park) is on the polar opposite side of the city from where the chief
financial and organizational backer of the recall effort lived (Tyner) and that
the effort amounted to local-scale carpetbagging.
Here I was, just beginning to start to feel a little bit
less ashamed to be from Tennessee after the effort in the legislature to make
it legal for businesses to discriminate against gays crashed and burned taxing
on the runway. Then the recall attempt
started.
On Thursday, 7 August, there will be a question at the end
of the ballot for voters in the City of Chattanooga to approve or disapprove the
“domestic partnership” ordinance passed by the City Council, which actually
contains two provisions.
The first extends benefits to domestic partners. True, this will benefit same-sex couples who
in this state, under the current all-Tea Party regime aren’t even allowed to
jump the broom, but it will also benefit couples in long-term relationships who
for any variety of reasons are not married.
The second provision extends protections against
discrimination to sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
I know what some might be thinking. Approval of domestic partnership benefits for
city workers is the first step in a very slippery slope toward the dreaded “gay
marriage”. Chill. This isn’t even about “civil unions”, the 21st
century equivalent of “jumping the
broom”. And do you really think our
Christian Supremacist-controlled legislature in Nashville is going to cease
marriage inequality until forced to do so (as it eventually will) by federal
courts?
Keep this in mind also, when the inevitable occurs here as
it has all over the country, in Virginia most recently: marriage was made for man, not man for
marriage.
On the question ‘Shall the City of Chattanooga's
"domestic partnership" ordinance
(Ordinance No. 12781) be adopted?’, vote ‘Yes’ and make our
city a little bit more hospitable place to live. Because of the double provisions, a vote of
‘No’ is necessarily a vote to make Chattanooga a sanctuary for official
discrimination, and we are better than that.
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