About the Human Rights Ordinance
originally published April 2000

Has everything already been said?
Some activists in the rights ordinance dialogue argue that any further discussion is redundant, that most people have heard what needs to be said. Others see a need for more education before citizens can vote knowledgeably.

Most of the straights with whom I have discussed these matters, for example, are unaware of the many voices within the gay community, ranging from the in-your-face Triangle Foundation through the moderate national legislation focus of the Human Rights Campaign to the prayerful proclamation of Affirmation, a group of Mormon gays.

The glossary
There are diverse interests within the gay community, even as they fight for the same goal -- civil rights, as gays see them. "GLBT" has become the acronym to cover them all: Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and  Transsexuals. (To which the Triangle Foundation seems to be adding "Intersexual.")

In what follows, I adopt ROAR's Rick Wallace's suggestion to use "straight" and "gay." Even as he and I agreed to use that terminology, we recognized that "straight" means "square" or "nerdy" to some, so it is possible for a person to be a "straight gay!"

The organizations
Locally, the contending organizations do not reveal membership numbers. One reason is that "movement groups" like those engaged in the rights debate usually have dozens, perhaps scores, of followers or supporters, rather than actual members, who can be called out to a rally or to a public hearing. Certainly that is true of most neighborhood associations and of my public battle against mandatory historic designation. So it is understandable that some wonder whether there's anyone else out there besides Rick Wallace or Gary Glenn or Frank Versagi.

Locally, we have:
Royal Oak Association for Rights (ROAR)
Royal Oak Citizens Voting "No" (CVNO)

Each of these groups has been offered a parallel column, below, to present its position. The parallel columns will be followed by my observations and comments.

Among "outsiders" engaged in the dialogue are:
American Family Association of Michigan (AFA)
Triangle Foundation

About the Human Rights Ordinance - My observations & comments

The City Commission's decision to place the rights issue on the ballot
We have here a case where the majority of the Commission did the right thing although some suspect for the wrong reason.

In a representative democracy, most public issues are decided with the passive will of the majority after debate by contending minorities or special interests. On those occasions when the majority makes it clear that it is unwilling to leave the decision to the contending minorities, then one way or another the active will of the majority comes into play.

Mayor Cowan properly recognized that the human rights issue is perceived by the public as being more important than an ordinance prohibiting a homeowner from letting grass grow longer than 8 inches.

Placing both the Rights ordinance and the Fire Department millage on the same ballot
Bad decision. I know there are those who are offended by the thought that Royal Oak voters can't distinguish between the two issues, but the Vote no on both advocates and the Vote yes twice people are currently dominating street talk.

Traditional wisdom, among school districts seeking a millage increase, for example, is to lower the volume on public dialogue, the assumption being that most people won't be paying attention and the concerned minority who want the millage to pass will all come out to vote.  Concern about May 15 is that conventional wisdom won't hold, that both the Fire Department millage and the Rights Ordinance are in jeopardy because (a) opponents will get out their no-vote or (2) a broader mass of citizens will come to polls primarily to vote no on the rights ordinance and will keep that frame of mind when they vote on the millage.

It has not been lost on voters of both persuasions that proponents of the rights ordinance fought desperately to keep the issue off the ballot.

The concern that a small voter turnout is unrepresentative of the community
Many who express this concern would willingly accept a vote on the Fire Department millage alone. Indeed, elected officials are often elected after small voter turnouts. Voicing this argument unfortunately lends weight to the suspicion that because only the gay community is vigorously campaigning for the rights ordinance, it must be a gay rights ordinance.

The use of "outsiders"
Defenders of the ordinance label as "outsiders" people like Gary Glenn and his American Family Association of Michigan. Opponents make the same complaint about participation by the Detroit-based Triangle Foundation and gay rights advocates from Lansing and Ann Arbor. To me, this is not an issue. To paraphrase one of the debaters, "Ideas know no geographical boundary.

The fears on each side
Despite what appears to some as an unceasing militancy by the gay community, there remains an almost palpable fear of coming out of the closet. By itself, that such a fear continues to exist seems to confirm the gay community=s contention that anti-gay bias remains real and threatening. A parallel fear on the straight side is of being labeled a bigot if one disagrees with the gay position on any public issue.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one=s perspective, a phenomenon I have labeled principled backlash is developing. Weary of what seems never-ending demands by groups who depict themselves as perennial victims, individuals who have until recently been quiet middle-of-the-roaders are challenging assertions that to oppose a group's specific proposal is to be anti-that group.

"Human" rights, "Civil" rights, "Gay" rights: which is it?
Stripped to its essence, the position of the gay community is that it is fighting for civil rights.

Stripped to its essence, the dominant element in opposition is religion-based and contends that since no other organized group is advocating the ordinance, it must be a fight for "special" rights, "gay" rights.

Both sides claim the label "human."

Read the ordinance
It's on the City's excellent website and is available at City Hall and at the Library.

Dedicated people tried to develop language which expresses the perceived need and lays out the penalty for violations. The proposed ordinance contains a mass of text devoted to exemptions--obviously in recognition of the fears of such clusters as religious organizations and small businesses.

Only you can decide how well the ordinance supports your pro- or anti- position.

The tone of the debate
This is a tough one, because it is almost impossible to keep the comments at an intellectual level which does not generate strong emotions.

All “movements” – abolition, women’s suffrage, feminism, civil rights – contained activists who thought persuasion is more effective in the long-term than confrontation and activists who preferred confrontation to persuasion.

Because so much of Royal Oak's public dialogue has been less than cordial--ranging from hissing and booing at City Hall to quiet sarcasm to political threats -- straights are surprised and unbelieving when they encounter something like the following on a gay website: We affirm that homosexuality and homosexual relationships can be consistent with and be supported by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

That language appears in the General Charter of Affirmation, a nationally active group of gay and lesbian Mormons.

In contrast are statements from such as the Triangle Foundation calling opposing spokesmen liars.

In between are groups like the Human Rights Campaign, which concentrates on national legislation and which among other things guards against what it sees as unreasonable application of freedom of religion when that freedom discriminates against gay rights.

Also in between, we have Royal Oak's own ROAR whose spokesman, Rick Wallace, does an excellent job of being offended, reasonable, sarcastic, or threatening apparently as he sees the need to adopt one tone or the other.

Religiously motivated individuals, believing that homosexual behavior is sinful, more often seem sad rather than righteous when talking about all this.

The glbt community, having endured so much harassment and discrimination, finds it impossible to believe that one can oppose the proposed ordinance and not be anti-gay.

The website of the American Family Association of Michigan (AFA), although quite clearly opposed to what it sees as special protective rights for gays, presents news articles, studies, legislative battles about which one can make one's own decision. As only one example, the reports about the fiasco when Traverse City seemed to adopt the "gay rainbow" as part of a tourist promotion are there to be read and interpreted.

I have commented that sitting in a room with religiously-focused anti-ordinance people I felt from them more sadness than anger. Disagree as one might, it would be hard to label them a hate group.

But their resource person, AFA's Gary Glenn, is repeatedly demonized as an extremist by some gays and straights.

How pervasive is anti-gay bias in Royal Oak?
The gay community's drive for the rights ordinance is largely based on its claim that there is widespread anti-gay bias in Royal Oak.

Straight Royal Oakers, seeing gays active in business, politics, churches, service clubs, and civic organizations, find that hard to believe.

The gay position was not helped when the Triangle Foundation claimed to have hundreds of documented cases of harassment and produced none. A lesbian served on a Citizens Police Oversight Committee which was unable to find evidence of police harassment of homosexuals after reviewing hundreds of citizen complaints about diverse matters.

For an awkward couple of weeks after one fairly clear incident involving an off-duty policeman, some prominent Royal Oak gays were slow to rally behind those who claim that there is widespread anti-gay bias.

The claim that such incidents prove widespread prejudice has not resonated with the public-at-large, which neither understands nor believes that gays continue to fear retribution if they "make a big deal" out of their individual experiences.

During the scores of conversations, faxes, and email exchanges which went into preparing this report, I encountered attitudes ranging from puzzlement through defensiveness to hostility.  In a few instances, among both gays and straights, the defensiveness became suspicion so intense that it struck me as paranoid. There are gays who adopt the god-like “If you are not with me, you are against me” pose. And there are straights who make it clear that they consider it “unclean” even to interview gays. 

The politics of it all: Democrat versus Republican?
At the national level, both the moderate Human Rights Campaign and the “progressive” (anti-gays would say “aggressive”) National Gay and Lesbian Task Force are unhappy with losing access to Clinton’s White House and having to deal with Bush.

At the local level, it is also true that the Democrat party is generally more gay-friendly than the Republican Party. Because of the huge moral/religious component in the dialogue, though, the political picture gets fuzzy. The majority of Catholics are Democrats, for example, but they consider homosexual behavior sinful. In Royal Oak, there is no doubt that the votes will cross party lines.

Whatever your position – yes, no, maybe – go to your favorite search engine, mine is google, and search for “gay rights” to get a sense of all the pro, con, and neutral information which is out there.

What do you think?

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