“Kids try Cuss Lite: All the cool, less risk”
Seriously, I read better content on this consistently on blogs. I’ve written more compelling content than this on my blog. WTF?
God, we live in blandville, USA.
When an amendment to the city’s Human Rights Ordinance was proposed to the city council last year which would introduce protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, the council was bombarded with e-mail from the religious right — most of it from outside of Indianapolis, and some of it from even outside the state of Indiana (generated by a campaign from the extreme religious right).
Many councilors changed their votes to dismiss the legislation, only learning later that the mail against the ordinance was not from their constituents at all.
As you can tell from this Sunday’s Indy Star article, the councilors have figured it out, especially since they’ve sat down and had meals with Indianapolis residents who would be protected by this legislation.
All last week and again this morning, there have been numerous helicopters over downtown Indianapolis. Normally there are some; the news helicopters fly over in the morning doing traffic reports, and the lifeline helicopter takes off and lands on the roof of Methodist Hospital. We’re used to hearing helicopters.
This is beyond that, though. They’re flying over not just in the morning, but all day long, and they don’t appear to be the news or hospital copters, which are mostly white with colored logos on the sides. These are darker colors with no real logos that I can see through binoculars.
I’m getting my tinfoil hat now.
Coming soon to a neighborhood near me… a Charter high school focusing on the classic Liberal Arts education. Awesome.
Quick — what’s the difference between civil liberties and civil rights?
If you aren’t quite certain, you have a lot of company. The distinction is lost on most of my students, and — far more troubling — on a good number of city and state legislators.
Civil liberties are rights that individuals have against government. Citizens of the new United States refused to ratify the Constitution unless a Bill of Rights was added, specifically protecting them against official infringements of their “inalienable rights.” Among our civil liberties are the right to free expression, the right to worship (or not) as we choose, and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
After the civil war, the 14th Amendment added the Equal Protection Clause, prohibiting government from treating equally situated citizens unequally. The 14th Amendment also applied the provisions of the Bill of Rights to all levels of government — not just the federal government, as was originally the case, but also to state and local government agencies.
Only the government can violate your civil liberties.
Civil rights took a lot longer and were a lot more controversial.
It was 1964 before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. Civil rights laws protect people against private acts of discrimination — discrimination in employment, in housing or education. The original Civil Rights Act applied to businesses engaged in interstate commerce — businesses that held themselves out to be “public accommodations” but were, shall we say, “selective” about which segments of the public they were willing to accommodate.
State and local civil rights acts followed. Civil rights laws generally include a list of characteristics that cannot be used to favor some people over others: race, religion, gender and so forth.
There was a lot of resistance to civil rights laws, and there is still a widespread, if covert, attitude of “What business does government have telling me I can’t discriminate?” That resentment has redoubled as new groups have lobbied for protection.
The fiercest resistance has come from people opposed to extending civil rights to gays and lesbians. Those opponents have taken advantage of the widespread confusion of civil liberties with civil rights to argue that the 14th Amendment already protects gays, so amending Indiana’s civil rights law, or Marion County’s Human Relations Ordinance is unnecessary. (After all, that’s easier than taking a public position that “those people” don’t deserve equal civil rights.)I remember the astonishment of one of my African-American students when she realized that, in Indiana, people can be fired just because they are gay.
“There is still a lot of discrimination against black people,” she said, “but at least there are laws on the books! They may not always work, but they’re something.”
A few months ago, the Indianapolis City-County Council failed to pass a measure that would have made discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation a violation of the city’s Human Relations Ordinance. Several of those voting against it said it was “unnecessary” because the 14th Amendment already protected gays.
They knew better.
Stephanie and I went to the State Fair on Saturday: see the pictures on IndyScribe.
Also, I just recently found Godwin’s Law explained on Wikipedia, which is very cool. I thought it came into being long before 1991, though. I remember it being referred to when I was on USENET back in college, which would have been 1986-1990. And from there, I discovered another cool Wikipedia entry: adages named after people.
My neighborhood will be having its annual garage sale next Saturday, August 27, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and I and many other people will be participating. There will be maps of the neighborhood at each participating house.
Herron-Morton Place is downtown east of Meridian; the boundaries are East 16th Street on the south, East 22nd Street on the north, Pennsylvania Street on the west, and Central Avenue on the east.
UPDATE: The sale is next weekend — August 27 — not this weekend, as I previously stated. I cannot seem to keep the calendar in my head for anything.
Way back in March of 1998, I wrote a long article/essay/diatribe on the subject of “outing” people. Reading it today, I realize it wasn’t as much about “outing” people as it was about complaining about prevalence of opportunistic gay people who stay in the closet to prey on people who are out while avoiding the stigma of being gay, rather than about the action of “outing” itself.
The subject of “outing” has come up recently in the local gay community, surrounding the issue of Prop 68, the city’s human rights ordinance. It seems that there is some evidence that one of the city-county councilors who voted against the measure is gay or has a history of gay behavior, and none-other than State Rep. Julia Carson herself threatened publicly to “out” him as a hypocrite because he didn’t support it.
The suggestion has caused huge debate within the gay community; see bilerico.com for some of the discussion on the issue. It even has the religious right’s panties in a bunch; Micah Clark from the AFA sent out an email to his kool-aid drinkers where he was all in a tizzy about it.
Here’s my take: If you truly believe there’s nothing wrong with being gay, then revealing someone as gay shouldn’t be wrong, should it? If there’s nothing wrong with me having blue eyes, then why would you be hesitant/bothered/ashamed to talk about my blue eyes with other people? You don’t see black people running around worried about whether to reveal other black people as black, do you?
I thought not.
I recently posted a comment to an “blog” post on the Indy Star’s INTouch page, and they have refused to post the comment to the entry in question. Here’s the entry by Kevin Bain, regarding “attacking” Christians.
Unfortunately, I didn’t save a personal copy of my comments, but I promise, I was very tame. I basically pointed out that what he’s calling a “straw man” isn’t one at all, since there are actual Christians, like Eric Miller and Micah Clark who accurately fit his three point definition listed in the first paragraph.
I also pointed out that his “working definition” of Christianity is terrifying to those of us who aren’t Christians, because it indicated that he feels his religion should have dominion over “pretenders” like goverment, and by implication, over me. That doesn’t leave much room for my religion, does it?
They claim that they only moderate comments to prevent spamming, but my comment didn’t make it to the article. Since my comment didn’t clear inspection, feel free to post yourself if you get a chance.
Interestingly enough, the don’t seem to censor wildly reactionary right wing comments posted to some of the blog entries.
In the past couple of months, I’ve run across a person who was planning to dump a cat outdoors at a known cat colony, thinking it would “survive and fit in there” and a family that no longer wants their perfectly behaved, affectionate cat, because they have a child and “don’t have enough time to pet it.”
Meanwhile people who rescue and try to help abandoned pets are at their wits end because of folks like these.
How is it that so many people have so little common sense? And how is it that this city has so many irresponsible pet owners? Indianapolis is at the top of the list of cities with a huge abandoned or unwanted pet problem, and that isn’t factoring in cats and dogs born in the wild, just ones that are kicked out of homes by their owners. Bring home these rubber ducky isopods if you love exotic pets.
People keep blaming the Humane Society for their high euthanasia rates, but it’s irresponsible pet owners that are to blame. Please people. Spay or neuter your animals. Train them to behave, and have a bit of patience and affection towards them.