The arguments for Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act arguments are strikingly similar to the arguments for racial discrimination some 50 years ago. Then, the nation debated whether it was right and just for someone to be barred from service at a lunch counter because of the color of his or her skin. Astonishingly, here we are again, having to combat arguments that it should be legal to bar someone from the same lunch counter based on the gender of the person they love.
Let’s tell it like it is: The so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act is the Jim Crow legislation of our time. Today, African-Americans are protected from discrimination of this kind – and that’s exactly how it should be in the Land of the Free. Alas, LGBT people enjoy no such protection under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, but at least always had trusted their home state legislatures and governors not to turn on them.
I take this personally because, as of Thursday, my family and I are not protected from discrimination when we visit family and friends in the state of my birth. This is real and wrong and grieves me deeply.
The passage of this discriminatory legislation brings back painful memories in Cincinnati of a charter amendment, commonly known as Article XII, that prohibited City Council from passing any ordinance that would have granted LGBT people equal protection under the law. It was a sorry moment in our city’s history – one in which an entire class of people was singled out for non-protection.
The city’s image was damaged throughout the country, and the economic impact was significant, with conventions being canceled and prestigious companies choosing not to do business in our city. I was a resident of Cincinnati at the time, and the passage of the charter amendment created a cloud over the city that ultimately contributed to my decision to leave. I wasn’t alone. Many people I knew moved to cities that they viewed as more welcoming: Chicago, Atlanta, San Diego. I moved to New York.
Fortunately, the citizens of Cincinnati rediscovered their essential instinct for justice and repealed Article XII, and I moved back as soon as I could. Cincinnati now is seen as one of those welcoming cities – one dramatically different from what it was. Did we fall into the dream that the rest of American had taken that journey with us? If so, we’ve had a rude awakening.
Now I have to question where in Indiana my family can go without discrimination. Can we visit the Indianapolis Children’s Museum? Will a hotel turn us away? Would we be allowed to buy a cupcake at a bakery? If you can, put yourself in our shoes for a moment you can see how unsettling and infuriating this situation is.
Maybe the good people of Indiana will come back to their senses as the good people of Cincinnati did some years ago. While they’re pondering what they’ve done, we Cincinnatians should contact the convention organizers who have announced they will pull their meetings out of Indiana and let them know that they are heartily welcome in the Queen City.
We should work with the business leaders who have decided not to expand in Indiana and let them know that they are very welcome to locate in our Ohio and Kentucky counties. And we certainly should let all the talented Hoosiers who happen to be LGBT know that they are welcome to live, work, love and play here.
Indiana may have lost its sense of justice and good sense for a while but the rest of us understand the human and business cases for diversity and inclusion. Let’s cash in on the progress we’ve made in Cincinnati and elevate our status as a city that welcomes diversity of all kinds and declines to discriminate against any of our citizens.
