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Loading ...Kalamazoo passes – then repeals – gay rights ordinance
01.13.2009 2:34pm EST
(Kalamazoo, Michigan) Six weeks after passing an ordinance banning discrimination in housing and employment based on sexuality or sexual identity, city commissioners have voted to repeal the measure.
The unanimous move was not a change in position, but an attempt to halt a move by a socially conservative group to force the issue onto the ballot in the next election.When the ordinance was first presented, commissioners held two public meetings. No one showed up to oppose it.
But after it was passed, the American Family Association of Michigan began speaking out and collected about 1,600 signatures seeking the law’s repeal.
If at least 1,273 signatures were validated, the commission would have had to rescind the law or put it on the ballot.
The decision to repeal the ordinance avoided putting the issue to voters in the city of 7,200 people.
Unlike the first vote, the council chamber was packed for Monday night’s vote. Most of those present were opposed to the ordinance.
Mayor Bobby Hopewell supported the repeal but said that he hopes public opposition would change.
“My intent is that we will have an ordinance that will provide protections to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals,” Hopewell said.
Opponents said that if the measure is reintroduced they will begin a second initiative to have it repealed.
Whenever conservatives/Republicans/wingnuts say they only want to protect marriage, what they really mean is that they want all protections and rights stripped from homosexuals. Religion is a protected class, but religionists don’t want protection extended to others.
Right, brain drain. Michigan can take a flying leap with its antigay laws and people. There are like three progressive areas in the whole goddamn state. My only hope is that it suffers more economic hardship with its backward policies and people (upper peninsula screwholes are basically degenerates).
David…that was so well put in a l949…that 60 yrs ago folks, song.
ARTIST: Rodgers and Hammerstein
TITLE: You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught
[South Pacific]1949
You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear
You’ve got to be taught from year to year
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught
You’ve got to be carefully taught
This article validates why, after teaching university in Kalamazoo for 8 years (1967-1975), I fled the place and moved to San Francisco where, using my skills as a professor, I was able to build a wonderful writing career in gay publishing. Small American towns like this with their “bi-polar on-again and off-again politics” drive interesting people away. I loved my peers at Western Michigan University, but my then-lover and I knew we had no future in that town filled with the fundamentalist darkness of Protestant Calvinism which the university community itself could not beat back.
I suspect the comma in the population of Kalamazoo is misplaced. The population of the city of Kalamazoo is about 80,000. Kalamazoo is the home of the former Upjohn pharmaceutical company (absorbed by Pfizer), Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo College, and a significant paper industry. The area was formerly the world’s leading producer of celery, and bedding plants. It’s a mix of progressive (college town, educated people in pharm industry, significant support for the arts) and conservative (significant Dutch-American Christian Reformed Church population). On the progressive side, it’s the home of gay billionaire Jon Stryker’s Arcus Foundation.
Both the unanimous passage and the reversal do not surprise me. The political leadership has always been generally progressive. However, there is a yahoo contingent in the area, and what the article does not share is that AFA of Michigan can draw from and organize a wide swath of highly religious/conservative people in the “Dutch triangle” of Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, and Holland, Michigan.
These individuals are, in many cases, descendants of Dutch immigrants who fled the Netherlands in 19th century because they were part of a subculture that was disliked by the rest of the Netherlands for having extremely conservative-religious views (e.g., the immigrants thought dancing is a sin).
When they established the colony of Holland, Michigan in 1847, they decided it was godly to burn down the native American villages.
The conservative, mob-ready culture that remains in parts of western lower Michigan had a big part in the harassment of Gerry Crane, a music teacher in Byron Center, Michigan who was outed and ended up dying young of stress-related problems.
Finally: The name of the city of Kalamazoo was named after the Kalamazoo River, with “Kalamazoo” being a native American name.
????? !!!!
It is a shame that the people of Kalamazoo are so afraid of the religious right. That just goes to show that gay people have a smaller list of places where they can work and live in relative safety. The companies that are head quartered there should have spoken up but they did not. That also shows that the companies are not a LGBT friendly. So next time a recruiter ask tell them the company is not LGBT friendly and walk away.
I’m Getting tired of hearing of the AFA
I sure wish we could get our hands on the AFA’s membership lists…
@Rick.
You should look up the etymology of the word Kalamazoo. Hint: It comes from the Potawatomie.
As a gay man born and raised in Kalamazoo, I would greatly appreciate it if the author of this piece would change the 7,200 population number to the much more accurate 72,000 (according to the census bureau). It’s misleading compared to the number of signatures gathered.
Thank you.
Another town to add to my Most Bigoted Communities list.
AFA is gunning for a showdown in the supreme court over the rights of gays and Lesbians in america. Their intent? To remove us completely from ‘god’s Chosen City on the Hill.’
Guess what? We all should welcome their path. They are creating the road by which we will win our civil rights – for good.
And ere’s a personal Message for Don Wildmon: BITE ME YOU CLUSTER FUCKING PIG
Please keep in mind that these are the descendants of the people who named their town Kalamazoo. Enough said.
Spinless bastards.
You have to learn to hate. And, you must be taught to “un-hate”. Sometimes the teaching process is frustrating for us. But we shall overcome!