Taunting the taunters; or is intimidation really the all-American way of life?

By now, I’m sure everyone inclined to care (and probably even many who don’t care) have seen the photo of that smug teenager feeling compelled to taunt an American Indian activist who was partaking in a march to celebrate his culture.

Will this boy's image from Saturday become as well-known … 

The event was the Indigenous Peoples’ March that took place in Washington, D.C., and we’ve now seen the group of protesters from Catholic schools who felt compelled to have their anti-abortion protest at the same time and place.

WHICH RESULTED IN the confrontation that included students getting in the faces of those people wishing to celebrate their American Indian cultures. There even are the pictures of teens doing that silly Atlanta Braves-like gesture with the tomahawk – as though they are clubbing the activists and mocking their culture as well.

But the image that most will stick in the public mindset will be that of the kid wearing one of those Donald Trump-style red caps with his “Make America Great Again” slogan. Even though the way we’d really make this country great again would be to have the indigenous activists put a boot or two up the behind of every single one of these snot-nosed brats.

What bothers me the most is the fact that these kids claimed they were expressing themselves (which they have a right to do in our society) as some sort of religious gesture.

The Catholic school these kids attend, to their credit, has already denounced their conduct and hinted they could face some sort of official discipline for their garish behavior.

… as that of this teenage girl from mid-1950s Little Rock, Ark.?

BUT I SUSPECT these kids are going to grow up into adults who, on some level, will take great pride in the fact that they acted like a batch of twits. Perhaps on some level like all those Southern whites of some 60 years ago who protested against all those black Civil Rights activists.

Who may well have held their greatest contempt for those white people who sided with the blacks in their desire for equal treatment!

As much as many of us would like to think this Age of Trump is just a silly fad that will die off once the man is removed (one way or another) from the presidency, these kids are likely to grow into adulthood carrying on such attitudes.

Intimidation was the intent, both now and back then

They may well try to pass them along to future generations. They certainly are going to resent anybody who tries to remember them as behaving like a batch of brats this past weekend.

IT WAS TRULY an embarrassing sight for us to have to see such tacky behavior in public. Even though we’re officially going to regard it as such, there also will be many who will want to defend it.

As though they think they have a right to harass and intimidate those in our society who aren’t exactly like themselves.

So yes, I can comprehend that when it comes to racial and ethnic relations, things are better now than they were a half-century or so ago because we no longer have the letter of the law reinforcing the attitudes of the more ignorant amongst us.

Does this man who protested in Boston against school busing think using the flag as a weapon makes him a "real" American?

But there are those individuals determined to cling to the past, and take it on as some sort of crusade to restore the narrow-minded ideals of the past. Which may well be the most contemptable aspect of the Age of Trump – his existence gives those people aid and comfort to support their ignorance.

PARTICULARLY SINCE THE kids in question come from a Catholic school in Kentucky – meaning these kids made a special trip to the national capital and felt compelled to express their xenophobic hang-ups.

I guess they’ve never heard that old cliché about remaining silent and be thought of as a fool, rather than speaking out and removing all doubt. Then again, they probably think Mark Twain was just a guy who wrote a boring book they’re forced to read in English classes.

Which also makes me suspect they’re going to be inclined to think of Monday’s Martin Luther King, Jr., birthday commemorations as something that brings them mixed feelings.

They get an extra day out of school, but they’re not about to do anything meaningful to acknowledge their day off!

  -30-

What would we have thought some half century ago with building lit for MLK?

I happened to be in downtown Chicago on Friday night, along Michigan Avenue to be exact, when I noticed the downtown buildings that like to light themselves up for special occasions were at it again.

Celebrating King memory similar to a sports victory. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

For amongst the many colors intended to give the city skyline a touch of whimsy was the Blue Cross/Blue Shield building at 300 E. Randolph St., which was lit up in blue and white with giant several-stories high letters spelling out “MLK.”

SURE ENOUGH, IT was the beginning of the weekend in which we commemorate Monday the birthday anniversary of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who come April of next year will have been gone from our midst for half a century.

King is one of those names that has ceased to be a living, breathing human being. He’s just an image that people use for whatever purpose they choose – rather than for anything King may have said or done during his lifetime. I encountered one news story published this weekend whose point was to say that King as a child was an ordinary person, and something of a prankster.

I once heard an activist say that King had become nothing more than a marketing image. It wouldn’t shock this activist to someday see someone try to sell blue jeans with the King image.

Truly gaudy. But not out of line with the way some marketing campaigns for various products have gone.

SO WHAT SHOULD it mean to us that Monday is King Day across this nation – even though in some Southern states they try to rebrand it as Great Americans Day with people like Robert E. Lee being included in that list?

 

KING: More than just a hedshot

It’s not a surprise that some people would feel that way. Just look at our recent presidential election that some amongst us will never get over or accept.

For some, that idea of “Make America Great Again” may very well include the idea of downplaying this day because they’d rather not recall the images of half a century ago when King felt compelled to challenge the segregated way of life that existed in part of the country – and that many in the rest of the country was more than willing to accept as just the way things were.

We in Chicago can’t really claim to have been any better. We were, after all, the place where King, himself, got hit in the head with a brick (the Marquette Park rallies).

King drawing a crowd to Soldier Field for a 1966 housing rally. Photograph provided by Richard J. Daley collection at University of Illinois-Chicago.

AND WHERE MANY of us have parents and/or grandparents who fondly remember the image of then-Mayor Richard J. Daley standing up to King and his demands for equal housing for all. As though King's political defeat in Chicago was something to be proud of.

Unpleasant images. We’d rather not have to be reminded, if at all possible. And it’s definitely not something that many of us want to be called out on.

Just like many of those who a couple of months ago cast their votes for Donald J. Trump’s presidential bid. They either support the racial hang-ups of the most extreme Trump-ites, or they’re willing to be on the same side as those people and certainly don’t want anyone criticizing them for it.

This King Day is one coming at a time when some people might have fantasies about turning back the clock to an era when certain types of people were supposed to know their place (which was secondary).

NOT THAT I think we’re going back that far. But it is something that ought to be contemplated by all of us. Lest we wind up forgetting the significance of what happened some 51 years ago when King himself spoke in Grant Park – located just south of the building now lit up with his initials.

 

A tragic day for many

I can’t help but wonder what King himself would have thought of the image of one of the giant Chicago skyscrapers that overlook where he spoke bearing a tribute to himself.

But then again, keep in mind those same buildings light themselves up for just about any occasion – most recently back in November when the Chicago Cubs managed to win the World Series.

I also don’t doubt that for some people, the Cubs’ victory (the first in 108 years) was something far more significant than anything King ever said or did. It’s no wonder Trump won!

  -30-

Do we have right to goof off on the job?

One summer back when I was in college, I had a job with the Cook County recorder of deeds office where I still remember the first day of work – where my superior gave us the lecture about goofing off and sleeping while on the job.

Not because of any concern about the peoples’ work being done. But because the office had recently been the subject of one of Walter Jacobson’s “Perspectives” reports that showed workers goofing off.

THE OFFICE COULDN’T afford to have any more public embarrassments. That is what I’m sure is being felt these days by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District – which is being sued by two of its former police officers who are upset that they were fired for a series of infractions.

Including being caught talking about goofing off on the job in ways that included napping and drinking.

Yet we have two former police officers who have the nerve to take their case to the courts, where they’re not only suing their former employer, but also the Illinois State Police and Motorola.

They want someone to pay, and pay big, for the fact that their behavior on the job was less than professional and that they got caught!

IN THIS PARTICULAR case, the two officers were showing a new recruit around the water district’s plant in suburban Stickney and they were telling him about the secret place where they kept a refrigerator stocked with beer so they could drink, or nap, while on duty.

They also used racial slurs to describe at least one of their colleagues.

The reason we know about this conversation is because that the new recruit’s radio microphone was activated, and their conversation was not only picked up, it was broadcast over a frequency used by the Illinois State Police.

Hence, according to the lawsuit now pending in the U.S. District Court, the rights of the police officers were violated by the water district when they were fired for goofing off on the job and using racial slurs.

BUT THE STATE police also violated their rights by broadcasting their message to everyone in the area with a police scanner set to the right frequency, and also by Motorola – which came up with defective equipment with open microphone problems.

As pointed out in the lawsuit, there were at least 21 incidents in December 2014 that officials did nothing to fix. Which resulted in these particular officers being denied their right to drink on the job, as well as make insulting comments about whomever they wanted to.

Which is the most pathetic part of this whole affair – someone wants to take absurd behavior and try to turn it into their right. As though they’re somehow doing us a favor by drinking on the job and going about spewing slurs about everybody who isn’t exactly like themselves.

It comes across as a bastardization of the rights that we are supposed to have in this free society – if anything, it winds up providing the justification for those in totalitarian societies to mock us as being hypocritical.

PERHAPS IT’S BECAUSE I keep in mind any time I’m knowingly around recording equipment to watch what I say. And law enforcement officers who openly wear such devices ought to know this better more than anyone else.

Unless they’re the type of officers who expect such technology to be used against other people, and not themselves. Which sounds like the real violation of anyone’s rights.

I just wish I had known of this line of logic, because then I could have told my supervisor in Cook County government where to stuff it. It was my right to nap or goof off, regardless of what Channel 2 news cameras might pick up.

Although, somehow, I suspect that attitude would have got me fired long before any attempt to catch a little sleep off in the distant corner of the office where we were out of sight of the bosses.

  -30-

EXTRA: Could White Sox get bogged down in N. Carolina political squabble?

How long could it be before the Chicago White Sox find themselves caught up in a political squabble concerning North Carolina’s passage of state laws perceived as openly hostile toward the gay community?

Future Bulls star and White Sox prospect was a Tar Heel

Several government officials across the country have imposed travel bans restricting their ability to do business with North Carolina companies, while Mayor Rahm Emanuel has publicly said he’d like to urge a Carolina-based business to relocate to Chicago – IF they wish to escape the restrictions of the state’s effort to outlaw legal protections for gay people.

WHAT DOES ANY of this have to do with the White Sox?

Just that the Sout’ Side ball club has so much of its minor league operations based in the Carolinas. Their top-level affiliate is the Charlotte Knights, while they also deliberately located two lower-level affiliates in Winston-Salem and Kannapolis.

The idea being that a Chicago team official having to do business with the minor league teams can catch a simple slight from O’Hare International Airport to Charlotte, then rent a car for a short drive to one of the other cities if need be.

Have the White Sox been dragged into a potential political brawl because of the cities they use to try to develop young ballplayers into major leaguers?

COMMON SENSE OUGHT to say “No.” Then again, common sense rarely is used in such situations. It would be too easy to drag the team into the situation to try to score political points.

Sox' AAA, ...

After all, common sense ought to have kept North Carolina from taking on this issue to begin with.

But the idea that some places were passing local laws specifying that gay people had the same legal protections and rights as everybody else strikes some individuals as too radical a concept to tolerate.

Just like those people who want to fight against local laws concerning gun ownership and try to pass laws mandating that everybody own a firearm!

... high A, and ...

WHAT MAKES THIS truly pathetic is the fact that North Carolina officials wound up including provisions regarding restrooms in public schools (presumably, private schools already are segregating). As in transgender people would be told their thoughts about who they are is wrong, and they have to urinate and defecate where they’re told.

... low A affiliates.

No matter how squeamish and uncomfortable it might make them. Honestly, for all the talk about perverts hanging around bathrooms, I’d think the bigger threat is to some clown who thinks he’s acting in Jesus’ name in sticking some “guy’s” head in a toilet bowl because he doesn’t act “manly enough.”

Particularly if it winds up happening in one of the ballparks. Which would truly be a disgraceful incident that would wind up drawing negative attention to the Chicago team indirectly.

Now I don’t know what the White Sox would, or could, do if this situation were to wind up causing problems. I’d like to think that people attending ballgames do so to escape nonsense like this.

Alabama could become point of common sense for White Sox

BUT ALL TOO often, the ideologues of our society insist on bringing their nonsense to places where is truly doesn’t belong.

Although perhaps it would be nice if at least one White Sox affiliate were to be somewhere in the Midwest within range of Chicago (like the Chicago Cubs who have minor league affiliates in Des Moines, Iowa, and South Bend, Ind. – both of which, ironically enough, were once White Sox affiliates).

I don’t know that such a move is in the works. Then again, perhaps we’ll have to see if incidents arise once the Knights’ Opening Day is held April 14.

It would be nice if calmer and cooler heads could prevail.

  -30-

Evolution flows; but are we there yet?

I recall a conversation I once had with a veteran reporter-type back when I was an Illinois Statehouse reporter back in the mid-1990s with regards to the way political people handled themselves whenever issues related to sexual orientation came up.

This conversation took place back at a time when Republicans had complete control of state government (both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s office) and were willing to use it to bring up bills that were considered offensive to gay rights activists.

HECK, IT WAS an era when GOP officials felt compelled to use their influence to make sure that people understood that marriage between homosexual couples could NEVER be considered legitimate. Even though no one ever thought that Illinois law permitted it beforehand.

But my elder colleague – who has since gone on to mentor many new generations of reporters – said he noticed the difference from his early days at the Illinois Statehouse (back when the governor was named “Ogilvie”) whenever such issues came up.

Back then, he said, the opposition to anything considered sympathetic to gay people was vocal. He recalled how legislators felt compelled to speak out in as graphic of terms as they could.

Talk of how gay people “consumed human waste” and did all other sorts of perverted acts came out. Like it was a political battle to see who could be the most disgusting with their rhetoric.

BY THE TIME I was a reporter-type covering the daily activity of a Legislature, the tone had shifted.

DURKIN: A rare "yes" GOP vote?

There was still opposition. I’m sure there were some of the General Assembly members who really thought there was some act of perversion taking place.

But it always seemed that the only political people who felt compelled to speak were the ones who were determined to put themselves on the record as being in favor of issues of concern for gay people.

Which would make writing up stories about those legislative actions odd. Because you’d have stories filled up with quotations from political people who supported an issue that the majority opposed.

IT WOULD BECOME difficult to find people willing to speak out against the issue with anything other than the most dangerous action they could take – their vote.

DeLUCA: A rare Chicago-area "no."

Their majority of people willing to vote “no” so as to assuage those individuals in our society who are determined to think of anyone who isn’t exactly like themselves as being less than human.

Those people still remain. They’re more outspoken than ever. But it would seem the political evolution continues.

For I couldn’t help but notice an Associated Press dispatch on Tuesday from when the Illinois House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill that would outlaw programs that claim to be a medical way of converting people away from homosexuality.

AS THOUGH sexual orientation and identity were some sort of disease that could be eradicated from people if they would just go out and get cured. California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia already have such laws in place.

The bill actually got seven Republican legislators to vote “yes,” including House Minority Leader James Durkin of Western Springs. Also, there were six Democrats, including one local legislator (Anthony DeLuca of Chicago Heights) who voted “no.” So it’s not purely urban versus rural people on this issue.

But no one felt compelled to say anything publicly. Legislators, who are more than capable of bloviating beyond belief, just kept their mouths shut and voted. Do even the legislators who vehemently hate the idea of doing anything to support gay people realize that their rhetoric is pure nonsense?

Fewer political people feeling the need to say something stupid? A harmful notion to a reporter-type person in need of material to create intriguing copy. But perhaps a positive for our society as a whole!

  -30-

No smokes in the car with kiddies?

The Illinois Senate gave its consideration to a measure that I’m sure was bound to infuriate a certain segment of our society – making it a ticketable offense for someone to light up a cigarette in their own automobile if, by chance, they happen to have kids in the car with them.

Personally, I find it to be a noble goal. I can remember as a kid finding it rather disgusting to be around people who smoked tobacco products. It is a large part of the reason why I never took up the habit myself.

BUT I’M NOT sure how such a ban could ever be realistically enforced unless we’re willing to give police unlimited powers to start searching our cars. And it wouldn’t shock me to learn that many of those cops are smokers themselves.

So it shouldn’t be a shock that when the bill in question, sponsored by state Sen. Ira Silverstein, D-Chicago, came up for a vote, it went down to an ignoble defeat.

A mere 8 state senators were in favor of the idea.

In my mind, I can hear the piercing whistle that some legislators used to make whenever a bill was on its way to defeat. That whistle intending to be a parody of the sound of bombs being dropped on the idea, thereby blowing it to smithereens.

SERIOUSLY, THE WAY a cop would have to enforce this would be to get up so close as to see if not only is someone smoking, but are there little children in the vehicle as well.

What it really means is that police would wind up having to pull over people based on their suspicions, and hope that they wind up catching enough people in the act of smoking-while-in-the-presence-of-children that they can get enough people to file charges against.

Considering that this likely would be a traffic offense of sorts, I doubt the fines would be sufficient enough to make all the time on the part of police officers worthwhile.

Then again, the fact that we’d have to put a certain amount of trust in police officers not to start pulling people over for whatever suspicions they have (then claim they suspected there was smoking taking place).

SHOULD IT REALLY then be a surprise that the state Senate’s black caucus was amongst the opponents?

State Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, made it clear the caucus didn’t trust police enough to limit their searches for smokers with children to reasonable searches. They might wind up pulling over many black motorists, claiming there was a suspicion that tobacco products were somehow being inhaled.

Now I know some people don’t want to believe that anyone could legitimately not trust law enforcement. They’re going to be the ones who will now scream how ridiculous this all is.

But it may well be a sign of how big the gap is amongst certain people in our society in terms of trusting the police.

I REMEMBER ONE now-retired suburban police chief once telling me he seriously believed that the kind of people who went into law enforcement for a living are the elite of our society.

Others are quick to see a batch of thugs using their law enforcement authority to reinforce their own personal hang-ups.

The fact that this issue could even crop up is all the more reason we ought to be thankful that this particular piece of legislation (which likely will become an annual issue for the General Assembly to contemplate) didn’t go very far.

Because what’s the next step – we make it illegal for smokers to raise children?

  -30-

Gay marriage ‘brawl’ is on, but will it merely provoke a 2nd high court case?

The oral arguments by lawyers in the Supreme Court case related to whether gay marriage will become a legitimate concept across the United States took place Tuesday, with many legal experts expecting a ruling some time in June.

Yet this is going to be an issue that will remain with us for some time, and I found it amusing to read a Washington Post account of how this could merely trigger another legal battle that will have to be resolved by the nation’s high court.

MANY ACTIVIST TYPES whom I have encountered seem to be going on the belief that gay marriage’s time has arrived. A majority of the court will wind up deciding that this is not an issue that should be settled state-by-state.

There ought to be a single national policy, and the idea of a patchwork network with some states going absolutely out of their way to say “No!!!” to the idea of gay couples being married just isn’t workable.

However, I also know from experience that anybody who tries to predict what a court will do is a fool. This is a court with conservative leanings, and I noticed the Post reporting that Justice Antonin Scalia said during Tuesday’s questioning that he is reluctant to support anything that would be “unpalatable” to religious-motivated people. I doubt he's alone.

There may well be people who will “go down with the ship,” so to speak, on the issue of preventing gay couples from being able to wed (and get all the legal benefits that heterosexual married couples receive).

IF WE GET a patchwork of laws on this issue, it would seem that Illinois would remain a sympathetic place. Illinois may have been far from the first Midwestern state to take on the issue, but it ultimately had a Legislature and governor sign changes into law.

That may well wind up being the biggest part of former Gov. Pat Quinn’s legacy – although I’m sure there also are those individuals in Illinois who would want to demonize him for that very fact.

But those states who wound up having gay marriage imposed on them by courts striking down their laws against it (which Illinois used to have, the two mid-1990s years of Republican domination of state government included passage of a law prohibiting marriage for gay couples) may wind up engaging in a mad dash to see how quickly they could reinstate such conditions.

That could well include Indiana, where certain political people are peeved that their laws were taken down and that their attempt to make a symbolic gesture to the conservative ideologues (in the form of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act) drew so much hostile attention that they had to back off.

STATE LINE ROAD could well become a barrier for certain people – a place where they will have to make sure they don’t venture too far east for fear of getting caught on the “wrong” side of the Chicago area after dark. Although some Hoosier municipalities are trying to sway their Legislature to the “proper” side of this issue.

As for those couples who already have married, would they find themselves invalidated. The Post reported that it could well turn into another legal battle as to whether those marriages would be undone, or if we’d have certain gay couples who got married on a technicality and others who can’t because of timing.

It seems like the easiest thing to do would be to just accept the reality of our society these days. It’s here, and going nowhere – except perhaps in the minds of the ideologues who think everybody else ought to live in their world in a subservient position.

Although I suspect that regardless of how the high court ultimately rules, it won’t change the sentiments of some people with regards to marriage.

THEY’LL BE THE ones who will grimace every time they see a gay couple together – probably the same way they are bothered by the sight of an inter-racial couple.

The essence of human nature won’t change.

But what can change, and what should change, is the idea that those individuals’ hang-ups ought to have the protection of the letter of the law.

That is what our Supreme Court will have to resolve in coming weeks.

  -30-

150 years since Lincoln became immortal; what would he be today?

Anybody who hangs around political people gets used to certain catchphrases and concepts being tossed out when one wants to score political points.

One such idea I have often heard expressed is the notion that, if he were alive now, Abraham Lincoln certainly would not be a Republican. I can’t keep track of the number of Democrats who have suggested that a modern-day Lincoln would have converted to their political party.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN skeptical of the suggestion. Not so much because I think Republican partisans of the modern-day are somehow correct in their way of thinking about the biggest-name politico Illinois has ever produced.

It’s just that I think Lincoln himself might have become so repulsed by some of the actions committed GOP of the 21^st Century that if he had left, it would be to create yet another political party.

Perhaps someone like H. Ross Perot, goofy ears and all, is the modern-day equivalent of Lincoln. Not that I’m implying the Texas billionaire who actually gained a significant number of votes when he tried running for president in 1992 has much in common with Lincoln.

But perhaps I just think Lincoln would be ornery and independent enough to find all of the current political structure somewhat repugnant!

LET’S NOT FORGET that during his lifetime, Lincoln was affiliated primarily with the Whig Party. When the potential for slavery to spread into the territories we now think of as the Plains states split the Whigs into factions, Lincoln wound up eventually going with the one that opposed slavery.

Which wound up becoming the Republican Party, and Lincoln became their first presidential candidate who managed to win the election.

I do believe that the extent to which the old Southern agenda of “state’s rights” being used to justify repulsive racial policies and other means of imposing on the civil rights of certain people who don’t fit their image of who belongs in this country would have bothered Lincoln.

But I wonder if Lincoln would see the modern-day Democratic Party as being a bit dysfunctional in its own right – so many factions that have trouble uniting that the Republicans in their ideological rigidity are still capable of winning elections.

OF COURSE, THE reason we pay so much attention to Lincoln’s memory is because of the events of 150 years ago Tuesday. Just days after the first military surrender that essentially ended the Civil War (even though fighting continued in spurts for two more months), Lincoln was shot. Under circumstances that ensure his critics in life were permanently disgraced.

Lincoln died early the next morning, laid out in a bed so small that he had to be put on it on an angle. And yes, generations of Chicago schoolchildren have gone on field trips to the Chicago Historical Society museum to see that bed (along with the charred crackers that survived the Chicago Fire of 1871).

In fact, a part of me would be inclined to go to the museum Tuesday to see the bed, except that it is on loan for the year to the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. That’s a bit much of a drive for me to make on a whim.

So perhaps we should spend part of the day pondering Lincoln’s memory, which gets distorted in so many ways by people eager to simplify his story – particularly those too eager to engage in Confederate historic revisionism.

LINCOLN MAY NOT have been the pure abolitionist who was willing to do away with slavery of black people for the common good. Although his critics of the day were certainly willing to see him that way to benefit their own hostile thoughts.

Just last week, the Washington Post published a commentary suggesting that, “Today’s GOP is the party of Jefferson Davis, not of Lincoln.”

That might be a bit simplistic a thought, but there is a certain amount of truth to it – in that I wonder if modern-day Republicans find a bit of shame in the fact that their political party historically was known as the “Party of Lincoln.”

Wishing instead they could regard Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon of the “Southern Strategy” and Ronald Reagan (who throughout the years chased off those Republicans who were motivated by Lincoln’s ideals) as their true founders.

  -30-

Hoosiers eating crow?!? The race to backtrack from “religious freedom”

I must admit to being surprised at how quickly Indiana government officials are backtracking themselves concerning the alleged “religious freedom” law enacted last week.

Indiana Gov. Dan Pence said Tuesday he expects the Republican-dominated Indiana General Assembly (the negative image of what we have in Illinois) to pass some measure by week’s end that will clarify the intent of the new law so as to make sure that people can’t wind up being discriminated against based on sexual preference.

WHICH IS THE fear of many of those who are now lambasting the Land of Hoosiers for having felt the need to lead the nation in passing such a law to begin with.

It was interesting to hear Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society speak earlier this week on WTTW-TV’s “Chicago Tonight” program about how the law doesn’t really make Indiana much different from Illinois in terms of the way people’s rights are protected.

Although the difference appears to be that Illinois has laws including sexual preference as a category of person whose rights are protected. Indiana has never felt the need to offer such protections within their state law. Which is a big difference, no matter how much some try to downplay it!

That is why some wonder if the law is meant to let people who have hang-ups with regards to gay people (particularly on the marriage issue) claim that their religious beliefs are somehow being violated.

AS THOUGH THOSE beliefs somehow permit people to act on their prejudices toward those they don’t like.

It actually reminds me of a “Sunday school” moment when I was a kid of about 8 when we were told that being a “good person” had nothing to do with whether one went to “Heaven” after death – it was about how strong one’s religious faith is.

Perhaps some people think being the last hold out against gay marriage is what will assure them a place in the hereafter; while presuming that everybody else is Hell-bound.

As though God is the ultimate bully who backs those who bully everybody else not like them. I’d like to think that if there really is a hereafter, certain people are in for the shock of their existence when they find out how wrong they truly have been in life!

BECAUSE THE WAY that Indiana’s political actions of last week made any sense was as a political statement; letting it be known they did not approve of having “gay marriage” forced upon them by a federal judge – as opposed to Illinois where the Legislature and governor enacted changes in the relevant laws.

Which themselves were only a couple of decades old and were part of an effort by a then-Republican-dominated Illinois government to make its own statement against gay marriage.

Now, Indiana officials have to back away from their hard-headed statement. Perhaps it was all the public condemnation they were receiving that caused the change of heart.

Not just that the band Wilco cancelled an Indianapolis concert, or that the NCAA was talking about never again holding the men’s basketball tourney in the Indiana capital city (the Final Four will be held there this weekend, and it wouldn't be practical to relocate the event at this late date).

NOT EVEN THE fact that several states (including New York) rushed to enact legislation saying they were prohibiting non-essential travel by their officials to Indiana so long as the new law remained in place. Not that it would have cost much. Because how many people make non-essential trips to Indiana at all!

Or even the fact that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is now hitting back against all those vapid “Illinoyed” ads that Indiana has concocted trying to claim that businesses should jump for the chance of a Hoosier mailing address so as to get lower tax rates.

The lower taxes might just be evidence that the state government doesn’t do as much as Illinois does, and that the public embarrassment of having the Indiana address might not be worth the cost savings.

And we can all think of State Line Road as being just another municipal boundary like Howard Street to the north – rather than the barrier beyond which oddball things happen when one ventures too far to the east!

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: It may be nothing more than fantasy, but there are times I wonder if those northwestern Indiana counties ought to just shift themselves over to Illinois. While some Hoosiers would probably wet their pants with glee at the thought of being rid of Gary, we in Illinois would gain additional Congressional representation (and Electoral College votes) at the expense of Indiana. We’d see how quickly Indiana would quit wanting to live in such isolation from the rest of the Great Lakes states.

EXTRA: Avoiding the inevitable?

Let’s hear it for the Supreme Court of the United States, which managed to figure out a way to avoid taking an action concerning marriage that I suspect a slim majority of the court wants to avoid.


At stake is the issue of whether marriage (with all its legal benefits for couples) ought to be a legitimate option for those couples of the same gender.

ACROSS THE NATION, either state Legislatures are legitimizing the idea of gay couples being married, or their courts are inclined to rule to strike down the laws that ban them.

But it has created a patchwork across the United States where couples would find themselves married in some places, and illegitimate in others. In the latter category, there seems to be a competition as to which state can be the absolute last to have to accept gay marriage as legitimate.

Which is why it was thought that the nation’s Supreme Court was going to have to consider the issue so as to create a uniformity across the United States. We’ve all read way too many stories predicting that this would be the key issue of the Supreme Court’s fall term.

Except that the high court on Monday let it be known that it does not plan to hear the appeals filed to the Supreme Court – mostly by states like Indiana, where lower courts have ruled against gay marriage bans but state officials are fighting acceptance for as long as they can.

BY NOT HEARING the appeals, the lower court rulings stand; and must now be enforced.

The Chicago Tribune reported that this boosts the total of states where gay couples can marry from 19 to 30. With the other 20 states still trying to hold out.

What a legal mess we now face – one that the high court probably is going to have to resolve at some point in time. Only now, we don’t know when that will be.

My gut feeling (one that, admittedly, has been wrong in the past) is that the conservative-leaning majority of the current Supreme Court  (President Barack Obama’s appointments have been to replace moderate-to-liberal leaning justices) does not want to go into history as being the court that legitimized the issue.

HOWEVER, THEY ALSO can’t figure out how to avoid doing so if they take up the issue. There have been just too many courts of diverse opinions across the country that came to the conclusion that the old bans on gay marriage just don’t stand up under the law.

I’m also sure they have a sense how a ruling striking down the gay marriage efforts of the past decade would wind up going into legal history alongside past rulings like Dred Scott or Plessy vs. Ferguson – the ones that said (respectively) that slaves had no legal rights and that segregation was not an unconstitutional concept.

So this incarnation of a Supreme Court chose to do nothing!

It may be good in that all those gay couples from places like Gary and Munster in Indiana don’t have to rush across the state line to Illinois – where our Legislature and governor enacted the change into law – to get married.

BUT IT MAINTAINS the idea for now that there are certain places where people shouldn’t go, and that there is some legal legitimacy to that hostility.

That is a division that just can’t stand.

And my praise will go to the future version of the Supreme Court that has the nerve to accept the case, rather than kick it down the road a ways.

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Gay marriage holdouts? Or, where can one get a reliable ride home?

Officials from Indiana and Wisconsin were in Chicago this week to try to defend their states’ refusal to accept the idea of marriages for gay couples being legitimate, only to find the Court of Appeals panel not so acceptant.

 

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. State after state is getting on board with the concept that there isn’t a legitimate reason to deny the perk of marriage for those gay couples so inclined, but there are also those whose attitudes are so engraved in stone they will never come around.

 

I DON’T DOUBT when a federal appeals judge in Chicago pointed out the change in our society’s attitude toward interracial marriage, there were those people who wanted to say that such marriages also are wrong.

 

That is what popped into my head when I read a Chicago Tribune report about a lawsuit filed against a taxicab company which has a driver who kicked a couple out of his cab because he objected to their kiss in his vehicle.

 

This particular couple of men caught a Sun Taxi Association cab at O’Hare International Airport and wanted a ride back to their apartment in the Lakeview neighborhood.

 

When the driver saw them kiss in the back seat, he began flashing the internal car lights on and off, and initially tried to kick them out of his vehicle alongside the Kennedy Expressway.

 

WHETHER IT WAS a sense of compassion, or the realization that stopping his cab alongside the Kennedy Expressway was as dangerous to himself as it was to the passengers he was abandoning, the cab driver ultimately went to the nearest exit before kicking the couple out at a supermarket parking lot.

 

The couple is working with Lambda Legal in their lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court. They’re asking for notices about the Illinois Human Rights Act to be posted in all taxicabs in Chicago, and for the cab company to get stuck with paying the legal fees connected to this lawsuit, the Tribune reported.

 

Which I’m sure will infuriate the critics who side with the cab company – who would probably rather have the company pay some large settlement to the two men if they didn’t have to admit to doing anything wrong in this particular case.

 

Because I’m sure they’re going to want to believe that cab drivers have a right to selectively pick whom they offer transportation to – even though such an attitude is so absurd it is almost laughable.

 

EXCEPT FOR THOSE moments when a driver is trying to dump someone off alongside an interstate highway. That moment alone ought to be the one that kills the cab company’s chances of success in court.

 

It may well be because of attitudes like this that many people in need of a ride prefer to use the ridesharing services like Uber or Lyft. I literally have heard people say that such services offer cleaner, less-offensive vehicles than many taxicabs offer.

 

Just like I’m wondering how much Indiana’s marketing attempts to steal businesses from Illinois are going to get knocked to the ground because of the perception being created that the Hoosier state is determined to be the last in the nation – or at the very least, in the Great Lakes states region – to permit gay couples the same legal rights as other couples who choose to live their lives as one.

 

Of course, there’s no guarantee how the Court of Appeals will choose to rule. The kinds of hostile questions they asked to Indiana and Wisconsin officials offer hints, but no one can say how a court will rule until they do so in writing.

 

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