Fighting the Bad Legislation
“Oklahoma — going out of business” was the headline on an ad in the Business section of USA Today recently. The ad, authored and paid for by Cimarron Equality Oklahoma (www.eqok.org) featured the distinctive outline of Oklahoma with a “Closed” sign hanging on it. And why is Oklahoma closed for business?
Because, according to Richard Florida in his best-selling book “The Rise of the Creative Class”, one of the major indices of whether a city will grow or stagnate is its ‘diversity’ index; and with the abhorrent bills passed by Oklahoma’s legislature this year, our Diversity index, already abysmally low, will take a nosedive. Progressive companies will not move their businesses to a state which does not welcome their workers. Studies show that a state’s level of tolerance for its Gay and Lesbian citizens directly impacts its success in attracting the talented people and creative atmosphere essential for economic growth in today’s competitive marketplace. 211 of the Fortune 500 companies offer Domestic Partner Health benefits, and the large majority of them have nondiscriminatory policies which include sexual orientation.
Oklahoma City has in recent years abolished the Human Rights Commission, in order to keep sexual orientation out of their anti-discrimination policies. They have yanked Gay Pride banners from Classen Avenue poles, passed a law to forbid flying gay pride banners, and when that law was shot down, fought and lost an expensive lawsuit over the banners ? paid with glbt as well as straight tax dollars, needless to say.
And then the clincher was this legislative session, when the folks at the Capitol sent an anti-gay Marriage amendment to a vote of the people in November, and passed that most harmful of legislation, the anti-gay adoption bill. This is not the kind of lawmaking which will bring Dell and Delphi to the state.
Most people looking at the adoption bill think it is most clearly unconstitutional, and that it was just passed as a kind of anti-gay grandstanding on the part of the lege. Just a little political gaybashing. Within the next few weeks a lawsuit will be filed to find it unconstitutional.
Cimarron is saying that these bills, and this history, are anti-business, and hope that the business community can be persuaded to say so also. Cimarron is also conducting polling to determine the best way to fight the anti-Marriage amendment. Collective wisdom says that the amendment will pass big, but CW’s been wrong before. For the next five months there will be a massive statewide educational campaign to defeat it. Legal opinion is divided on whether or not the Amendment can be kept off the ballot, and there will be attempts at that also. If it is on the ballot and does pass in November, a legal challenge will be mounted at that time to overturn it.
If you have a particular interest in the outcome of either of these two issues, feel free to email Margaret at herlandsisters@cox.net