Hoosiers should continue to hope state lawmakers don’t get too cute in trying to recover from last year’s mess with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Passage of that act was seen coast to coast as an attempt to discriminate against LGBT people. It subjected Indiana to ridicule and cost the state economically and in the court of public opinion, especially with a younger demographic that’s creating the jobs of the future.
Senate Republicans have proposed legislation that would extend civil rights protections to people based on sexual orientation and gender identity. But director of Bloomington’s human rights commission Barbara McKinney says the exceptions in the proposed law “kind of swallow up the protections.”
Ten years ago and four blocks east of the Indiana Statehouse, a similar debate about LGBT protections occurred in the Indianapolis City-County Council. After lengthy debate, the council in the state’s capital city voted to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the city’s human rights ordinance.
That vote is recalled today in an editorial published by the Indianapolis Star and shared with newspapers, including this one, that have joined the #Rights For All campaign to include sexual orientation and gender identity in the state’s human rights law. And to do it without a lot of carve outs.
When Indy’s ordinance passed a decade ago, opponents predicted trouble. They said people would be forced to betray their religious beliefs, businesses would face frivolous lawsuits and the city’s image would suffer.
None of those fears materialized. In fact, it’s the reluctance to provide equal rights that has hurt the image of the state so badly.
Businesses don’t fear expanding the law. Large and influential corporations based in the state, as well as business organizations such as the State Chamber of Commerce, are strong advocates. The Star’s editorial board recently met with Indianapolis pastors and asked them if they could point out incidents in which their congregants had been harmed because of the city’s ordinance. They couldn’t specify any.
No one can dispute the city has grown as a magnet for business, including lucrative convention business, in the past 10 years. That helps all Hoosiers.
So far in the discussion this year, legislators appear to still be missing key points about this issue. Those are: All Hoosiers deserve the same level of protection under the law; and providing it won’t hurt the state or other individual citizens. That’s been the experience in Indianapolis, Bloomington and other cities that have passed inclusive human rights ordinances.
The bill being proposed by Republican senators, however, would require state law to supercede local ordinances. So stronger laws, such as the one in Indianapolis or another in Bloomington, for instance, would be weakened if the Senate GOP language were to pass.
Successful city ordinances that have proven the test of time should be used by state legislators as models, not as threats that need to be tamped down.