Freedom: We can do better in Utah

So the other night, I was watching How I Met Your Mother on the CW channel with my roommates (here in Provo, UT).  During one of the commercial breaks this ad came on:



Seems super benign and reasonable, right?

FALSE.

I had heard a few things about SB100 (Senate Bill 100), Utah's proposed housing and employment non-discrimination update, enough to know that this ad was misleading at best.  I went to the Sutherland Institute's (a conservative think tank based in Utah) YouTube channel to see if I could re-watch the ad, and found they also had 2 others (see below).

The problem with all three of these ads is that they are purposefully misleading to the point of being dishonest.  The first ad (above) is the only one to explicitly mention the proposed Utah non-discrimination law.

The main part says:

"But then I learned it gives special rights to some people, and takes away the rights of others. Being loving and tolerant shouldn't cost others their special rights: like freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the right to make a living. These harmful consequences are already happening in nearby states."

This, my friends, is well crafted, intentionally misleading ad.

First off, let's go over what SB100 actually does:

It adds sexuality and gender identity to the state's existing housing and employment non-discrimination law so that:

1) You cannot be fired from, or denied, a job simply because you are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer (LGBTQ), if otherwise qualified
     a) Religious organizations, businesses owned by religious organizations, and small businesses ( with < 15          employees) are not required to abide by these rules

2) You cannot be denied housing simply because you are LGBTQ
     b) Landlords with 5 or fewer housing units are exempted from these rules

Here is the full text of the bill, which I have sped-read through:
http://le.utah.gov/~2014/bills/static/SB0100.html

The only "special right" it gives people is to expand protection from non-discrimination to one of the more vulnerable classes of people in our society, especially in Utah.  It is currently illegal to deny someone housing or a job based on their age, sex, color, national origin, disability, or religion.

You can't be fired because you're 65 (if otherwise qualified)
You can't be fired because you're a woman (if otherwise qualified)
You can't be fired because you're brown (if otherwise qualified)
You can't be fired because you're from Kazahkstan (if otherwise qualified)
You can't be fired because you're in a wheelchair (if otherwise qualified)
You can't be fired because you're Mormon (if otherwise qualified)

But, right now, you can be fired if you're gay.

You can't be denied housing if you're just barely 18
You can't be denied housing because you're a man
You can't be denied housing because you're Asian
You can't be denied housing because you're from Chile
You can't be denied housing because you're visually impaired
You can't be denied housing because you're Lutheran.

But, right now, you can be denied housing because you're a lesbian.

Could you imagine the outrage if some self-righteous Southern Baptist bought a condo complex in Salt Lake and then refused to rent to Mormons? The anger would indeed be justified. And what he did would be illegal.  The Southern Baptist could claim that he was only doing it out of his freedom of association and expression of his conscience - and to that degree, he would be correct. He feels that Mormons are being beguiled by Satan and does not want to associate with them, or rent condos to people who claim to have God's power to seal themselves together for time and all eternity in their holy temples.  He finds their personal lives to be an affront to the God he sincerely believes in and tries to follow.  And yet, as a society, we have decided that a human being's right to express their religion without it impairing their ability to find and secure housing, trumps his right to 'freedom of association' that he would be able to pick and chose (based solely on religion) the tenants he rents to.  And I think most people are happy that we've made that decision. I also think, that most people are happy to add LGBTQ to the list of things we won't discriminate against in housing or employment.

Expanding non-discrimination laws to include LGBTQ individuals, does not "takes away the rights of others" especially if we're talking about freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the right to make a living.  You can still quite freely speak, freely exercise your conscience, and make a living quite comfortably, while still ensuring LGBTQ individuals are not denied housing or employment solely because of their sexuality.  The only way this takes away anyone's "rights" is if somehow there is a right to "deny housing or employment to someone based on their sexuality," which I feel fairly confident is not a right.

Another issue I take with these ads, is maybe a little semantic, but I feel is almost just as important.  The use of "other people" and the "new rights" we're giving them.  Quite frankly this is just a poor characterization of what is going on.  We don't have non-discrimination laws for other types of people because race, we have non-discrimination laws for all of us because of different categories of race.  Stop 'othering' everyone who have different characteristics from you.  We're. All. The. Same. We're all human. And nobody should be discriminated against based (solely) on any number of characteristics which we deem to be inherent to our nature, or choices so sacred and personal that we don't want society meddling with our decisions.  We don't have these laws to 'grant rights' to other people, we have these laws because all of us deserve to live freely in a society and not be constrained by the characteristics of our individuality. There are not black people, and French people, and men, and old people, and Catholics, and disabled people, and transgender people.  There are just people.  People who are black. People who are from France. People who are men. People who are old. People who are Catholic. People who are differently abled. And people who are transgender.  In fact, one person could be all of those things together.  There are not different types of people, or other people. There are just people, all with different characteristics, quirks, personalities, and interesting details.  We aren't making these laws to give new rights to a new segment of society, we're just expanding the number of details about every person and their life and that we don't feel should be a barrier to them putting a roof over their heads, or getting a job to feed themselves and their family.

What really offended me were the 2 following ads, which do not explicitly mention the Utah bill, but quite clearly intend to create an atmosphere of fear and misunderstanding about the legislation.




"Imagine you're a landlord renting to private university students, in accordance with the university's honor code, and a young man decides he wants to live in women's housing. Those special rights would trump your rights as a landlord and ultimately the honor code."

First, "imagine"  should be a really big red flag.  A political ad based solely off a hypothetical situation, which is also explicitly not possible under the proposed legislation, is misleading and dishonest.  Second, the hypothetical situation doesn't make sense anyways.  Private and public universities still retain their rights to define and enforce 'honor codes' as they see fit.  If a university says men and women can't live together, they are not allowed to. The end.  Now you can withdraw from or be kicked out of the university if you really want to, but non-discrimination laws do not suddenly render moot university policies about housing and 'honor'.  If you're renting to university students, you're not forced to accept non-university students.  If you're just renting to the general population, that's a different matter.  Not to mention, that if you have fewer than 5 units (which I think covers a lot, if not the majority, of private landlords) you're not even required to abide by the legislation.  The above hypothetical is totally totally bogus. Next.


"But what if they were forcing someone you love to chose between keeping their job and living according to their individual conscience and values? Does that sound fair? Is that legislation that you would want to support? To learn how special rights laws are already threatening people who just want to live according to their personal values, visit fairtoall.org."

Now this one is even better / worse.

Again "what if" should be a big warning sign. Also, the "someone you love" is a totally unnecessary (but highly effective) addition to suck people into an emotional, rather than rational or logical, state when they consider the contents of the ad.  Another hypothetical situation that has literally NOTHING to do with the proposed legislation.  Actually, to be fair, this hypothetical only makes sense if you consider that currently many LGBTQ individuals feel they have to choose between keeping their job and 'living according to their individual conscience and values' by being honest about who they are and they relationships they may or may not be in.  Quite the opposite of the fear this ad intends to instill.

Unless, you're employed as someone who hires and fires people for a non-religious company of more than 15 people, and feel that it is your moral obligation to not employ or work with people who are LGBTQ, there is nothing about the proposed legislation that would make you choose between your job and your conscience.  Also, if you are that person, I'd like to talk to you about the God you believe in, because I feel like he might be different than mine.

This ad is hinting at "'public accommodation" laws that have been enacted by other states (but is not being considered by Utah) which require businesses to not discriminate when serving customers - these are essentially anti-Jim Crow laws.  The need for and efficacy of public accommodation laws is something quite worthy of debate on it's own.  Indeed, I am not sure how much I support them.  But to conflate public accommodation laws, however subtly, with Utah's proposed SB100 is again, misleading and dishonest.

I am all for people honestly and openly debating the merits of legislation and government action in our society. It is healthy and indeed essential.  But the ads by the Sutherland institute are underhanded and dishonest.  And that upsets me.  Ad's like that upset me whether they're from the Obama campaign or the Sutherland institute, or anything in between.  Furthermore, Sutherland and their allies appear to use this approach, not only in ads, but when talking to the media:

"Nobody should have to choose between their convictions and their livelihood. This law would definitely set the stage for that."  - Laura Bunker, president of United Families Utah(United Families Utah is among 19 organizations that make up the First Freedoms Coalition, which was formed to fight the proposed nondiscrimination law)
Once again, opposing legislation, if we take their word for it, based solely off of what they few it could do to legal landscape in the future. And trying to use that imaginary fear to block current legislation.

I would encourage you to read this article (source of the quote above), because if you have even minimal critical reading skills it should be blatantly apparent by the talking points used by both sides which side is being deceitful and playing politics and which side is being straightforward.

http://m.deseretnews.com/article/865594100/Same-sex-marriage-debate-could-impact-proposed-Utah-nondiscrimination-bill.html

In another Deseret New Article, a poll shows that

72 percent of Utah residents, 68% of Utah Republicans, and 67% of active LDS members favor the proposed legislation.

Paul Mero, president of Sutherland Institute, described the poll questions as "fluff" because he said although they accurately reflect Utahns' feelings, they don't get to the core issue.

The real question should be, he said, do Utahns support a statewide nondiscrimination law that would conflict with their "first" freedoms such as the free exercise of religion and speech.

No, Mr. Mero. The real question is whether or not Utahan support the legislation. Duh. Not some sly politically motivated talking points that you aren't even using effectively, let alone honestly.

Read that article here: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865594605/Poll-Utahns-favor-nondiscrimination-laws-in-employment-housing.html?pg=1

When I see underhanded stuff in politics, I often ask myself why.  And quite frankly the answer always has to be: they don't believe they can win without being underhanded.  Why be dishonest, if you can be honest and still accomplish your goals? More importantly: why support something that can only be accomplished by being dishonest?  The fact that the First Freedoms Coalition (including Sutherland Institute and United Families Utah) would engage in that  kind of activity disappoints and angers me.  If they intended to slyly sway public opinion with their vague and dishonest TV ads, they have instead upset me enough to devote a few hours crafting this blog post with the intent that my friends will become educated on the issue and come to the same conclusion I have: that SB100 is a very common sense bill that does a lot of good, mitigates almost any possible negatives, and makes our state a better place for all of us.  And, that the organizations that are opposing it are being deceitful, which should make us all think twice before trusting political information from them in the future.  Bad move FFC. Bad move.

In conclusion, if you think that people should be able to fire people, not hire them, or deny housing to people simply because they are LGBTQ, (which most people acknowledge is not a choice) then by all means exercise your God-given right in a pluralist republican-democracy to oppose this bill.

If however, you, like most people in Utah,  (including Governor Herbert, as of today!) believe that every human being deserves the opportunity to house themselves, and obtain gainful employment, regardless of immaterial details about their lives, please support SB100.

PS: Five gold stars if you read through this entire post :)
PPS: Yes, I paraphrased the name of the ads for my blog post title, because I can, and I because I thought it was deliciously ironic. :)

Third: The Way Forward for the Republicans

As Republicans we have clearly fallen short.  Not only were Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan not elected, but Republican candidates lost up and down the ballot from all wings of the party.  From the socially conservative Indiana and Missouri Senate candidates, to Mia Love of Utah who surely must have a bright future in Utah and potentially national politics.  

There is a case to be made that Romney-Ryan could have won Tuesday night had our turnout operation been better.  The margins of victory in Florida, Virginia, and Ohio were all well within the ground-game-range (3 points).  There are multiple media accounts of our turn-out attempts and turn-out results which I will not comment on here.  And so there is a legitimate possibility that we lost a tactical battle and not the ideological war.  

But you can also see that late-deciding independents broke for President Obama, and there simply are not enough old white men to sustain the GOP in its current form.  

I am personally offended when people paint the Republican party as anti-women, anti-minority, anti-gay, etc.  We sincerely believe that the principles of limited government, free enterprise, personal responsibility, and a strong military will help all Americans better than more government programs,  and economic stimuli.  

As Republicans, we need to modernize on a few issues and better communicate our beliefs and our results on the vast majority of our key platforms.  We don't need to shut-down.  Not when a majority of Americans thing government is too big, or when they think we're headed in the wrong direction.  We need better messaging, better relations with the media, and better ground game operations.  

America needs a credible Republican party just as much as it needs a President Obama to make real accomplishments in the next 4 years.  Let's get to work.  

Second: The Two Paths for Obama

The similarities between President Bush's re-election and President Obama's are notable: relatively unpopular presidents dealing a country that feels it is drifting off course and in the wrong direction.  Both managed to re-energize and turn out their base, much to the chagrin and incredulity of the opposing side.  Both were disliked by the opposition to the point that loathing might not be too strong a word.

We know what President Bush did.  He felt he had earned a mandate, and decided to push ahead with programs and policies he felt he could expend his 'political capital' on.  That combined with the draggings on of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an eventual financial collapse contributed to abysmal approval ratings by the time he left office and a reputation today that one of the few bipartisanly held opinions in the country.

Wednesday morning, while trying to search for a way to feel positive about a second Obama term, and to determine why our nation had decided he would make a better President than Mitt Romney, I came to the following conclusion: America, ever an optimistic nation, has decided to give hope another chance.  While I do not agree with the conclusion that President Obama offers a brighter future for us, and I do not understand how we as a nation could had arrived at that decision with so much record and rhetoric to the contrary, I do sincerely hope that President Obama will be able to leads us in a positive direction.

And so I hope he learns from from the mistakes of President Bush.  As Mitt Romney was so fond of saying, we face enormous challenges as a nation.  Our deficits and debt, a stagnant economy, threats from abroad - our course in the 21st century will be heavily impacted by the decisions we make over the next decade, and especially the next four years.  My view is that President Obama was given another chance at hope - to be the President he told us he would be in 2008.  That candidate was not a left wing ideologue, he was unifying figure for a bruised and battered nation.  Four years later our still hurting nation is just as in need of a hero - President Obama, be that hero.

So many crucial decisions await us as a nation, we really cannot afford partisan bickering over the next four years.  That does not mean either party can or should abandon its principles - but it does mean we should have an honest and open dialogue that leads to honest and durable solutions.

That President Obama can be that leader, one I do not believe he has been, is my sincere hope and prayer.        

First: Romney and the Campaign

(this one is going to be a little upset, positive update coming next)

As it became apparent Tuesday night that we had lost the election, I struggled to make sense of it.  I had gone into Tuesday with such high hopes and a good deal of confidence.  That it all evaporated in just a couple of hours, was almost as depressing as the result itself.  As I read through tweets news articles, and Facebook updates, one by my friend Matt Whitlock stood out: "This has nothing to do with Mitt Romney not being good enough. It has everything to do with us not being good enough for him. #Romney2012" and I agree with that wholeheartedly.  Mitt Romney is by far the singularly most qualified person to pursue the Presidency, ever.  If you dispute that, you and I have an extremely different view of what it takes to be a President.  [Foreign policy experience aside, which we generally have not demanded of our candidates in modern American politics].  I have supported Mitt Romney since 2007 when he first began running for President because no one else has such a real record of accomplishments in a such a wide variety of fields.  I want my candidates to be smart, articulate, and committed to results above all.  I do believe being rhetorically inspring is an integral part of a successful President, but inspiring rhetoric is not enough when not backed up with results.  Given a choice between the two, I will chose competency over rhetoric every time.

The post-mortems have begun (as there always will be, and always should be). What worries me are the "Mitt Romney wasn't conservative enough" people.  If you sincerely believe Michelle Bachmann or Herman Cain would have been a more successful Presidential candidates against President Obama, I don't know what to say.  While their (and other's like them) convictions of conservatism may be laudable, their campaigns and their potential as a President were not.

I believe Romney is a right-of-center pragmatist - not a closet moderate, not an ideologue   I believe that's what he's been his entire life and his entire political career.  And I believe that's what this country needs right now. Why he or his team was unable to communicate that, I don't know.  He has not been a flip-flopper or lacking in a political core.  At least not in any way more significant than any other political figure.  If you dispute that, I have a President-elect Obama to sell you who supports a single-payer health care system, has halved the deficit, closed Guantanamo, and doesn't suport same sex marriage.  Politics is tough, and a lot of it is messaging, but Mitt Romney is not some soulless political chameleon, le't s be real folks.

Along those lines,  Mitt Romney does not hate women, or minorities, or poor people, or gays.  He was not a ruthless corporate raider.  Besides being the most competent and qualified person to run for President in modern history, he was by all accounts the most generous.  Countless stories of private personal acts of charity and kindness dot Mitt Romney's life.  By biggest fear and worry was that, had he been elected, his ability to govern would have been hampered by the fact that half of the country thought that he was out to get them - as promulgated by millions of dollars of TV ads.  Whether America rejected Mitt Romney because we viewed him as an unacceptable potential President, or because we rejected his economic and foreign policy plans.  That is indeed the biggest tragedy of this election.  

Anybody who has watched the closing month of the campaign should have been able to see a Mitt Romney the way I've seen him.  While I feel that he could have done a better job of a being a more 3-dimensional candidate by explaining where he comes from and why he is who he is today - in the end we should be voting for a President  not a celebrity or a storybook character.

I had so hoped that Romney would have had the chance to be an amazing President, and I sincerely believe he would have been.  Rarely has a candidate been so prepared for so critical a moment.  But America has chosen a different path.  We will never know what a Romney presidency would have actually been like.      

What, pray-tell, is Cosmopolitan Conservatism?

cos·mo·pol·i·tan

   [koz-muh-pol-i-tn] 

–adjective
1. free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments; at home all over the world.
2. of or characteristic of a cosmopolite.
3. belonging to all the world; not limited to just one part of the world.


–noun

5. a person who is free from local, provincial, or national bias or attachment; citizen of the world; cosmopolite.

—Synonyms 

1.  sophisticated, urbane, worldly.  

con·serv·a·tism

   [kuhn-sur-vuh-tiz-uhm]  

conservatism as a modern political tradition, conservatism  traces to Edmund Burke's opposition to the Fr. Revolution (1790), but the word conservative  is not found in his writing. It was coined by his Fr.disciples, (e.g. Chateaubriand, who titled his journal defendingclerical and political restoration "Le Conservateur" ). Conservative as the name of a British political faction it first appeared in an 1830 issue of the "Quarterly Review," in an unsigned article sometimes attributed to John Wilson Croker. It replaced Tory (q.v.) by 1843,reflecting both a change from the pejorative name (in use for 150 years) and repudiation of some reactionary policies. Extended to similar spirits in other parties from 1845.

Cosmopolitan Conservatism is my attempt at classifying or examining my political and philosophical beliefs.  As I am still very much exploring and defining my core beliefs, I hope that by writing about them I will be able to more fully develop them.  Cosmopolitan and conservatism rarely are seen in the same sentence, and that is why I have chosen them to represent my thinking.  As a caveat, the definition for conservatism is "the disposition to preserve or restore what is established and traditional and to limit change," which is one that I find neither very appealing nor indicative of my ideas.  My "conservatism" is better defined as preserving and enhancing existing moral structures within society while using government in the most limited, effective, and efficient means possible. For the most part, I am comfortable in the mainstream of US conservatism.  However, I feel too that there is a need for a rebirth or reinterpretation of conservatism for the global age in which we live.  This is where cosmopolitan comes in.  

Much of 'American conservatism' is epitomized by the Sarah Palin's and the Mike Huckabee's - nearly the antithesis of "cosmopolitan".  People of my generation will not long stand for such insular personalities in a world where information, jobs, capital, and goods flow freely across borders like sand through an hourglass.  This is not to say that we must run to the editorial board of the New York Times, or the cafes of Paris for new personalities and bold ideas - I doubt they have them.  Quite the contrary.  But we (the conservatives of the 21st century) must be aware of and even curious of such things - not to become merely less-than-liberals, but to develop and update conservative ideals to govern the world in which we now find ourselves.  

Cosmopolitan Conservatism is an ideology that affirms that secure borders are imperative, but recognizes deep rooted economic and geopolitical situations that have brought us to this point.  This ideology understands that the immigration debate is how we will define ourselves as a nation in the century of globalization, not about doing exacting justice on millions of migrants.  Cosmopolitan Conservatism upholds the value of life from conception to death - but is more interested in results than posturing.  Cosmopolitan Conservatism understands that we are entrusted with the stewardship of this earth and we must care for the environment, but that doesn't necessarily mean what either the environmentalists or corportatists will tell you.  Cosmopolitan Conservatism embraces that government is a divinely inspired institution that functions best when simple and efficient.

And with that, I'll end this first post.  More explanation and a look at the issues coming soon.