Lansing State Journal

The following guest editorial was published in the Lansing State Journal in an abbreviated form in late March.

The season of the year that includes Black History Month and Women's Month seems an appropriate time to reflect on our progress towards equality in America. In the recent movie The Great Debaters, Samantha, one of the college students from an all-black Texas school, boldly argues, " . . . the time for equality is always, is always right now!"The movie is set in 1935. It took nearly 30 years for congress to enact The Civil Rights Act. Michigan's civil rights act was passed 13 years later. It seems Michigan was slow to get it. So how are we doing now? Over time, the federal government and many states added various groupsof people to their civil rights acts such that discrimination based on religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, familial status, or marital status is forbidden in most states.Michigan, though, still excludes one of the most discriminated groups in our state from protection. Many estimates would place this collective group at about ten percent of our population. These unprotected citizens of Michigan are those whose sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression is "different". Accepting the "different" was precisely the catalyst for adding religion, race, color, sex, and handicaps to civil rights protection. It is still what civil rights - and our country - are all about.Jefferson's reminder of the self-evident truth that all "are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is still true and yet some persist in seeking to deny these rights to others; others who are different. Coretta Scott King understood this pursuit of civil rights better than most. She boldly proclaimed, "I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation." The time for equality is always now. Amending Michigan's Elliot Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1977 to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression is quite simply the right thing to do. In addition to fundamental fairness and equal opportunity, protecting the civil rights of this currently unprotected population is pragmatically good for Michigan. Academician and researcher Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class) has made it clear that the current generation of college and university graduates place the honoring of diversity as a very high priority for their lives. The brain drain (and concurrent job drain) from Michigan is at least partly the result of Michigan being an unfriendly state for this diversity. Many businesses, including most of the Fortune 500, have already added diversity protections in their workplaces because they know it is not only the right thing to do, it is also simply good business sense to do so. Yet these workplace pockets of protection in Michigan are not enough. As one who lost her job because of the lack of job protections for simply being different, I know the time for statewide equality is now. The time is now to amend the civil rights laws of Michigan to protect these who are excluded and too often the victims of hate, exclusion, and even violence. The time for equality is always now.