Last week, another milestone for Bowling Green’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community was finally attained.
On Tuesday, August 18, the Bowling Green City Council voted to implement, alongside additional legislation, new ordinances which provide additional anti-discrimination measures to help protect the rights of multiple demographic groups in BG. Those protected by this new legislation include gays, transgendered people and HIV-positive people, as well as pregnant women and military personnel.
I found about this hot topic after stumbling across WBGU-TV during a bit of channel surfing. After I quickly ascertained the topic of the debate, taking place in the Simpson Building in front of the city council, I was pleased to see the rampant support for the new legislation taking form in the words of concerned citizens and civil rights activists.
Personal stories and compelling arguments on the part of the pro-ordinance crowd drove the debate forward and made me (and my fellow viewers) all the more aware of the civil rights battle taking place before our eyes on public television.
And at the end of it all, after much debate on both sides, the council approved the legislation amid boisterous applause from the audience. It filled my heart with warmth to know that another significant step towards true equality for everyone in Bowling Green was taken on that day.
I couldn’t be happier about these new anti-discrimination measures, as they represent the continued modernization of a community which is commonly stereotyped as being anything but progressive.
I’m sick of hearing jokes about how supposedly ‘backwards’ the town apparently is, so these ordinances should help to debunk some of those rumors. But despite the recent and continuing progress made for equal rights for all people in the Bowling Green area, there are still those who would like to hold this community in a state of stagnation with regard to civil rights advancement.
While some points made by the anti-ordinance side were indeed legitimate, such as concerns about reverse discrimination stemming from implementation of the new rules, I was appalled at some of the arguments posed by the anti-ordinance side of the debate.
Several people explicitly referenced Christian scripture (in a very offensive way) as a supposedly feasible argument for the anti-ordinance side of the issue at hand. I even witnessed an extremely one-sided tirade against the legislation (and against LGBT people, for that matter) on the part of one individual who turned his opportunity to argue his point into a hateful rant about the ‘true will of God.’
While every individual is (and should be) entitled to his or her own opinion, simple hate speeches and sensationalized concerns do little to drive an argument forward. And in this particular case, it revealed some of the prejudice which still exists in the Bowling Green community.
I experienced simultaneous sensations of sadness and frustration while listening to some of the horribly biased, exaggerated and completely subjective views coming from particular anti-ordinance individuals.
Fortunately, such narrow-minded views hold increasingly little credence in modern society.
Today’s America is one which becomes more secular with every passing day, in addition to fostering the growth of relative morality. Gone are the days of 1950s hyper-conservative America and its resurgence in the ’80s. America is daily becoming increasingly diverse, so the rise of moral and cultural relativity is crucial to our continued advancement as a civil rights-friendly nation.
Islam within America is growing at an exponential rate, as 16 percent of all Americans are atheist or nonreligious, roughly 40 percent of American adults currently attend religious services regularly (down from recent years) and Christianity is gradually slumping within our nation.
Wrongfully constructed and one-sided arguments aimed against the civil rights progress in the name of a supposedly forgiving and loving God will continue to be regarded as extremist so long as our nation continues to become more culturally and morally relative.
As a whole, the United States has made great strides over the years in granting equal rights to increasingly diverse and varied social groups. Let’s not marginalize that progress by taking steps backwards in the Bowling Green area. These new ordinances are a wonderful thing for the LGBT people in our community, and for the sake of equality, we should support this new legislation with fervor and enthusiasm.
True equality knows no bounds.
Respond to Levi by commenting below or email him at [email protected].
