GLBTs Join Michigan Affirmative-Action Debate (a bug-chasing barfer of an advocate's article)

Despite claims that affirmative action gives unfair advantages to women and people of color, those who grasp the deeper meaning realize that ultimately, it benefits everyone. That's why gays, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) groups in Michigan are banding together to support the civil rights of all people in the state, despite having had their own freedoms trampled when Michigan voters banned same-sex marriage two years ago.

"It was wrong to single out a group of citizens for discrimination in 2004, and it's wrong today," Michelle Brown, a member of the Human Right Campaign's Board of Governors, told Between the Lines, Michigan's weekly newspaper for the GLBT community.

On Tuesday, representatives from 50 GLBT groups announced their opposition to the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), the anti-affirmative-action measure that will appear on the state's November ballot.

"The GLBT community knows very well how basic human rights can be assaulted by a deceitful ballot measure," Sean Kosofsky, policy director for Triangle Foundation, told the paper. "We are here to say, 'No more.' We stand against injustice toward any group. Period."

Affirmative Action is an egregious violation of the core principles of American democracy and a blatant violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. It also defies plain common sense justice by giving racial (albeit reverse) discrimination the status of federal law.

The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified after the Civil War (1868) to insure that ALL races would be under the color blind "equal protection" of the law.

Affirmative Action is the product of an activist judiciary which chose to put clear constitutional mandates in abeyance in the name of racial politics.

What's often ignored is that this "favoritism" harms those it was intended to help greatly. It also undermines the general respect for law and weakens the credibility of a system which purports to be objective in its opposition to racial, religious, and gender discrimination.

I urge all FReepers to visit the web site of Ward Connerly. He and his assistant, Jennifer Gratz, were principals in the Supreme Court Michigan cases which ruled on this matter.

Ward is an articulate and intelligent opponent of all government sanctioned racial discrimination. He heads the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. info@michigancivilrights.org

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