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New Jersey Employment and Civil Rights Trial Lawyer Discusses Fayetteville Arkansas Repeal of Civil Rights Law

On Behalf of | Feb 2, 2015 | Civil Rights |

I’m a big science fiction fan; I hope you are too. If you are, and you know anyone who has a machine that would allow us to put a dome over the State of Arkansas, or better yet, just cut it loose from the United States, let it drift out to sea and then sink it, let me know.

Un-f’ing believable.

The year is 2014′ the human race is supposed to be evolving. Certainly, in America, where we keep telling our selves we’re the “greatest country on Earth,” we’re supposed to be lighting the way to the future.

And then there’s Arkansas. More specifically, there’s Fayetteville, Arkansas, a backward little shitburg that thinks it’s 1953.

In a general election held on Tuesday, December 9th, 52% of Fayetteville voters (7,523 people) voted to repeal a Civil Rights Law which made illegal any discrimination against employees and customers based upon gender, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion and other factors.

In other words, substantially the same Civil Rights Law that the United States passed in the 1960’s and that nearly every State in the country has in some way shape or form echoed with its own Civil Rights Laws since, has been repealed, in 2014, in this crappy little slice of nowhere.

I watched an interview from a local news network down there with the “president” of the movement to repeal the Civil Rights Law. He struck me as the “classic” southern, ignorant redneck. His bullshit argument about why the law should be repealed was because now, Fayetteville was a “free city.” He argued that the Civil Rights Law took away freedom (how Orwellian does that sound)?

Now, of course, I know that’s stupid, and you know that’s stupid, but apparently just over half the brilliant minds of Fayetteville Arkansas, either didn’t know that it was stupid, or worse, didn’t care.

So let me tell you what this really was. I’m 1000% certain that the truth of this is that most of these people are probably extreme right wing Christians. They wouldn’t dare argue publicly that this is really about biblical pronunciations or racism, but they smile when they’re speaking their bullshit to one another because everyone knows it’s exactly what this is about.

How do I know all of this? Because the “president,” Duncan Campbell, is a minister. What a coincidence, right? Now, the poor person in charge of the movement to keep the Civil Rights Ordinance in place had to say something, so she said that she was “excited” that the “process works,” referring to the fact that there was a vote.

Yeah, not buying that. I believe in democracy and all of that, but the process doesn’t work when the wrong result is reached. For example, I didn’t believe the process “worked” when we elected George Bush (twice). I don’t believe it “worked” here, either. It failed. When people are too stupid, ignorant, conservative or addled by mythology to make rational, progressive, correct decisions, the process doesn’t work.

I’m not saying that there’s a better one, I’m just saying this vote didn’t “work.”

I’ve said this a thousand times and I’ll say it again. We cannot allow religious beliefs to dictate public policy. The Constitution is not there to protect religion from the reach of government. It’s there to protect government from the reach of religion. This is one more instance where that process failed and religion got hold of Government’s guts.

And ripped them out.

Shame on “minister” Duncan, shame on everyone that was attached to his movement, shame on everyone who voted in favor of the repeal, and shame on everyone who should’ve voted against the repeal and didn’t. Shame on the people of Arkansas if they can’t find a solution to force Fayetteville to join the 21st Century (I’d even take the latter half of the 20th Century at this point).

I’m pretty sure that the people that voted in favor of the repeal, and especially the people who were part of the movement to repeal, are the same people who, just a generation or two ago, were calling black people “boy,” celebrating separate water fountains and burning crosses while wearing their bed sheets. I don’t care if that’s inflammatory, and I don’t care if I don’t “know” these people. I don’t care to “know” these people. I know what they did. My father always said that you can say anything you want, but the way you’re going to be judged is based upon what you do.

Minister Duncan, I don’t give a rat’s ass about what you say, or what any of the other exclusively white, exclusively straight, 100% Christian people in the background while you were being interviewed said, either. What I care about is what you did, and it’s from that fact that I draw the inference that you, the others in your movement, and the people who spawned you, are what is wrong with the South and what’s embarrassing about this country. You and your movement disgust me, and happily, I know that you disgust a majority of people elsewhere in the United States (the part of the United States in the 21st Century).