Somebody needed to stand up for the anti-discrimination ordinance if the Fayetteville City Council was going to pass it. Hundreds did at Tuesday's council meeting. They kept standing into the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
What needed to happen happened. A guy got up in front of his whole town and said he could lose his house because he's gay, for instance. So there won't be any more columns from me about how nobody points to himself when he says there's a need for this law.
Others showed up to oppose the ordinance. They now have facts to face. Supporters more than matched them at the face-off, person for person. Opposition to an ordinance such as this would have been mainstream a couple of years ago. Now that's a reality check.
Half a dozen aldermen voting for this in an empty room could have been dismissed as a misguided bit of political correctness. Half a dozen aldermen voting for this despite a turnout of hundreds opposing it might never have happened. Having hundreds of supporters behind the council when it passed the measure made a strong statement.
People get all worked up about about the president and Congress and such, which befuddles me. Even this whole state can't make much of a difference with those. But a local crowd taking a stand can swing a city council vote at any meeting. People should get worked up over things they can do. Here, they did.
I love this town.
For all I know, most voters in the city might either oppose the ordinance or not care. Maybe yes, maybe no, but the assertion this ordinance is a solution in search of a problem just got successfully challenged. You may disagree with me and think there isn't much discrimination. You may believe the hundreds who showed up supporting this measure are wrong or misguided or their solution is worse than the problem. Maybe you're right. But you can't claim the demands of so many townspeople who are willing to stand up and be counted are something a body of elected officials could just ignore.
Name one real, indisputable problem needing a council decision that ever drew such a home crowd to a council meeting. Even the facts behind the smoking ban were disputed, if not very successfully. If you insist half of Tuesday's crowd showed up for a made-up cause, you'd better hope these same folks don't find a real one.
Now, on to the wider political implications of passing this ordinance.
We're about to have an election in which Republicans could lock up our state's congressional delegation, most of the state constitutional offices and both chambers of the Legislature. This same year, Fayetteville passed this ordinance, and the state constitutional ban on gay marriage was overturned. All this springs from the same causes.
First came the shock of losing the White House to a nonwhite guy. Then came the failure to regain it. Then came huge defeats in the culture war. All that finally drove Arkansas conservative Democrats to become Republicans. This was earth-shaking. Those Democrats were so conservative, they didn't even change parties for decades. Now they don't just refuse to go the way the rest of the country, particularly Democrats, are going. They've rushed the other way.
So the same forces sweeping gay couples into marriage chapels may keep Democrat Mike Ross out of the governor's mansion.
The ordinance vote shows the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community can win a showdown, at least in Fayetteville. They are a force to be reckoned with. That's not entirely news. Any group that can get a state constitutional amendment struck down is a force to be reckoned with. There's a difference, though, between winning battles in court and winning one at a city council meeting. An important milestone has been reached here.
Another big implication of this vote is the LGBT community isn't alone. They have a lot of friends. These friends show up. Also, we've seen their opponents are still a mighty force. Fayetteville's one of the few cities in Arkansas where their force can be met, but even here it's a fight. The biggest difference of all is, now both sides knows it's a fight the LGBT supporters can win.
DOUG THOMPSON IS A POLITICAL REPORTER AND COLUMNIST FOR NWA MEDIA.
Commentary on 08/24/2014