Fayetteville residents narrowly voted last week to repeal the city's recently enacted civil rights administration ordinance.
The next morning we woke up in a town that's still one of the most inclusive and tolerant in America, a progressive place where discrimination of any kind is rare and looked upon by most people as unacceptable.
Fayetteville has always been a town that believes in equality and opportunity for all, a place where people are instinctively fair and respectful to others who are different than them. We proudly embrace our diversity and understand every life matters and has value.
That's who we are and what we are, despite anything we may have heard or read during the intensely emotional public debate in recent months.
Fayetteville has always been a warm and accepting place to live and work for everyone, a great place to go to college and the kind of town that welcomes all.
That hasn't changed and it never will.
Good citizens in Fayetteville from all walks of life found themselves on opposite sides in the special election. One side got a few more votes than the other but there were no real winners. We all lost because what has transpired has divided our community and painted our hometown in a false and negative light.
The blame for that belongs mostly on the shoulders of our city government, which chose to enact a poorly written and overreaching ordinance and mistakenly allowed an out-of-state special interest group to use Fayetteville as a tool to advance its own national political agenda.
We deserve better leadership than that from our elected officials.
The ordinance was too broad and ambiguous, full of vagueness and uncertainties on how it would be applied once in effect. Lawyers would have quickly picked it to pieces, rendering the ordinance either unconstitutional or virtually useless to any aggrieved person.
Legitimate questions and good-faith concerns were raised by many open-minded residents and businesses only to find themselves unfairly and offensively labeled by some as bigots who must believe it's OK to discriminate against others.
That's no way to capture the hearts and minds of voters because I'm convinced a healthy majority of those who cast ballots to repeal the ordinance want to support reasonable and workable protections for gay and lesbian people in our community.
There were some, but not many, who based their opposition to the ordinance strictly on their hateful views toward others different than them.
A few, mostly from outside Fayetteville, manufactured false claims designed to create fear among voters.
Those sort of sentiments and tactics are wrong and always fail in the long run.
So where does Fayetteville go from here?
The first thing we do is move beyond the bitterness and divisiveness this ordinance and election has engendered in our town. We can't let lingering anger and hurt feelings tear apart our community. Emotional rhetoric needs to subside and we need time to heal from what was a bruising and contentious election.
We need to walk away from the ordinance just repealed.
Simply put, we need to start over. And this time it's imperative we get it right.
I would recommend an interim step before Fayetteville tries to enact another civil rights ordinance. In early 2015, our City Council should unanimously adopt a resolution, similar to the one in Starkville, Miss., declaring that it's the public policy of our city to respect the inherent worth of every person, without regard to a person's race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, veteran's status or disability and further declaring that discrimination against a person based on any of these classes is contrary to the public policy of the city of Fayetteville.
A resolution of intent, which isn't legislation and thus not subject to referendum and another divisive election, would put into words what's already in the hearts and minds of most Fayetteville residents and it would be the bridge we need to eventually get us to a much improved and more narrowly written ordinance in the next year or so, one rooted in widespread community consensus and an ordinance most of our residents will embrace and support.
Any new ordinance should closely track Arkansas law and should be limited to extending legal protections to our fellow lesbian and gay citizens.
It should address the concerns of some in the business community plus include a broad exemption completely carving out churches and religious groups.
When it comes to equality and fairness for all, Fayetteville has always been on the right side of history. We will be this time, too.
Commentary on 12/18/2014