Playing A Tolerant Tune For The DNC
Faced with a multi-million-dollar budget deficit that has led to wholesale shuttering of public schools, pink-slipping hundreds of teachers, slashing funding for libraries and parks, cutting services for wounded and disabled Veterans, and reducing social services across the board, the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners spent the bulk of its Tuesday night meeting approving a resolution in support of tolerance and inclusion, or something. It was hard to tell exactly what.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Mecklenburg commissioners politick and pontificate while the county craters.
The rambling resolution, which was crafted in response to recent comments from Republican Commissioner Bill James tagging homosexuals as sexual predators, included more than a dozen “whereas-es” and took longer than five minutes to read. The Gettysburg Address, by comparison, can be accomplished in less than two.
The resolution was pitched as a way of “honoring, supporting and paying tribute to community values that embrace and promote equality, diversity, tolerance, inclusion, respect and civility,” and – take a deep breath – proving that the board of commissioners “stands united in firm opposition to inflammatory speech that may cause bullying, intimidation, harassment, persecution, or discriminatory treatment of any individual because of their race, color, sex, religion or creed, national origin, ancestry, age, sexual orientation, Veteran’s status, or disability, not inconsistent herein with state and federal law.”
While the board unanimously approved the resolution, most commissioners acknowledged that it was largely a symbolic gesture that would accomplish little of actual merit or produce any substantive change.
“It is enough that we all understand our responsibility to treat everyone fairly and equally,” said Commissioners Vice-Chairman Jim Pendergraph, a Republican. “I do not believe that passing 10 resolutions will make any difference to one or some on this board.
“This resolution does not specifically address approval or non-approval of a homosexual lifestyle,” Pendergraph said. “My support of this resolution is to reiterate that the majority of this board shuns behaviors of intolerance, discrimination, hate, and prejudice – nothing more.”
James opined that there were ulterior motives behind the resolution, aside from promoting tolerance and inclusion, namely an effort to bolster Charlotte’s bid to land the Democratic National Convention.
“If this board was truly serious about standing up, in particular the liberals and the Democrats, for homosexual rights, they would have done a whole lot more,” James said. “This is an attempt to put a nice, fancy, glossy façade on something that kind of got out. I don’t think it’s a dirty little secret, because I honestly think that the people of Mecklenburg County and North Carolina don’t support homosexual rights because they believe it’s wrong, they believe it’s immoral.”
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