Play nice

So, to recap. Some people get upset when customers spit on the floor of their business. Some people are freaked out by the possibility of having to work with men wearing dresses. That means Fort Wayne is an intolerant city. Or something.

Perhaps we should back up a bit. Both of those stories were covered on our front page yesterday. I ran out of time to comment on them, but I don't want them to go unremarked upon here, since they deal with the developing trend of America's status as a "minority-majority" nation. If any of us can end up being in "the minority" at any given time under the right circumstances, perhaps that's an issue we should explore.

"Men wearing dresses" is obviously a gross oversimplification of the reaction to Councilwoman Karen Goldner's failed attempt to introduce an ordinance to prohibit discrimination against "transgender" people who believe they're one sex trapped insided the body of the other sex. But it's understandable shorthand for an issue that is on the cutting edge of accommodating differences. I confess I'm one of the transgender skeptics. How common is the condition -- one in 100,000? -- and what causes it? Is this something we should accept, or is it a mental illness that we should try to correct? If we accept the premise that tolerance is required, what are the chances our acceptance will be abused by pranksters? How far does the majority have to go to make room for a tiny, tiny minority that makes us feel uncomfortable?

But the issue before City Council Tuesday was whether to engage that controversy or just ignore it. The council chose the latter, voting 5-4 on a party line vote to not even let the proposal be introduced. Goldner and the other three Democrats wnted to disucss the issue, but the five Republicans voted to kill it at the door.

When this issue first came up a few weeks ago, I disagreed with our columnist Kevin Leininger, who said the council should let the proposal be introduced and discussed, even if it was clear it would be defeated in the end. With all local legislators have to deal with today, including having to do more and more with less and less during a fiscal crisis, why waste time on smemthing with no chance of becoming a law? Even if the ordinance passed, it couldn't be enforced by the city's Metropolitan Human Relation's Commission in the absence of similar federal or state legislation.

But I've been rethinking that. Part of the reason can be found in the comments of 6th District Councilman Glynn Hines, someone I don't agree with on a lot:

Hines said that when considering a civil rights measure such as this ordinance, people should ask themselves, “What if it was me?” and not take it for granted that they're right. “We're very judgmental,” he said, remarking on e-mails he received on the ordinance. He said e-mailed comments were about equally divided between supporters and opponents of the measure.

The council's job is not just to take up cut-and-dried issues and vote them up or down. It's also to provide a forum for issues residents --even a minority of residents -- think are important. If there's something I care about, even if I know I'm in the minority, I'd like to think I'd at least get a hearing before the council. If they vote to not even consider the issue, let alone discuss it, I would feel my status as a citizen of Fort Wayne -- equally desevring the considerations due all other citizens -- was in doubt. The council's Republican majority was wrong to just block any discussion of this issue.

And so, on to spitting.

The Anderson-based owner of a local coin-operated laundry had to go quickly into the apology mode on discovering an employee had put a sign on the door that said, "For sanitary reasons, no Burmese people allowed." The sign was removed, but not before it had gotten a lot of attention in the civil rights community. Much later in the story we learn what the fuss was about. There's another sign at the laundry, both in English and in Burmese, that offers a clue: "No spitting! No betel nut!" The remaining presence of that sign apparently upsets some -- it sends an "unfriendly to Burmese" signal -- but it's hard to make the case for taking it down. Spitting out betel nut juice is so common that just such a sign is also posted atop the counter at the Burmese Advocacy Center.

The obvious point is made that the employee of the laundromat is a retrograde nativist apparently unaware of the last several decades of civil rights law. You can prohibit unwanted behavior, but you don't go around trying to ban every member of the group based on the actions of some of its members. The story also nicely covers the other side of the issue, which is that newcomers to the community are as obligated to understand and respect our customs as the community is to understand and tolerate theirs. Sensitivity is a two-way street:

Health department spokesman John Silcox said there are “ongoing issues about what can and can't be tolerated” with newly arriving immigrant and refugee groups, especially in the area of hygiene. Fort Wayne is home to about 5,000 Burmese