We in Philadelphia live in a relatively progressive bubble compared with what’s happening in the vast majority of the country, where LGBTQ Americans are not protected from discrimination.
To be clear, antidiscrimination laws don’t prevent LGBTQ people from experiencing hardship in employment, the provision of public services or securing housing. The legislation simply ensures that recourse exists to rectify the discrimination.
Outside Philadelphia, our country is one that includes an attorney general easily imaginable in the role of a plantation owner, cracking the cat o’ nine tails as slaves fail to pick cotton fast enough. But it’s not 1830 — it’s 2018. And yet, when Jeff Sessions made an off-script remark in February in an address to the National Sheriffs Association — “The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement” — it might as well be 1830. The repercussions were probably about the same.
This week, Sessions announced a “religious liberty task force,” as if the legislative and executive branches currently under the control of mostly older, white male Republicans didn’t already ensure their purely self-interested agenda is moving forward. The task force is ordered to lean toward the broadest possible definition of religious freedom when interpreting federal laws. With LGBTQ people remaining outside the federal protections afforded to religion and other categories, this task force threatens to trample rights that, for example, currently prevent city funds going to religious institutions that discriminate against LGBTQ people.
People of color have known since the founding of this country how dangerous white supremacy is. They know it is the true foundation of this republic. Why haven’t we listened? Now, we have leadership that does not represent the majority of Americans. It’s de Toqueville in reverse: We are living in the tyranny of the minority, not the majority.
To wit, from “Democracy in America: Vol. 2”:
“So in the United States the majority has an immense power in fact and a power of opinion almost as great; and once the majority has formed on a question, there is, so to speak, no obstacle that can, I will not say stop, but even slow its course and leave time for the majority to hear the cries of those whom it crushes as it goes.”
The majority of Americans believe in the following: marriage equality, gun reform, a radical change in the healthcare system, Social Security and better infrastructure, all of which are being dismantled by the current administration.
We live under the tyrannical rule of the minority, and with roughly 100 days to the midterms, it’s time to wake up.