Statement in Support of Springfield Township Anti-Discrimination Ordinance

9/14/11

“My God is not a bigot”

For nearly a year, the Board of Commissioners has been looking into an ordinance to ensure that members of the LGBT community are provided with the same basic protections as the rest of Springfield. We have heard from a wide variety of voices from those who think the ordinance is such common sense to be unnecessary to those who think the ordinance is a conspiracy with an endgame of protecting bestiality and pedophilia.

We have listened to the people and made adjustments. The current ordinance is much simpler than those passed by other municipalities. It does not provide adjudication, just voluntary mediation. This will enable that people can be heard without a costly, adversarial trial-like environment. The ordinance provides that an aggrieved person can bring an action in County Court without the Township participating as a party. I am proud of the simple, streamlined yet effective product.

We heard concerns about the conflict between religious views and the principles of equality. To that end, we provide an exemption for religious institutions. Some people feel that we went too far in the exemption but I caution that good law is the result of thought, deliberation and compromise. While I would prefer that nobody discriminates, I think we need to reconcile conflicting views. I hope that those who harbor negative thoughts about the LGBT community will also show such reconciliation.

We are not legislating against religious values; we are legislating against intolerance of the values of others. The ordinance is all about intolerance. It is not about encouraging any particular value or behavior. If people wish to limit the type of people they love, that is their right. But let’s not get in the business of telling our neighbors whom they should love. Picking one’s soulmate is one of our most glorious and human events in our lives. Let’s allow freedom to all on this choice.

We are not promoting a particular lifestyle; we are promoting the freedom to live the lifestyle of your own values.

Intolerance is best practiced in assessing one’s own faults, not the faults of everybody else.

I was stung by a letter that called into question my parenting skills for my support of tolerance. I have reflected seriously on such a profound accusation. What message should parents send to our children? I believe that we should teach our children to love and respect everybody. If my children’s friends have two moms or two dads, then that is a teaching moment of celebration, not condemnation.

I have been accused of being part of the “Gay Agenda,” told that my real endgame is to foster bestiality, sado-masochism and child molestation. But this is not the Gay Agenda. The Gay Agenda is safe streets, good schools, equal opportunity, efficient trash pickup and exemplary snow removal.

We have heard testimony saying that Civil Rights should not be a priority because we have little or no documented instances locally against LGBT residents. None of this opposition has come from the LGBT community. If Civil Rights is such a low priority then why have we drawn more public comment than any other action over the past decade? It is time to tell the world that the LGBT community is not an afterthought in our priorities. Everybody deserves respectful treatment.

We have heard the argument that expanding the state’s Human Relations Act is usurping authority from Harrisburg and is pre-empted. But the Commonwealth Court clearly rejected this argument in the 2005 Hartman v. City of Allentown decision where it held that the Supreme Court “looks favorably on the autonomy of each municipality to provide protections to accommodate its citizens in the area of anti-discrimination.” The Act itself states “nothing contained in this act shall be deemed to repeal or supersede any of the provisions of any existing or hereafter adopted municipal ordinance.”

We have heard from many religious leaders and devout people. Just as the world has thousands of religious institutions, we have heard conflicting opinions on the acceptability of alternative lifestyles and the proper way to treat people deemed different. We are not here to reconcile conflicting religious interpretations but to make policy. All I can say is that the God I believe in is not a bigot.

Finally, I want to discuss the assertion that there is no intolerance in Springfield Township therefore the law is unnecessary.

• We heard from one landowner who said that forcing her to rent to gays would lower her property values. How can you explain that logic except by intolerance?
• We heard from the Oreland Evangelical Presbyterian Church in a letter signed by the congregation opposing the ordinance. The pastor felt that providing any governmental sanction of the LGBT lifestyle was wrong. The letter said to do so “is not good law, not good governance, not good sexual ethics, and certainly not good parenting.”
• Springfield has always been a great place to live and I believe the vast majority of its citizens are not intolerant. However, Springfield has never been immune from intolerance. Many of the homes in Springfield, including those of some of us in this room, were deeded with “Whites Only” deed restrictions. While these restrictions are no longer legally enforceable, they are a painful reminder of past intolerance. Moreover, many do not remember that our first African-American graduate of Springfield High School was not until 1970. Also, I have here a copy of the admissions certificate from 1926 of a township resident to the Ku Klux Klan. While we all hope the Klan is long gone from the Township, to assert that intolerance is totally gone is, sadly, wishful thinking.

We had a very well attended special meeting last week about the possibility of electronic billboards along Bethlehem Pike. Driven by the decision of our Pennsylvania Supreme Court, we have been forced to make sure our laws provide a home for billboards somewhere within our communities. There is a painful irony to see that our state better protects the right of billboards to exist over the rights of our brothers and sisters in the LGBT community to do so. Tonight we have a chance to stand up and be counted in our support for our fellow men and women.

I proudly support this ordinance.

Jeffrey T. Harbison
President
Springfield Township Board of Commissioners