This article is part of HuffPost’s biweekly political newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) this week signed landmark legislation to protect the state’s LGBTQ community.
In the process, he and his allies are sending a message about the kind of state Michigan wants — and how it hopes to tackle the far-right agenda, within Michigan’s borders and beyond.
The new law amends the Elliott-Larsen Act, Michigan’s civil rights law, to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In practical terms, that means everything from ensuring landlords can’t reject LGBTQ tenants to ensuring employers can’t fire workers in same-sex marriages.
Advocates have been trying to pass something like this for about 40 years. They eventually broke because, in the 2022 election, voters returned Whitmer to office while giving full control of the legislature to Democrats. That hasn’t happened since the Reagan era.
The new House and Senate majorities have worked quickly. Initiatives that have been implemented or will be implemented include new tax credits for the working poor, repeal of anti-union laws and several initiatives designed to prevent gun violence – something that is on the minds of Michiganders after the mass shooting in February. Michigan State University.
Relative to these measures, the LGBTQ amendment will have an invisible impact on everyday life because the version of protection already exists. In a key case last year, the state’s Supreme Court ruled that sexual orientation and gender identity fall under the Elliott-Larsen law’s umbrella even without the new language.
But the courts can reverse themselves, especially in Michigan, where voters elect justices to the seven-member Supreme Court. Additionally, putting statutes on the books, as Whitmer and the legislature did, makes the protections more difficult to remove in the future.
And nothing of symbolic value in a country where attitudes on LGBTQ issues still vary, from individual to individual and, especially, from place to place.
“There are places in Michigan where I’m hesitant to hold my partner’s hand where I’m, you know, more guarded, where I’m not the real me,” Erin Knott, executive director of Equality Michigan, told HuffPost. “It really says to members of the LGBTQ community that they are loved and valued for just being who they are and that Michigan stands by them.”
At Thursday’s signing ceremony, Whitmer echoed that call while acknowledging that not all elected officials and states share the same feelings.
Brandon Bell via Getty Images
Michigan As The Anti-Florida
“Right now, there is a national attack on the LGBTQ+ community, especially trans neighbors, family and friends,” Whitmer said. “There are state legislatures all over this country that are devoting themselves to legalizing discrimination. This is dangerous, wrong and un-American.
Whitmer didn’t specify any countries, but it’s not hard to think of a few that qualify. At the top of that list is Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has promoted himself as a warrior against the “woke” crowd — an image he hopes will allow him to win the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, which he seems almost assured. seek.
Like Whitmer, DeSantis just won re-election and has partisan allies in the legislature that passed legislation. But the actual content of the legislation is very different. Instead of passing a law that makes it harder to get and carry a gun, DeSantis and Florida Republicans would make it easier. Instead of repealing old restrictions on abortion, they created new ones.
And then there’s the GOP agenda to limit what teachers can say about gender and sexuality, ban books that address these themes, and limit gender-affirming treatment. DeSantis and his allies bristle at the suggestion his agenda targets the LGBTQ community. This defense would have been more credible if his successor had not attacked his critics by calling him “makeup artist“and if he does not give a position in the public commission to a pastor who calls out homosexuality”bad.“
“This really says to members of the LGBTQ community that they are loved and valued for just being who they are, and Michigan stands by them”
– Erin Knott, Michigan Equality
DeSantis has characterized his agenda as an attempt to defend freedom from liberals to trample on the religious rights of Americans and gun owners or to indoctrinate vulnerable children. And Florida’s governor isn’t the only one making this pitch. Pretty much every GOP presidential contender — including the former president himself, Donald Trump — is using a version of it in his stump speeches today.
Whitmer on Thursday also invoked the cause of freedom, but from a very different perspective.
“Michigan is a state where we stand for people’s basic freedoms,” Whitmer said, “whether it’s your freedom to make your own decisions about your body, the freedom to go to school or work without worrying about a mass shooting, or the freedom to be who you love.”
The demand for freedom is one of national support. “What people don’t want is politicians deciding health care,” Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, told HuffPost on Friday. “They don’t want politicians telling you to go to the bathroom, they don’t want politicians telling you what books to read.”
A Play For The Center, Not The Periphery
The Elliott-Larsen Amendment is a Democratic bill signed by a Democratic governor. But Whitmer, in his remarks, emphasized the role Republicans played in promoting civil rights, both now and in the past.
Elliott-Larsen is named for two former state House members who sponsored it, Democrat Daisy Elliott and Republican Melvin Larsen. Elliott is no longer alive, but Larsen and appeared at the signing ceremony to a rousing ovation. Whitmer recognized him and later paid tribute to former Governor William Milliken, a progressive Republican whom Whitmer often cited as a role model for public service.
And just as Whitmer praised the two state Democratic legislators who led the campaign to pass the new amendment, Sen. Jeremy Moss and Rep. Jason Hoskins, they also went out of their way to show that some Republicans voted as. also. “These are values we all share,” Whitmer said.
“Michigan is a state where we stand for people’s basic freedoms.”
– Governor Gretchen Whitmer
This is not the kind of cross-party rhetoric from DeSantis, Florida Republicans or their counterparts across the state. Instead, he seems more interested in scoring points with Fox News viewers by making Democrats the enemy, not just of Republican voters but of America itself. In fact, one Florida Republican lawmaker recently introduced a stunt bill to effectively eliminate the state’s Democratic Party.
In Michigan, at least, this seems to be working to Whitmer’s and the Democrats’ advantage because the right-wing agenda is alienating many middle-of-the-road swing voters — including those who think primarily about economic issues.
One of Whitmer’s favorite lines, which he repeated Thursday, is that “bigotry is bad for business.” Knott of Equality Michigan and Amritha Venkataraman, Michigan state director for the Human Rights Campaign, told HuffPost that some employer groups have been enthusiastic partners in advocacy efforts because they think the promised protection against anti-LGBTQ discrimination helps to attract talent.
Political Issues – And personal too
But it’s hard to watch and listen to Michigan Democrats and not understand motives beyond political pragmatism at work.
Although the enactment of the Elliott-Larsen amendment is four decades old, the push received an extra boost last year in response to anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in Michigan politics — and after speeches defending the LGBTQ community statewide. Sen. Mallory McMorrow who went viral.
Political efforts to support LGBTQ-friendly candidates follow, and strengthen, the campaign to protect abortion rights that dominated the 2022 election, directly to the Democratic majority that includes not only a record number of women in the highest roles but also. a record number of LGBTQ public members, including House Speaker Pro Tempore Laurie Pohutsky and Attorney General Dana Nessel, who first became famous by litigating one of the key cases that led to national marriage equality.
Nessel spoke at the signing ceremony, recalling the stories of discrimination that have come to her office over the years – and how the new law will make it easier for her to act in the future. He explained that, for him, the war was personal. Whitmer did the same thing when she emphasized that in addition to being a longtime and visible ally of the LGBTQ community, she is also “the mother of a proud gay woman.”
Reflecting on the four-decade struggle to pass the amendment and the resistance advocates faced every step of the way, Whitmer quoted Detroit native and well-known LGBTQ ally Lizzo: “It’s about time.” Then he signed the legislation while sitting in front of a pride flag and wearing a Michigan “LOVE” pin on his lapel — once again sending a message that DeSantis and other alt-right avatars won’t.