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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > September > 18
Friday, September 18, 2009
From Peggy Lehner: Gay rights bill is about inalienable rights
This is the prepared text that State Rep. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, read from before voting for legislation banning discrimination against gays in employment and housing.
I rise to support House Bill 176.
This has not been an easy decision for me, and I know that there are many people who are going to be very disappointed by my support for this legislation. But I would like to share with this body why I have decided to support 176.
I have spent much of my life defending the right to life of unborn children.
While my personal religious faith has certainly played an important role in my opposition to abortion, ultimately that opposition has been grounded in perhaps the most famous sentence contained in the founding documents of our nation — those immortal words penned by Thomas Jefferson:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
I have vigorously argued for years that to deny the right to life to unborn children violates one of the most important principles upon which our great nation was founded — the unalienable right to life.
There are those who have taken the liberty of substituting the principle of unalienable rights with a principle of freedom of choice. I am not among those.
The constitution does not speak of choice when it refers to life, but nor does it speak of choice when it addresses liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The constitution does not grant this body the privilege of conferring liberty only on those who agree with us, live like us or believe what we believe. An unalienable right is one which we have no ability to deny and which, as legislators, we are sworn to defend.
There are those who are concerned that HB 176 creates special protections for one particular class of people. That simply is not the case, for those protections reside not in what this body does here today, but rather what our forefathers chose to provide over 200 years ago.
What we are doing today is simply reaffirming a principle upon which this nation was founded. There are also many people who, in good faith, believe that this legislation violates their freedom of religion. I appreciate the fact that the sponsors of this bill have attempted to take those concerns into account by excluding religious institutions from the employment provisions in the bill.
Balancing conflicting rights is never easy. The solutions are rarely perfect, but, in the end, I think (House Bill) 176 does a good job of affirming the basic natural rights of all citizens. I support this bill and urge your careful consideration as well.
Permalink | Comments (29) | Post your comment | Categories: Civil Rights, Guest Columns, Ohio government, Ohio politics
Editorial: Region leads Ohio GOP on gay rights
When the Ohio House of Representatives passed a gay rights bill Tuesday, Sept. 16, 56-39, all Democrats voted for it, but only five Republicans.
Three of the five are from the Dayton area: Peggy Lehner, of Kettering; Terry Blair, of Washington Twp.; and Ross McGregor, of Springfield.
Good for them. They bucked some of the most vocal, active people in their party’s coalition. They will be derisively called “Rinos” — Republican in name only — for this one vote alone.
They did right by Ohio — which must project a modern, tolerant face especially to young adults or saddle itself with one more economic development problem it doesn’t need.
They did right by the Dayton-Springfield area, which can use a restoration of its old reputation as a place where both parties are moderate and forward-looking.
The did right by gays, who are entitled to their basic rights as Americans.
And they did right by the Republican Party, which needs to, once and for all, get over its gay hang-up.
When, in recent years, the discussion of gay rights turned to the marriage issue, opponents of gay marriage frequently said that they had nothing against gays, just very strong views about marriage.
But this bill only guarantees equal rights in housing and jobs. The case that the people who voted against it don’t have anything against gays is a little hard to believe.
Some opponents are pretty frank about their hostility. Says Rep. Lynn R. Wachtmann, R-Napoleon, to proponents:
“Keep your hands and morals and your immoral beliefs to yourselves. Don’t punish those who disagree with you.”
Rep. McGregor’s independence on this vote is not terribly surprising. He has broken with his party in recent votes on passenger trains, a moratorium on home foreclosures and the state budget.
Rep. Lehner’s vote will surprise a lot of people who still see her as an anti-abortion activist and, therefore, presumably a staunch right-winger. But she has displayed some moderate and pragmatic tendencies. She explains her vote in a piece on this blog.
Rep. Blair’s vote is the most surprising. Still in his first term in the legislature, he has portrayed his views with staunch conservative language and has been seen that way. But he was actually a co-sponsor of the bill.
The owner of a swimming pool company, he says, “I don’t care about a person’s personal life. I care about if they show up for work, if they do the job, if they come back tomorrow and do the job again.”
The logic is hard to fault.
The only Montgomery County legislator who disappointed was Rep. Seth Morgan, R-Huber Heights, who assiduously courts the religious-conservative part of the party’s base.
Aside from the legislators, there was another notable local player in the passage: the Rev. Mike Castle of Washington Twp.’s Cross Creek Community Church. He’s chair of Equality Ohio, a statewide organization that has fought for gay rights since Ohioans voted against gay marriage in 2004.
The House victory is an important symbolic one, at least. Some people question how much discrimination against gays actually occurs in housing and employment. They question whether legislation is needed. But symbolism has been part of legislative work forever.
This symbol declares that Ohio embraces the modern world and the traditional American values of equality and tolerance, at a time when, let’s face it, not everybody is on board.
Speaking of which, there is still the matter of the Ohio Senate. If one were to judge by the party label of the House opponents, the fight is uphill. The Senate is two-thirds Republican. Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, has not even promised a vote. Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, would be doing his community a service if he were to push for one, and to vote yes.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment | Categories: Civil Rights, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Ohio government, Ohio politics
Martin Gottlieb: Local Lincoln basher has problem with outcomes
As the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s visit to Dayton is being marked by various local events, an embarrassing truth must be confronted.
Well, “must” might be an exaggeration. Let’s just say that confronting it makes for a newspaper column.
The leader of the most anti-Lincoln faction in the North was the sometimes congressman from Dayton.
Clement Laird Vallandigham was the leader of the Copperheads, the stauncher anti-war wing of the Democratic Party, whose other wing was also not on board for the war or the fight against slavery.
(Since the Civil War era, the two parties have basically switched positions. Then the Republicans were the more progressive, Northern-based party with, eventually, black support; the Democrats were the conservative, Southern-based party without black support.)
Tellers of the Vallandigham story have various takes on why he opposed the war. Some present him as skeptical of war generally. (But he had supported the Mexican War — which Lincoln opposed — and labeled opponents traitors.)
Vallandigham himself made various cases against the Civil War. He said that if some states want to have slaves or exit the union, that’s their right.
And he insisted that the war was a power grab by Republicans, an effort to establish a sort of dictatorship. He apparently saw the Republicans as warring against the most Democratic part of the country.
That seems like the kind of argument you hear these days from the hyperpartisan radio and television screamers who wouldn’t put anything past the other side.
The intense partisan in Vallandigham kept showing up. Academic Frank Clement started his book about him (“The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War,”) with V’s arrival at the Harpers Ferry arsenal in Virginia. This was days after John Brown’s bloody, unsuccessful and notorious effort to stir up a slave rebellion there.
Vallandigham talked with a bedridden Brown and another participant. The Ohioan’s only interest was to find out if any Ohio Republicans were involved with Brown, so that he could use that against them politically.
You know the type.
The suspicion is hard to avoid that one reason he had seen opposition to the Mexican War as treasonous was that the war was waged by a Democratic president.
(Vallandigham once said — under provocation — that he didn’t care to live in a country where Lincoln was president.)
When he arrived in Dayton, Vallandigham had already served in the state legislature from the eastern edge of the state (New Lisbon, now Lisbon). His move west was in keeping with the times. He became editor and part owner of a Democratic newspaper, the Empire. He was also a lawyer.
He ran for a variety of offices, typically losing. He was elected to Congress from the 3rd District in 1858 and defeated in 1862. He ran for governor in 1863 and lost.
Lincoln’s visit to Dayton had nothing to do with Vallandigham. Lincoln was just campaigning for Republicans around the state, following the tracks of Stephen Douglas. Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, in a speech at Courthouse Square this week, characterized the Lincoln visit as a continuation of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
But Vallandigham did eventually become a big figure in Lincoln’s life. In 1863, federal troops arrested Vallandigham at his home at 323 E. First St. for his anti-war agitation.
The arrest was, of course, decidedly controversial. It apparently led to a mob’s storming and burning of a Republican newspaper, the Dayton Daily Journal.
But Lincoln asked, how am I supposed to bring the full force of the law down upon some illiterate young soldier who deserts while I ignore the leaders who urged him to desert?
Lincoln felt that times of “rebellion” require unusual restraints on free speech. Vallandigham said he “spit” upon any such restraint.
Rather than imprison Vallandigham, Lincoln had him delivered to the Confederacy, which turned out not to want him. He was exiled to Canada, whence he ran for governor of Ohio.
In 1864, Vallandigham got the national Democratic Party to label the Civil War a “failure,” just before the North turned the tide.
After the war, its Northern opponents largely faded from history. With a different outcome, perhaps Vallandigham would have a different place in history.
Any article about him must end with his end. Are you ready for this?
OK, so he’s a lawyer after the war, and he’s defending an accused murderer in Lebanon. He’s at the Golden Lamb (which had another name). In a hotel room, he demonstrates his theory that the dead guy actually shot himself:
He was kneeling, Vallandigham said, with his gun in his pocket, and he accidentally fired as he got up.
Vallandigham’s gun was loaded. Shot himself in the abdomen. Took up residence at Woodland Cemetery.
Outcomes weren’t his best thing. (But his client did go free.)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Local History, Martin Gottlieb
