As you might have heard, John Gard, the Republican leader of the Wisconsin Assembly retained the Alliance Defense Fund (Dr. James Dobson's group) to defend the legislature against a lawsuit seeking health and other benefits for domestic partners of gay state employees. The legislature was not named in the suit, but whatever.
It's difficult to argue with these people on moral or ethical grounds when all they have to do is say, "It's in the BIBLE!" and then plug their ears and say, "Lalalalalalala I can't hear you lalalala."
But despite their support from the religious right, their bread and butter continues to come from business and industry. So it's important to get business leaders to tell them they're lunatics. My effort is below the fold.
In
my column in Madison Magazine this month, I make the economic development argument for nondiscrimination:
The problem, from a business perspective, is reputation. UW is the last Big Ten school not to offer domestic partner benefits. The UW has not been the last in the Big Ten in anything since Don Morton thought "The Veer" was a good offensive scheme.
Like it or not, Wisconsin is widely regarded as the land of cheese and white people, not as a progressive place where the increasingly important "Creative Class" flourishes. Remaining last in the Big Ten does not help that reputation. It undermines the progress made by Republicans like Lee Dreyfus, who signed the nation's first law protecting gays from discrimination, and Tommy Thompson, the business-friendly governor who championed a "big tent" for the GOP where gays and lesbians were welcome.
Think about it this way: If I'm looking to start a business, I want people who can think outside that proverbial box. How is someone going to solve research and development problems, come up with creative customer retention strategies, reach new markets and generally help my business out if they still seriously think it's OK to discriminate? Say I'm in New York or Singapore and looking for a spot to set up shop or open a branch office. I hear that Wisconsin wants to ban gay marriage and hires extremists to defend discrimination. This makes me doubt my chances of finding outside-the-box thinkers in Wisconsin. I'm taking my money elsewhere.
This is not speculation. If you read a story called "Queer Quandary" in Madison Magazine's February issue, religious activists in Cincinnati managed to amend the city charter to make sure gays and lesbians had no legal protection. The city's economy immediately -- immediately -- lost around $45 million when eight groups cancelled conventions, and twelve others took Cincinnati off the short list. Who knows how many other opportunities were lost in the ten years it took the city to come to its senses and repeal the amendment?
Plus, a Brookings Institution study found that the single strongest indicator of a vibrant and growing high-tech economy is a large gay population. It's not because gays make the best high-tech workers. But where you find a large gay population, you also find a lot of people who don't mind living near a large gay population. People who, unlike John Gard, have open minds.
Bottom line: it's a competitive global economy. We are not only up against Minnesota and Illinois in the competition for research money, scientists, entrepreneurs and new businesses. We're going head-to-head with California in both dairy and biotech. We're competing with New York, Florida and Texas -- not to mention India, China and Europe -- for people and talent. We've already got the weather as a strike against us. We don't need another. The crusade against alternative lifestyles -- and the resulting exodus of creative class workers -- won't end until business leaders wake up and bring the Republican Party back to its roots as an advocate for business, jobs, and economic development rather than a mouthpiece for a particular religious point of view.