Via Keep Troy Strong, the newly elected Mayor of Troy, Michigan posted the following message on Facebook.
“I think I am going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that queers can get married there.”
Mlive confirms:
Daniels confirmed today that she did post the message, though she said she decided against ditching the bag.
“I may have said something like that,” she said. “I probably shouldn’t have used that kind of language, but I do believe marriage should be between one man and one woman.”
Keep it classy, Mayor Daniels.
I take these stories personally. Very. It is about about me. I was raised in Michigan. I worked in Troy, MI for two years in the the 1990, right off the Big Beaver Road exit. It seemed like Troy was a pretty nice place. Troy is really better than this. Troy deserves better leadership than Mayor Daniel's and her inclination to post infantile, nasty comments on Facebook.
The news is uniformly awful these days out of Michigan, on so many fronts and especially LGBT issues.
You want to stop loving New York because we passed marriage equality? Well, you go right ahead, Mayor Daniels. But before you sneer your snotty, holier-than-thou crap at my adopted state, take a look at your own. You know, the one your neighbors elected you to lead? It doesn't seem like the of beating up on "queers" is pulling your state out of the economic doldrums it's been in since I was a child in the 1970s.
Maybe if the leaders of the Great Lakes State worried less about what the queers were doing and more about creating an 21st Century environment your state wouldn't be in the mess it's in?
Maybe Mayor Daniels should grow up, log off from bashing gays on Facebook and get get to work on the serious problems facing her state?
As Detroit Free Press columnist Ron Dzwonkowski wrote in 2008:
Young people are leaving based on a perception that Michigan is an “old economy,” a dying state. I know of some who are going to places such as Chicago or Dallas and taking jobs below the level of their state-subsidized college education, thinking that if something is going to happen for me, it’s more likely to happen there than in Michigan.
Count me among the young, bright, college educated people who long ago left Michigan for greener pastures. Statements like Mayor Daniels only confirm, given the choice between the home of my birth and my adopted home, I did the right thing.
Left Michigan in 1993. Glad to stay away. Good luck to you and your colleagues gay-bashing your way out of your depression. (Hint: It won't work.)
