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Editorial: Legislation lets Idaho stand up for equal rights

Wed., Feb. 2, 2011

It would be some surprise if Idaho lawmakers added sexual orientation to the state’s anti-discrimination law. They’ve rejected the idea for so long, and so consistently.

But now that Senate Minority Leader Edgar Malepeai, D-Pocatello, has introduced a bill to that effect, and since the Idaho Human Rights Commission has come to its senses and restored its support of such a provision, let’s just say that Idaho has a Nixon-goes-to-China opportunity if the Legislature will only seize it.

It took a conservative Republican president, remember, to do something no liberal Democrat would have dared to try: restore U.S. relations with communist China. A red state like Idaho could make an attention-getting statement about its commitment to civil rights by joining the mostly blue states (Washington being one) that have affirmed gay and lesbian citizens’ right to be full participants in society.

Washington protects sexual orientation? Big deal. Idaho does? Wow!

Idaho may be bluer than lawmakers think regarding human rights:

• A 2008 Public Policy Survey by the Social Science Research Center at Boise State University found that 63 percent of the respondents believed “it should be illegal to fire an employee because they were perceived to be gay or lesbian.”

• In North Idaho, activists rallied commendably to demonstrate their rejection of Richard Butler and his Aryan Nations racists. Even before that, as early as 1968, notable Republican leaders like former Gov. Phil Batt pushed for legislation to secure human rights in state law.

• Except for a one-time lapse last year, the Idaho Human Rights Commission has supported inclusion of sexual orientation among the protected classes identified in statute.

In Idaho as elsewhere, understanding about this issue is progressing generation by generation – not fast enough, perhaps, to fully satisfy the cause of justice, but steadily and relentlessly.

Idaho legislators can ignore the opportunity or make the rest of the nation sit up and take notice of Idahoans’ sense of fairness and respect. Or the state can turn its back on the gathering support for fair treatment and someday find itself as one of the dwindling number of holdouts unready to concede the case for equal human rights.

The legislative history may not instill optimism that it will happen this year, but the track record outlined above suggests a disconnect between Idahoans’ values and their representatives’ voting patterns. Sen. Malepeai has afforded his fellow lawmakers a chance to catch up with their constituents.

Go ahead, Boise, surprise us.