If you’re a Washington Postie, this has to be a real head-scratcher: A municipal government achieves a milestone in diversity (meaning there’s not a straight white guy to be found), only to come under fire for … its lack of diversity?
According to Post Senior Correspondent Scott Wilson, in November 2017, the city of Palm Springs, California achieved progressive nirvana. The planets aligned, Gaia smiled, the coyote laid down with the roadrunner, and Palm Springs elected America’s first-ever all-LGBT city council. Like, all the letters and everything.
In what sounds like the start to a joke that will get you disinvited from hosting the Oscars, Wilson explained, “A bisexual woman and a transgender woman joined three gay men on the council.” Man, when that happens, your seven chakras are meshed up like a Swiss watch. Good karma (or whatever fits your spiritual-but-not-religious worldview) for years!
Here was Wilson:
“It was pretty cool, a pretty cool thing,” said council member Geoff Kors, noting that adding the “B” and the “T” to the council that night was particularly special. “It sent a very powerful message to anyone out there who felt alone.”
The happy moment did not last long. The council elected in November 2017 also happened to be all white, and some people did not think that was cool at all.
Well, if you didn’t see that coming, you haven’t studied the territorial habits of the North American Progressive. See, although Palm Springs is majority LGBT, it also has a large Hispanic population, and they’re demanding representation on the council. What Wilson called a Latino “civil rights group,” the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, threatened a lawsuit. The council decided to break the city into election districts, guaranteeing at least some of the Fab Five would lose their seats next election.
And just like that the dream of having the awesome power of zoning and building permitting and parking regulation in LGBT hands was ripped from those Palm Springs LGBT kids feeling alone in their mostly LGBT city.
But you live by identity politics, you die them. Wilson wrote:
What was viewed by many as a broad step toward greater diversity instead turned Palm Springs into a forum for a debate about what diversity means — and who, exactly, is best suited to represent whom in a state shaped for decades by identity politics.
So classifying people according to race or religion or what gets them feeling all atingle isn’t the best way to foster civic amity? Who knew? The city’s Latino population (or at least the “civil rights” group claiming to speak for it) is wondering “whether gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender politicians understand the changing needs of those outside the community.”
And who could blame them? The city council seems to spend a lot of energy virtue-signaling and poking its nose into national politics. It “passed a resolution saying Palm Springs would abide by the climate-change goals of the Paris agreement despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the environmental accord,” Wilson wrote. “The city joins legal briefs about LGBTQ issues and takes positions on immigration and health-care policy.”
“This is not my favorite analogy, but Palm Springs punches above its weight,” Kors said. “People care what we think on certain issues. We don’t just take positions to take positions.”
But you're not filling potholes, either. And the council has pressing problems back home -- issues more disturbing than losing their municipal monopoly to another grievance group: the mayor might “secretly” be a Republican. Really.
