LGBTQ Presidential Forum

Look at where we are? Can you believe it??

Crowds gather for the LGBTQ Forum in Cedar Rapids

The first thing to be noted about the LGBTQ Presidential Forum, featuring ten Democratic presidential candidates, is its historic character. Such a forum, dedicated to discussion of issues affecting the queer community, and in which candidates competed on allegiance to that community, was unthinkable even twelve years ago. In 2007-08, within the memory of even my first-year college students, the only candidate who supported gay marriage was the marginal Democrat Dennis Kucinich. Things have changed very fast for the better in this area--after years of spadework, of course, as with most overnight sensations.

The LGBTQ Presidential Forum was co-sponsored by The Advocate, The Cedar Rapids Gazette, One Iowa, and GLAAD, and was broadcast nationally by NBC.

We should also celebrate that the forum was more substantive than it could have been. Given how quickly the Democratic field, along with most of America, have come to broad agreement on gay rights, the discussion could easily have devolved into competing empty declarations support, a 21st century version of "Well, I hate the Romans a lot!" That the forum encouraged more informative expressions from the candidates was thanks to some of the questions, which got past the surface to inquire about violence against transgendered people, state religious exemptions laws, human rights advocacy in foreign policy, and other policy issues of particular interest.

The candidates, who included all of the leading contenders except Senator Bernie Sanders, were interviewed serially. 

Lyz Lenz of the Gazette interviews Joe Biden

They all answered a common question ("What would you do [for these communities] in your first 100 days?") and then two or three other questions from a rotating set of interviewers. This prevented give-and-take between the candidates, for better or worse. It also meant the candidates had to make a good first impression, or else.

The evening was punctuated by appearances by celebrities, including Angelica Ross who served as host. It took 15 minutes for Marianne Williamson, the first of the candidates, to get to the stage. I thought this tended to diminish both the candidates and the gravity of the electoral decision before us; perhaps the younger people in the crowd, who have actually heard of these celebrities, appreciated their contributions to the evening's program, but I found Ms. Ross in particular rather irritating as well as unnecessary.

Angelica Ross (Creative Commons via Wikipedia)

Besides that cavil, I have two reservations about the event:

First, a single-issue event such as this forum or the climate forum in Washington tends to define Presidents as people who deliver the goods (or not) to a series of constituencies. Anyone, even Donald Trump, can make promises. Moreover, narrow foci neglect issues of presidential management, which include the need to set priorities, allocate the budget, respond to new or complex information, and negotiate with political opponents. There was, in spite of the quality of some of the questions, a lot of box-ticking--we really do, as it turns out, hate the Romans a lot--and allegiance-proclaiming. Candidates used their opening statements to show that they had been in front of the social change in favor of gay rights: Cory Booker raised a pride flag at the Newark City Hall in 2006, Kamala Harris performed a gay marriage in 2004, Joe Sestak served with gays on a navy ship in the 1990s, and Joe Biden had been on the side of gays since he was a boy, which was a very long time ago indeed. So, we're all for gays and lesbians. Now, "when do we get our debate on reproductive rights?" someone asked after the forum. 

[This is not to defend the Kennedy-Nixon style of debates we've also seen this summer, which bring their own set of problems. But the single-issue forums absolutely beg for logrolling.]

Which leads me to my second reservation, which is that the value the sponsors and the audience placed on allegiance to the advocates' positions left little room to discuss tactics. I understand the frustration and impatience of many in the audience, but we also need to plan how to get to (and sustain) the inclusive world we want. The venerable "100 days" frame, which apparently cannot be killed no matter how many presidents it's inflicted on, puts the emphasis on immediate satisfaction. Sometimes it takes incremental steps to get to a goal--Don't Ask Don't Tell is wrong now, but in 1994 it was a huge step forward--and sometimes it takes negotiation. I don't have much good to say about Mike Pence, but I do believe in redemption, and sometimes people can see things in new ways if they're shown a positive vision. I'm not saying Pence is one of those people, but obsessing about whether Biden gets along with him or should be calling him "a good guy" is setting too pure a standard for politics.

The trick is to push forward, while leaving the door open for future allies to come around. "Evolution" should be encouraged, not permitted to become a "snarl" word. Because, faithful readers, your humble blogger has "evolved" on these issues. It was awhile ago, before the youngsters in the audience were born, but nonetheless, I was raised with a traditional view of sexuality, and it took some exposure and some gentle persuasion to get where I am. Our common life needs everybody, not just the pure.

Grace King and Molly Duffy, "Crowd at Coe Welcomes LGBTQ Discussion," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 21 September 2019
James Q. Lynch and Rod Boshart, "LGBTQ Forum Brings Marginalized Issues Into Mainstream of 2020 Presidential Campaign," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 22 September 2019

The video:

Why other people's health care matters

Unity Point Health-St. Luke's Hospital, Cedar Rapids
(Source: unitypoint.org)

This week's report from the U.S. Census Bureau showing the percentage of Americans without health insurance increased in 2018 shows that this issue is not going away any time soon (Casselman et al). The increase is the first since the economic recovery began, and the first under the Affordable Care Act of 2010. It occurred despite a decline in the poverty rate and sustained good economic indicators. When the economy flags, health care could become a real mess.

If the extent of health coverage has indeed peaked, it may indicate that President Donald J. Trump is successfully mismanaging the ACA to death, as he threatened to do in 2017. The administration has urged states to crack down on eligibility for Medicaid, which seems to be the biggest factor in the recent decline; it has also threatened immigrants their status would be affected by receiving Medicaid benefits, stopped enforcing the individual mandate, eliminated subsidies for insurance purchases, and stopped publicity and assistance efforts (Casselman et al).

James Morone's culture-centered review of seven decades of health care policy making, published in 2014, shows amidst the technical complexity and interest group influence there have been two strong themes throughout this time (2014: 172-173). Both themes have deep roots in American political culture. One is support for social insurance, the idea that all members of a community deserve a certain level of the stuff necessary for life. From Obama's second inaugural address: We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own (quoted at Morone 2014: 187).

The other is aversion to socialism, including what the American Medical Association's public relations firm began calling "socialized medicine" back in the mid-1940s. We are a nation of individuals who believe success (or failure) should depend on our own efforts, and that such success as we are able to attain should not be redistributed away from us by the government to someone whose efforts were insufficient to achieve the same good outcome. As Justice Antonin Scalia said during oral argument in the 2012 case, The federal government is... supposed to be a government of limited powers.... What is left? If the government can do this, what else can it not do?

Put that way, there's no escaping the value choice inherent in health care policy. My previous posts on health care, in 2013 and 2017, while allowing that responsible people could disagree, generally defined the problem as a case of fixable market failure. Morone (2014: 181-184) faults former President Barack Obama for an early focus on technical solutions that lost sight of the values underlying his policy effort.

So, let's talk values. To start with, I've already made explicit my communitarian values on this blog. From the start, I've argued that the problems of the 21st century--economic opportunity, environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and governmental finance foremost among them--point us to a shared destiny. We are a community, and the bell "tolls for thee," whether we like it or not. This has put me on the liberal side of today's American politics, despite my preference for non-partisanship. There's a lot to be said for markets and individualism, but I also believe our most serious common problems require collective solutions. Access to health care is one such problem.

Beyond that, I am a person of faith, at least nominally Christian, depending on your definition. I worship in the Christian tradition, at any rate, and find one particular aspect of Christianity distinctively compelling: the emphasis on redemption. No one, in Christian teaching, is ever so far gone that they can't recover. In fact, apparently nothing gets God off the couch to do the end zone dance of joy like recovering an individual thought to be lost. What do you think? Jesus asked his disciples. If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than the ninety-nine that never went astray (Matthew 18:12-13, NRSV).

Children's book version, from Concordia Publishing House

Of course, this story, along with the Good Samaritan and the lost coin and other examples, probably refers to spiritual rather than physical redemption, but as much healing as Jesus did during his lifetime, you'd think the logic could be extended. Sure, we are responsible for our own lives, whatever the hand we're dealt, as well as the consequences our actions have. But it must also be that no one should be allowed to fall so far as to be unrecoverable.

And that's what lack of health insurance--as well as its more obscure relative, underinsurance--do. People live precarious lives, getting sick more and longer, working and earning less, dying sooner, always one event away from financial ruin. This is one area of life where we have to have each other's collective backs, regardless of individual assessments of merit.

This is not to say the Affordable Care Act, even with needed revisions and better implementation, is the only answer to this need, nor is Medicare for All. By all means let's talk about a variety of approaches. That means engaging with the conversation in a serious way that looks for solutions, not ad hominem yipping about "socialism."

And it's even possible that heaven rejoices more over someone who is able to get health care they couldn't otherwise afford than they do over 99 healthy people, even if those people always eat right and exercise.

SOURCES

Ben Casselman, Margot Sanger-Katz, and Jeanna Smialek, "Share of Americans With Health Insurance Declined in 2018," New York Times, 11 September 2018, A1

James Morone, The Devils We Know: Us and Them in America's Raucous Political Culture (Kansas, 2014)

Mayors Bike Ride 2019

One year after rain forced cancellation of the event, the Labor Day Mayors Bike Ride was back on an utterly gorgeous day. Hundreds of riders participated, most of them enjoying the long route that began at Ellis Park on the northwest side. Among them was Brad Hart, mayor of Cedar Rapids, whose blue shoes you can see at lower left in the picture below. (For the record, the rest of Mayor Hart was attached to those shoes; it is just not pictured. He is in conversation with Councilman Dale Todd and my Coe colleague John Chaimov.)

A guest dj played pop songs of the 70s and early 80s, beginning with Peter Schilling's homage to David Bowie, "Major Tom." Attendees brushed aside the morbid nature of that song, and enjoyed complimentary coffee and doughnuts, along with information about trail development

 and bike safety.

Adequately caffeinated and doughnuted and safety-tipped, I headed out ahead of the crowd to my station on 10th Street SE, where I waved riders through and pressed the crosswalk button to keep the light green as long as possible. Due to construction on 3rd Avenue, the ride went down 4th Avenue, so I was a block away from my usual spot.

From there I had leisure for the following random thoughts:

1. Cycling in Cedar Rapids has come a long way. I wish for some exact numbers, but you don't need them to know that far more people are commuting by bicycle than were doing it ten years ago, when I first began volunteering at this event. The trails fill as fast as they can be built. A lot of credit goes to advocates like the Linn County Trails Association, the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization, and receptive people in city government like former Mayor Ron Corbett and City Council member Monica Vernon, who pushed for bike lanes and one-way to two-way street conversions. At least downtown and in the core neighborhoods, streets are more accessible to cyclists and pedestrians. Case in point: I don't know that this event has gotten more popular, but along my route I saw a lot of people riding other places, which is a change from even ten years ago. Even so... 

2. The Mayors Bike Ride still seems to surprise a lot of people. Enough people are plugged in to the event that it is annually a big deal. But I wonder how many other people are aware of it?--that is, before they encounter a huge cloud of cyclists as they make their way around town. A map of the route in the Gazette on Labor Day morning would let people know what streets are likely to be congested, so they could avoid them. (Yes, a lot of people in our town get their news from the paper version of the paper.) Today, one cyclist and one driver stopped to ask me what was going on. "The Mayors Bike Ride." "What's that?" I hope they join us next year!

Maybe this would be overkill for the Mayors Bike Ride, but we knew what was coming

3. Crosswalk countdowns can be confusing. I don't go as far as the prophet Jeff Speck, who argues in Walkable City Rules (Island Press, 2018) that cities should "Ban the beg buttons and countdown clocks," although it's a fair point that Anyone who drives in cities with these signals will tell you what its inventors should have realized: the rapidly ticking off seconds, in addition to informing pedestrians of remaining crossing time, also encourage drivers to gun it to beat the light (pp 178-179).

I will argue that where installed, the countdowns ought to be accurate. I've spent enough Labor Days at 3rd Avenue and 10th Street to tell you that at that traffic light, for which after all our conversations I've come to feel something like friendship, 0 means 0. At 1st Avenue and College Drive, on the other hand, the light continues to be green for maybe 20 seconds after the countdown runs out and before the green left-turn arrow.

At my station today, 0 meant 0... until the first wave of bicyclists came through. When the countdown came to 0, I held up my hand to stop them. This time, the light stayed green, which earned me a good bit of jawing from one thwarted rider. Subsequently I noticed that sometimes the light turned yellow when the countdown got to 0, and sometimes it stayed green for awhile. What this achieves I can't imagine.

View to the south, with the eccentric traffic light in foreground

4. 4th Avenue is still dreary. Standing too long at this intersection could depress a dachshund. Except for the lovely brick building housing the invaluable Catherine McAuley Center, we are pretty much in parking craterville.

View to the west across 4th Avenue SE 

Being in the MedQuarter means monotonous development and oceans of surface parking, albeit with banners...

and truly top-notch medical care should you require it. (I do.) This is too close to the center of town for the design to be this bad.