A creatuve response to bigotry

Thanks to Huffington Post for this story:

Salem, Massachusetts Mayor Kim Driscoll found a creative solution to anti-gay phone calls her office has been receiving.   Here's the background:   Gordon College, which calls itself a Christian college, has a student behavior code that prohibits "homosexual practice" among its students.    

Recent White House initiatives will ban any federal contractor from LBGT discrimination;  presumably that would include some schools that receive federal contracts, research grants, etc.   I'm not sure whether grants or student loans would count.   Anyway, this prompted a letter signed by the college president asking for an exemption from this requirement -- that is, that Gordon College be allowed to reject LBGT applicants to the school.

[As an aside, I have to interject here and address Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion in the Hobby Lobby case.   Justice Alito, do you not at least now see how naive you were in writing that this decision was narrowly limited to the case before you?   Your hollow reassurance that this was not going to have any sweeping effects was so patently false to those of us who live in the real world.    Either (1) you didn't really believe what you wrote when you wrote it;  or (2) you are way too naive and isolated from real life to have the power given to you as a Supreme Court Justice.]

Now, back to the story:  In response to this anti-LGBT discrimination, Salem's Mayor Driscoll informed the college that it would no longer be allowed to use the Salem Town Hall for events.   That's when the angry, anti-gay phone calls began coming in to the mayor's office, many of them from out of state.

The mayor's creative solution:    She has announced that, for each such call her office receives, she will donate $5 to the local North Shore Alliance of GLBT Youth.  Brava, Mayor Driscoll.  What a clever way to turn an ugly impulse into something good.   

It reminds me of a similar creative solution concerning the Missouri Adopt-a-Highway roadway cleanup program, in which local groups agree to keep a highway section cleaned of litter in exchange for a roadway sign acknowledging their participation..   Several years ago,  the Ku Klux Klan wanted to participate.   Missouri officials refused.   The Klan sued, and a federal court said that was an unconstitutional infringement of free speech.

Missouri's DOT had to assign the Klan a highway section.   So they did -- a section that they had quickly renamed The Rosa Parks Freeway.

The Klan apparently wasn't too happy about this.   They never did any clean up and were eventually dropped from the program for lack of participation.

Ralph