This week the Shelby County Commission was scheduled to begin action
on an ordinance which, in the context of constitutional logic and
simple justice, should be non-controversial but, alas, is unlikely to
be treated as such. We

refer to a measure brought by Commis-sioner Steve Mulroy that would
explicitly extend the protective umbrella of the U.S. Constitution to
cover a class of people whom it presumably already covers
implicitly.

What the ordinance does is prohibit discrimination of various kinds
on the basis of “sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.”
(And, yes, that would include, besides gays, lesbians, and, for that
matter, celibates, the relatively minute number of transsexuals —
i.e., persons who have endeavored to change their birth genders by
surgery or other means — who live in Shelby County.) The
ordinance would prohibit discrimination against any affected employee
of county government, it would prohibit such discrimination against an
employee by any contractor doing business with the county, and it would
prohibit — “subject to the limitations in state law and the
Shelby County Charter” — such discrimination against employees by
private employers operating in unincorporated Shelby County.

In our view, none of these provisions should merit even a modest
raising of an eyebrow, though the last of them, especially, which would
extend the ban against discrimination to private business, is likely to
provoke a good deal of discussion.

The issue is simple. Nobody, in either the public or the private
weal, would be required to extend to the affected individuals special
benefits or constitutional protections not made available, as a matter
of course, to all other citizens. Nobody, in either the public or the
private weal, would be required to log social time with the affected
individuals, any more than they are with any other class of
persons.

Nevertheless, there will be debate and opposition, both on the
commission and in the community at large — some of it on
professedly moral grounds, some of it relating to fears of add-on
responsibilities or fiduciary obligations on the part of
government.

Yet the issue involved is simple: All citizens are to be afforded
identical rights and protections under the Constitution. And, all
hair-splitting and legitimate moral preferences aside, opposition to
the proposed ordinance amounts to saying that constitutional rights are
not to be regarded as universal and, in the language of George Orwell’s
Animal Farm, some citizens are more equal than others.

The penalties provided by the proposed ordinance for breach of its
terms are hardly draconian. The most specific of them, directed at
contractors in violation of the ordinance, merely stipulates that the
commission may urge the county mayor to cancel the contract in question
and debar the offending contractor from doing business with the county
for three years.

Not everyone of good will is going to agree with us or with the
ordinance — which, as we see it, merely asks each of us to
respect the rights of others. But we are entitled to hope that debate
on the matter, should it proceed beyond a first reading this week, will
remain, as one opponent, Commissioner Mike Carpenter, put it, “toned
down and respectful.”