Kentucky, you have my sincerest condolences

Hoowee, you gotta be some other kind of homophobe bigot to call for a special session of the legislature just so you can rip away insurance benefits from gay families, but that is exactly what Governor Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky is planning on doing. It takes some other kind of hate to do this, especially in light of the fact that there will be innocent children who will be impacted as well.

The mind reels:

Legislation to prohibit publicly funded universities and colleges from extending domestic partner benefits to families of faculty and staff was narrowly defeated last march in committee.

The bill was prepared after the University of Louisville decided in July to offer the benefits - making it the first publicly funded college in the state to do so. (story) The University of Kentucky later followed also offering health benefits to same-sex domestic partners.

[…]

State Sen. Ernesto Scorsone (D) the state's only openly gay legislator is accusing Fletcher of "trying to score political points by hurting people."

"It's clear what he's doing here on the call, and, quite frankly, it's sad we have a governor who is a doctor and he's trying to keep people from buying health insurance," Scorsone told the Herald-Leader newspaper.

Well all I can say to ole Ernie is: Let the Brain Drain Begin. No wonder Gay-friendly cities enjoy more economic prosperity than ass-backwards places like Ernie's neck of the woods:

Richard Florida, a professor from George Mason University and author of the book The Rise of the Creative Class argued that the more "gay-friendly" a city is, the more economically prosperous it will be.

In his March 2007 paper "There Goes the Neighborhood," Florida uses something he calls the "Bohemian-Gay Index" to demonstrate that "artistic, bohemian, and gay populations" have a "substantial effects on housing values across all permutations of the model and across all region sizes." He also found that more open and "gay-friendly" areas generally support higher income levels.

[…]

After realizing that the top 5 "gay-friendly" cities in the US -- San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Portland (Oregon), and Tampa -- are also prosperous centers of technological innovation, Florida decided to do a more thorough study. The results, he said, held up for other cities as well.

"Places that were open to gay and lesbian people were also the kind of places that could attract not only smart young people, but also Indian and Chinese immigrants who come here and start a lot of high tech companies," he said. "They were attracting people across the board, building up a talent base, and then innovating and starting these new enterprises."

Florida said he thinks it is the open mindedness of these cities that has allowed economically successful communities to emerge, rather than prior economic success attracting open minded people.

Well all I know is that when our 3 children were young, my husband’s employer gave him the choice of 3 cities to which we could transfer and move our family. One of those cities was in the South, but had the mildest weather of the three cities, so naturally, this little Arizona native opted for that city in the South.

My husband, in no uncertain terms, made it clear that he would never, ever raise his 3 children in the South. Never. End of discussion. We moved to Minnesota instead. And guess what? We had 12 of the most wonderful, albeit frigid, years of our lives. I long to live in a progressive city again.

It took me a while to “get” why my husband was so adamant on this point, but stories like the one above have hammered the point home with me. I cannot even imagine raising my children in such a homophobic, backward state like Kentucky and then finding out one of my own children was literally an enemy of the state.