In the late 1980’s while teaching, I had a second job working at a Pop&Pop video store in Long Beach, California.

There were two very young fellow employees who were a bit giddy about life, and who refused to become politically active in, or even politically aware of the world in which they lived. For them life was all feather boas, late nights at the local clubs, and pretty much flaming out.

When asked, they said there was no need to work for GLBT rights because this was an “enlightened age” and our rights would come through natural progression and within a very short time.

Much has happened in the intervening years to show the age was not as enlightened as they had imagined, and I have at times wondered if there was a point at which they saw this, or did they somehow manage the last 25 plus years living in blissful ignorance.

Not long ago a senior student had asked me if the government could take away rights that were acknowledged through legislation or executive order.

He was concerned about something he had heard on the radio regarding discussions about not renewing the Voting Rights Act.

This was back in 2010, and such talk was going on.

I told him that it was possible, so voters needed to be really aware of the thinking of those who were running for office on the local, state, and national levels. Rights that had been acknowledged by legislation, especially a bill that had an expiration date, could be renewed, rejected, or modified.

The class did not think this was right, especially if the legislation only required that people acknowledge a right that already existed as we are all created equal and have been endowed by our creator with our rights.

Most vulnerable were those acknowledgements of rights that came through executive orders as these can be cancelled by the next person in the executive position.

Some rights, therefore, although theirs by the fact of their being human, were political footballs, and could be played with for political reasons.

Just as with those who hold that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and must be obeyed often play fast and loose with what is in there depending on how it applies to them or others, many who claim our founding documents are inviolate, often pick and choose according to political expediency.

Our creator gives all of us our rights, but these selective adherents insist people vote on to whom these rights apply.

Many of the students in that particular class were immigrants who were bought here by their parents and had never had reason to question whether that had been legal or not, but had become concerned there may be a surprise or two when they applied for college.

They were concerned that laws that benefited them could be revoked, just as those to whom the Voting Rights Act applied could find themselves losing the rights they had been “granted” up to the repeal, non-renewal, or modification of it.
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Using myself as an example, I pointed out that when I was “straight” I had all the rights and privileges of my brothers, but I had lost them in certain places when I accepted myself for who and what I was, and came out. The only way I could regain those rights was through legislation, but I had to realize that where one group of legislators would acknowledge my rights, another either wouldn’t, or would enact legislation to remove the ones I had.

I was in Oklahoma at the time where I basically had no rights, and where people were constantly asked to vote whether I could be a full citizen of my home country, or one holding second class status. It was possible that if my rights were accepted by vote or bestowed by legislation, those who opposed this could undo them depending on future elections.

Unlike other citizens who shared my creator endowed rights, my status was very politically fluid.

For eight years, GLBT state employees in Kansas could not be discriminated against, harassed, nor fired merely on the basis of their sexual orientation. People moved along in their careers, contributed to the betterment of the state, and took part in their communities.

That was until Governor Sam Brownback signed an executive order on Tuesday that removed the protections in employment that had been acknowledged by a  former Governor Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat.

The rescinding of these protections was not based on any evidence that they had been bad for the state, or there was a compelling state interest to rescind them. It was just pandering politics.

According to Brownback, “This Executive Order ensures that state employees enjoy the same civil rights as all Kansans without creating additional ‘protected classes’ as the previous order did. Any such expansion of ‘protected classes’ should be done by the legislature and not through unilateral action.”

So GLBT employees are subject to supervisors’ whims, and have had their equal treatment pulled from under them.

Interestingly, the financial policies of the governor have left his state’s finances in a sorry state, so he has found a distraction to keep people from dealing with his errors.

People will be fighting to get their rights back, their opposition, with a lot of religious support, will oppose that, and no one will be looking at the finances.

And, quite interestingly, those who harp on states rights and condemn the over reach of the federal government defend the governor’s action saying that until the federal government protects GLBT people, states shouldn’t have to do so on their own.

State Representative John Rubin, a Republican and a former federal judge, defended the governor’s decision when he said, “As a legal principle I would agree with what Gov. Brownback did. Until sexual orientation is either added in Kansas as a protected class under our law or added federally, which it isn’t now … I think that’s the Legislature’s prerogative. Whether they should be a protected class is a separate question … but it isn’t a protected class until we say it is.”

I will not go into it, but this argument is very familiar to me.

This is a case of not acknowledging people’s rights by an executive order, but subjecting the creator endowed unalienable rights to a discussion and vote of the majority, those whose rights are already taken for granted.

So, yes, boys and girls, your rights can be given and taken by those who are disinclined to accept you have them.