The Lens of Mayor Longbine

Ridiculous topic raised by bigoted commissioner provides windows into civics, cowardly capitulation, and corporate rule

I hate writing this. I hate having to write this. I hate knowing for a year that I'd have to write this.

I don't have that long a list of hates. I hate bigots and bullies and fascists. I hate the unaccountable. I hate the willfully ignorant and proudly stupid.

Which means I really hate Bill Longbine, the current mayor of my home town, Salina, Kansas.¹, ² (I’m pretty disgusted with the rest of the city commission as well.)

See, a year ago, when Bill was just a city commissioner and vice mayor, he decided to pull a stunt. Oh, he probably thought he was Martin Luther with 95 theses at the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, but it was a stunt.

The June 12, 2023, commission meeting included pro-forma city proclamations: photo-ops for local organizations where the city recognizes them, usually around anniversaries or achievements. They’re nice. They’re fluffy. We do scads of these.

Trouble was, the June 12 meeting was slated to issue the proclamation acknowledging Pride Month in Salina.

You’ll note that Bill Longbine “recused” himself just before the Pride proclamation and returned just after. More precisely, he “excused” himself, leaving the room, so that he could vice-signal to certain bigoted, Trumpian constituents (his electoral base) that he disapproved of…something having to do with Pride, LGBTQIA+ folks, or whatever.

During his at-large campaign for city commissioner, Longbine had presented himself as a normie, as his campaign flyer indicates:

But the town’s small, so word circulated that Longbine was favored by the “Granny Brigade” a largely Facebook-organized group of shameless, deluded nutters who jumped whenever Trump said “Ivermectin” or Christopher Rufo said “CRT.” The Grannies would show up to school board meetings to object to “groomer” content in library books and big words they couldn’t grasp in Equity Council materials. They drove through the streets in caravans of honking, Trump flag-adorned vehicles, intimidated those they deemed liberal spies, and generally formed the hometown cheer squad for Jan. 6 and all its entangled derangement. Just the perfect storm of loonies combining threads of QAnon, religious hate, decades of talk radio radicalization, Trumpian weekly marching orders, and all related dipshittery.

But back to Bill Longbine: What was so horrible about the 2023 Pride Month Proclamation? Read it yourself:

Did Bill take issue with the fact that LGBTQ+ folks have made contributions and achieved much? Does he support discrimination? Oppose equal rights for LGBTQ+ people? Think they don’t deserve dignity and respect? Reject inclusivity and diversity in our community? Fact is, to this day, citizens don’t know.

At the time, Longbine’s only public explanation was this (I’d link, but it’s paywalled by my hedge-fund-gutted husk of a hometown paper, emphasis mine):

While not required to respond to statements by citizens during the citizens' forum, Longbine did speak about his action during the Pride proclamation on June 12.

"I do have deeply held beliefs and values," Longbine said. "This did conflict with my beliefs and values and I have that right."

Longbine said he had a conversation with Raiden Gonzales, a board member of North Central Kansas Pride who read the proclamation.

"He had no issue with (my actions)," Longbine said. "I stand by my decision. I'm sorry (those who disagree) feel that way."

Finally, Longbine said he meant no hate or animosity toward the people the proclamation was dedicated to.

"I just could not acknowledge that I supported that proclamation," Longbine said. "(My actions) were not geared to any one person, it was the topic as a whole."

“Deeply held beliefs and values.” Which are…?

That should have been the first question from reporter Charles Rankin, but maybe Bill Longbine dodged him in a show of typical elected unaccountability. Clearly, there’s nothing that objectionable in the language of the Proclamation, unless Bill just has supremely toxic views, but no one has the power to make him answer the goddamn question.

But that was just his public response.

In private, in responses to his constituents, Bill revealed a little about how he “reasons.” Here’s one such letter, shared with me back when this all went down:

(I have no idea why certain words here are in tinier font.)

Note a couple of things.

Citing Probably the Worst Possible Court Ruling

First is Bill’s reference to “this weeks [stet] court ruling.” He was referring to 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a scandalously horrid Supreme Court decision irrelevant to this situation. The case was about a private business owner, not a public, elected official. It was about a bigoted woman in Colorado who suffered no harm and thus had no legal standing to ever get into court at all, let alone the Supreme Court. She was likely “groomed” as a plaintiff by the bad-faith but super well-funded, SPLC-designated hate-group (for anti-LGBTQIA+ positions, surprise!) Alliance Defending Freedom to manufacture a nation-sized hole in first amendment/public accommodation law for retrograde religious intolerance. ADF has been behind the Hobby Lobby decision, the Dobbs decision, and the effort to ban mifepristone, and it looks really likely that they and their client committed perjury in the Colorado courts in this case.³

(A more relevant example for Bill to reference might be that of Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who, citing her religious beliefs, refused to issue marriage certificates for gay couples. But last I heard, she was on the hook for $350,000 in damages and legal fees, so…not so noble a tale for Bill. No, goofy little city proclamations don’t put any officials in legal jeopardy, but it’s still a more germane analogy.)

But…But…I Don’t Hate Black People (Okay, Not All of Them)

But then Bill references North Salina Community meetings and events: in Salina, the Black folks used to be more or less relegated to the North side of town. To this day, that area is economically behind most other sections of the city. What Bill is probably doing here is saying, “Hey—I have Black and poor friends! I’m not a bigot!” to deflect from the fact that he doesn’t approve of the existence or inclusion of gay people. Which is whack on several levels.

Because Black folks can be queer. I don’t see how you can advocate for Black folks while crapping on various segments of the Black population. Hell, Stonewall is specifically commemorated during Pride, and specifically mentioned in the Proclamation that gave Bill hives, so either he’s never heard of Marsha P. Johnson and Miss Major, or he’s especially revolted by them. I guess Bill gets to decide which Black folks are acceptable.

And poorer folks can be queer. Given discrimination against LGBTQ+ folks, it’s pretty likely that they will face economic hardship at some point in their lives and greater risk of precarity than straight folks, other things being equal. If we’re looking at youth, hoo boy, the case is especially strong, since folks with Bill’s views are a big reason so many queer kids end up kicked out or driven out of their homes.

Segregation Now, Segregation Forever!

What’s even more perverse is that Bill’s whole argument—that his personal, religious beliefs prohibit him from tolerating the Pride Proclamation—are pretty damn parallel to the arguments floated in…

…Katzenbach v. McClung, which law students will know as like the Ollie's Barbecue case. A barbecue restaurant that didn't want to have integrated seatings. So they would sell to Black people on a limited menu from a takeout counter, but did not want to give table service to Black people. They justified this by saying it was their personal rights of persons in their personal convictions to deny services to Black people. That was in their brief.

… [or] In Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, some drive-in establishment asserted that requiring him to, "Contribute to racial integration in any way violated the first amendment by interfering with his religious liberty."⁴ [emphases mine]

So Bill’s defense is essentially the same line of reasoning used (unsuccessfully with a sane Supreme Court) to try to end-run public accommodations law during Jim Crow, and he has the audacity and historical ignorance to proudly use it today against LGBTQ+ folks, citing the shameful ruling of a corrupt christofascist SCOTUS.

More Clues from Bill’s Constituent Mail

What else did Bill say in private? Here’s another 2023 letter to a constituent:

Here we get to the real reason Bill objects to Pride. It has nothing to do with what the Proclamation’s text says; it has everything to do with what Bill imagines is going on in the current LGBTQ+ “movement” with its “agenda.”

In other words, Bill has Fox News brain, and he’s flipping out over that instead of the literal words on the piece of paper he’s asked sit in the room and allow to be handed out. This is precisely what the Kansas legislature did this year with its anti-DEI law, sponsored in the House by another real winner from Salina, Rep. Steven Howe. As I’ve torn my remaining hair out about, real DEI at Kansas universities is not problematic and makes damn good sense, but Kansas Republicans refused to even define it and projected all sorts of demented bogeyman delusions about it to inflate it into an “ideology” so they could ban “litmus tests” to guarantee conformity to it. Bill Longbine apparently does the same thing with Pride: use it as a drive-in movie screen where he casts his demented and distorted imaginings over the real thing to the point he can’t see what’s right there before him.

“Targeting children and women’s sports” is the tell. He’s talking about trans folk. He’s talking about “groomers.” He’s drunk all the Kool Aid poured for him by right-wing echo-chamber media without a single skeptical thought, much less any research into the opposing side, which happens to be correct, have all the data, and does not ally itself with segregationist arguments.

It’s almost cute that this MAGA-supporting twit positions himself as some kind of sage scholar on the history of the gay liberation movement and its intentions. As if Bill was there at Stonewall, one in spirit with the brick-throwers, only to see some dude in leather chaps today and conclude that his beloved cause had somehow gone astray.

But of course, none of this is funny at all because this guy is now mayor of my home town, and we’re just letting him bigot all over the place with zero consequences, zero accountability, zero analysis, zero real opposition.

Legal Liability vs. Democratic and Representative Ethics

Longbine insists he received a clean ethical bill of health from the city attorney over his actions. To put that in perspective, it was likely a legal review regarding Bill’s and the city’s liability for lawsuit, which means a heavily parsed examination of case law and specific definitions and conditions, focused on such things as financial conflicts of interest. Since Proclamations are not voted upon and have zero material force or effect (they amount to the commission holding up a sign that says, “Go Dental Hygienists!” or “Go Kansas Bicyclists!” or whoever is being feted in a given week or month) none of that’s at issue here. What’s at issue is the democratic ethic of a guy who campaigned under false pretenses and is clearly violating the spirit of the city’s own ethics guidelines, which state:

Nothing in these screenshots is legally actionable in these circumstances, but Bill’s private responses to constituents reveal he’s anything but fair and unbiased regarding LGBTQ+ folks, Pride, or the gay liberation movement. His campaign materials and the record of his campaign show that he never disclosed that his “deeply held beliefs and values” would cause him to snub an entire category of his constituents and their supporters and loved ones, which constitutes discourteous and disrespectful treatment from the chair of a sitting commissioner. It’s textbook discriminatory behavior, if we want to jump to the “Organizational Values” of the city, to say nothing of the dishonesty to voters that helped get him into office, the lack of compassion and the unfairness underlying his deeply echo-chambered and one-sided views.

Return of the Evil Rainbow

So all of that went down last year. And it all happened again this year as Pride Month returneth.

Charles Rankin’s May 14, 2024, story leads with “The Salina City Commission is getting out of the proclamation business during its meetings.”

Instead, there will be a twice monthly period (off-weeks, when the commission isn’t meeting) where people can sign up and speak for five minutes to plug community events or praise/celebrate whomever (or, really, say whatever the hell they want) while a disclaimer runs below, so it won’t look like the city commission or any specific member is endorsing “controversial or sensitive topics or views they don't believe in.”

Like the controversial or sensitive idea that gay and trans folks exist and are equally human and have rights. The bullshit rationale here is that Proclamations could be perceived as “official, endorsed, stances by the commission, stamped with the city's seal and signed by the mayor or another commissioner.” Because apparently we are all just that stupid.

So Bill Longbine had bigoted issues with the gays and the trans, so climbed on a cross over a Proclamation that contained not a word of objectionable content, instead, reading into it all the nightmare fuel his right-wing media sources and probably his ministers have been mainlining into his veins. Now the rest of the commission is choosing to accommodate his bigotry instead of dealing with it head on, and as a result, they’re getting rid of Proclamations for everyone.

If only I had described this dynamic ahead of time. Oh, wait, I did. The short version: when you let bigotry and intolerance enter a public space without confronting it, actually fighting it through to either victory or defeat, you kill that public space for everyone.

Even More Lessons from Jim Crow

The dynamic here is also known as drained-pool politics. Again, Bill Longbine has taken us back to segregation days, specifically to massive resistance, the era when southern jurisdictions realized that the Supreme Court, with its Brown v. Board decision (celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, something I’m sure the city of Salina would deem too “sensitive and controversial” to be seen to take a stance on), lacked the armored divisions to actually enforce.

So southern jurisdictions developed all sorts of strategies to avoid having to comply with desegregation of public utilities and venues. The most famous involved municipal swimming pools. There was just something about mostly naked Black bodies in the same liquid as mostly naked white bodies that broke bigots’ brains, I guess. Faced with the requirement that cities with public pools must open them up to their Black citizens, many cities decided to simply close those pools entirely. If we have to include the Blacks, we just won’t have a pool for anybody.

This was, to be fair, a brilliantly evil answer. It didn’t hurt the rich white folks, who had or could build private pools for themselves and their rich white friends. It did hurt Black folks, and it did hurt the poor whites, but their anger could be directed…at the Black folks—See what those uppity negroes made us do with their civil rights agitation? Now you got no place to swim!

Drained-pool politics is still alive, and thriving, though more subtle. Pitching or framing policies as benefiting racialized Others turns white people against them, even when those policies would overwhelmingly make white people’s lives easier. It’s kinda how we got Donald Trump, so it’s fitting that Bill Longbine (I have a picture of him rapturously wearing the red ballcap) is at the root of Salina sacrificing this nice, fluffy City Proclamation practice because he just can’t abide the queers.

So Deeply Dumb…And Yet

Now, all of this is incredible stupid. So blindingly stupid. It’s why I hate having to write about this.

Bigoted Mr. Noodle (apologies to Elmo and the fabulous Bill Irwin) pitches an uninformed fit about the existence of people he’s supposed to be fairly representing without bias…cloaks it in vague, gussied up blather about “deeply held beliefs and values” which is just cover for his fever dreams about Them. Cowardly colleagues prioritize collegiality and comity over addressing the problem in their own ranks. City staff get tasked to find a bureaucratic workaround to spare everyone the discomfort of admitting what’s really going on so we can preserve the illusion of unity. Hell, even the bigots have to realize this is the sort of whitewash they despise when they rail on the “administrative state” and its doubletalk.

And it’s all about a purely symbolic, touch-feely, nice thing the city does to recognize groups and events. Utter fluff.

So why rail about this?

Because it’s a lens into so many dysfunctions and ways in which we’re just plain going down the tubes, folks.

Photo by me

The Godstuff

Let’s assume Bill Longbine’s objections aren’t entirely Trumpian. That they are, in some way, entwined with retrograde religious views. I haven’t touched on religious belief here, mostly because I’m trying to make a straight up civic argument.

Despite the current Supreme Court’s corrupt majority endeavoring mightily to carve out a specifically Christian exception to church-state separation, we remain a civic republic, not a theocratic one. Philosopher John Rawls famously advocated for what he called “public reason” to prevail in public forums, like, oh, city commission discussions.

Rawls is a popular target for attack, but his ideas here have merit. The gist is that, when making arguments in a pluralistic democracy like ours, you need to confine yourself to “public reasons,” not “comprehensive doctrines” like those of a religious faith that presents a totalizing vision of the world, its beginning and end and how it all must be ordered. Such doctrines are specific only to those who share such views, and as such, are not the “common tongue” of the varied and different folks who live in a pluralistic society. Arguing from religious faith, in other words, is kinda like grabbing the mic and speaking in a language only part of the population knows, instead of the lingua franca everyone learns in civics class.

Rawls moderated his initial argument in later years, conceding that, sure, you could hop up and advocate something based initially on religious reasons (those “comprehensive doctrines”), but you also had to offer a kind of translation to the proper civic lingo and logic that everyone could get behind as citizens, not just as devotees of your particular faith. In other words, you can’t just say, “God forbids this” and expect your “argument” to carry the day in a democracy the way it might in your church. In a pluralistic democracy, it would be wrong if it did prevail based only on that sort of sectarian logic or rhetoric.

Civic leaders have to do more than this, and arguably, regular citizens need to do more as well. Does this impose a higher burden on the religiously motivated? Sure. They now have to take their religious convictions and figure out how to translate them into or align them with the principles of a democratic, Constitutional society.

“But…but…that’s like learning a whole ‘nother language!” sectarians cry.

Well, yeah. But it’s their choice to approach the common life of the citizens from the specific religious worldview they hold. If they want to persuade and use the power of the state to affect the lives of people different from them, then they bear the burden of doing that extra translation work. Hell, the public schools are supposed to teach you the common, civic lingo and logic, and they do it for everyone, for free. So tough noogies, pastor.

The crazy-making thing in Longbine’s case is that he never has given any kind of clarity about his “deeply held beliefs and values,” whether they’re religious and theological or just whatever he picked up at a MAGA rally. He hasn’t even publicly stated those beliefs in substantive terms, or explained what, in the actual text of the Pride Proclamations he could not bear to sign his name to. His private responses to constituents show he is importing beliefs about what Pride is “really” about and overlaying those imaginings onto the clear language of the document he’s asked to sign or allow to be signed in his presence. At every level of this “personal beliefs and deeply held religious values” business is either a dodge or a projection, and the city has indulged him to the point that they have eliminated the Proclamation practice entirely.

In a way he probably did not intend, Longbine’s case really is much like the web designer in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis: he doesn’t have “standing” to force anyone to make any change. He isn’t harmed by anything the city did with any of its Pride Proclamations. He hasn’t specified any portion of the actual language of the proclamations that requires him to betray his beliefs, much less explained how they are betrayed: he hasn’t made a case. He’s the one who has harmed the community by running for office under false pretenses, failing to disclose his “deeply held beliefs” that would conflict with democratic ethics and the city’s own stated values, creating this entire “divisive” situation, and stripping a nice little thing from every group in Salina that’s enjoyed its photo op and bit of recognition.

Yet the commission indulged him.

City Government As Corporate Board

Why have they indulged him? I believe it’s because the city commission is deathly afraid of anything that smacks of controversy, division, or conflict. It prizes collegiality, comity, camaraderie, and the appearance of unity. But why is that?

The commission is intent upon presenting an image of a smoothly running machine because it sees its primary task as serving the economic interests and associated brand of Salina through things like zoning, bonds, approvals, etc. It views itself as a corporate board that keeps the wheels of Salina well-oiled. (Which is not to say it approves everything without scrutiny: it’s a traffic cop or a border patrol agent, inspecting vehicles and waving them through or turning them back as circumstances warrant.)

Viewing the city commission as a corporate board clarifies a great deal. It sheds light on why we have a city manager—he’s the COO. The commissioners recognize community groups with the Proclamations the way bosses recognize employees of the month. And jettisoning the Proclamations as a practice makes sense in the same way a corporation punts a product line after it becomes too controversial and begins to hurt their brand by generating unwanted publicity. Except it hasn’t yet—they’re just paranoid it will one day.

Yes, the people who file for candidacy and run for office, who have campaigns, campaign treasurers, yard signs, flyers, who accept campaign contributions, file the required disclosure forms for campaign spending, then either succeed or fail based on the returns at the ballot box on election day—they really see themselves as corporate board members, not democratic representatives of any real constituency. Most of them come from business or the professions. Most of them have experience from other, similar boards. Their campaign pitches and candidate personas fit the bland competency image of a corporate board member better than anyone trying to actually distinguish himself from his rivals (and they’re usually men).

It’s why, during candidate forums, most of the time, the rules require than any questions be put to all the candidates, none targeted at only one or two. It’s why the most devastating question you could possibly ask at a candidate forum is, “If voters could only pick one of you, why should it be you instead of the rest? Why are you a better pick for the job than these other guys? What’s wrong with each of your opponents?” Even when they campaign, they do their best to group-hug.

You can see the corporate board focus and mentality in the way the commissioners are ill-suited to even think in terms of civic governance, for example, the way there has been no accountability in the Bill Longbine matter over the course of the year.

Accountability, contrary to popular myth, does not mean facing consequences. It means giving answer, literally being held to (give) account. The press hasn’t been able to get Longbine to give answers about his “deeply held beliefs,” not their substance, not how they intersect with his responsibilities as an elected official bound to represent everyone. They just reprint his assertions that he believes he can do so. No follow-up, no asking How?

The people don’t get a chance to hold him accountable until election time, unless they mount an activist pressure campaign, which the city will view negatively and decry as disrupting the business they are supposed to be about: making sure Salina’s wheels are well-oiled, because that’s what they are elected to do. Whining about whether or not a democratically elected commissioner, now mayor, views a portion of his constituents as undeserving of the same basic recognition as, say, Altrusa International members, is an irritant, a distraction, from that core mission. Which means that democratic representation, rights, equality, and the dignity of all citizens is expressly not the main interest of the city commission.

But what about the other commissioners? Could they hold Longbine accountable? Have they tried? We don’t know. They haven’t spoken of it if they have. They probably view such matters as uncivil, divisive, a private matter between Bill and his God or his God Emperor Donald Trump. Therefore, very much not cricket. Plus, there’s open meetings rules to consider. And so long as the lawyers say Bill didn’t cross any lines, they don’t have to worry about it.

Which is very corporate-board indeed.

It’s only the folks who believe in democracy, elections, representation, rights, equality, human dignity who get upset about such things, and those folks are living in a bygone world where such things mattered. We’re managed now, by people who know better than us, and we just need to know our place. In this, the lunatic Granny Brigade is actually on something of the right page here when they insist that their electeds speak on matters that concern them. They’re demented and sad, but they retain something of the spirit of democracy, albeit in a twisted, mutant, supremacist way. The rest of town already gets the new regime: they just stew in their resentments of everyone else and never expect government to mean a damn thing.

What concerns a corporate board is not anything principled, but anything that can rock the boat, and principles sure have a way of doing that. Which is why the city’s stated “organizational values” aren’t in any way binding or defined, and its ethics are viewed only through the lens of legal liability and previous case law. The ignorance of basic civics, to say nothing of history and political theory (even the basic stuff) is completely understandable when you realize we’re electing corporate board members who need simply to be briefed by the COO and his staff and lobbied by interest groups. They have no need to understand the animating principles of democracy, of civil rights, of representation, of history. If they get nervous, they have house counsel to assure them that they can craft a safe neutrality.

It’s why nobody engages in the process, why young people don’t get involved. Not only is this stuff dull as dirt, it’s also intentionally soul-killing. You don’t get inspirational Thurgood Marshalls when you run from controversy. You don’t get Dr. King when you’re all a pack of white moderates more concerned with order than with justice.

It’s why there’s no interest and much hostility on the commission for moving toward a ward based system of representation and elections: that system would be a far more democratically representative model and a paradigm shift away from the corporate governance phony kumbaya we have now.

Take a look at the city commission study session where they contorted themselves over how to avoid a situation of offense to the tender prejudices of Bill Longbine. After endless rehashing of the “government speech” versus the “free speech forum” models that staff had researched and presented to the commissioners, former mayor Mike Hoppock became frustrated. Here, at 3:44 you get the real essence of what I’m talking about (emphases added):

Guys, I’m sorry, but I’m struggling with the fact that we’re struggling with this. We’ve had this discussion numerous times. I mean, I’m sitting here going, “Did I miss a meeting?” … We had the reason why we’re doing this, you know. I think staff did a nice job of outlining the scope of invitation and stuff. If we’re not comfortable with this, I guess we need another study session, but I think staff’s done what we asked them to do. Now we’re second guessing ourselves. … I’m not concerned—as we talked about—the time these actually take in our meeting. It’s the fact that we’re signing off as a city, and sometimes it’s some things we’re not representing the entire city. You know? I mean a proclamation can be written by an individual and they can do it off-air, we’re not signing it on behalf of the city because—you know, it’s not what we’ve had, but we could have gun rights or gun control issues come up, we could have abortion. Well, I don’t want to sign—and I’m saying Commissioner Longbine has first amendment rights and he stepped away from the podium and didn’t, you know, want to sign the proclamation. There may be something down the road that one of us doesn’t agree with and I can’t sign it because I know part of my constituents doesn’t feel that way. I mean, I think this cleans it up a little bit. I say if nothing else, we try it and if we run into problems, we take a new course.

Hoppock’s giving away the game.

Dutifully Representing The Imaginary Blob

Salina elects city commissioners at-large, city-wide. So, in our not-quite 50,000 population town, a pitiful 14,000 people voted for city commissioners, about 3300 for Hoppock specifically. Hoppock didn’t campaign on abortion or guns, so he has no idea where his voters stand on those issues. Moreover, he has no idea who his voters are. As for where his voters are, they’re scattered across town. Because he and the other commissioners never take distinctive stands on discernible issues, preferring to speak in vagaries and relying on name recognition within networks, they actively suppress clear positioning on issues that voters might care about.

Because we have no district or ward system, they don’t have to campaign door-to-door, so they don’t get to know their potential supporters, their issues and concerns. They have no geographical boundaries they can canvas via phone, email or shoe leather when a controversy arises to actually get a sense of their constituents’ views. Longbine, in the previous hour-plus long study session dedicated to this thorny matter of Proclamations, claimed his initial Pride refusal brought far more praise than criticism. Dollars to donuts that has a lot to do with the sample he’s spending his time with—like-minded folks from his church or political allies. Or did he attend Pride to see if his beliefs were correct and solicit counterpoints to test his ideas?

None of the commissioners can hold a neighborhood town hall for their constituents to engage in deep dialogue, because they represent no neighborhoods. They represent some amorphous blob called The City, which they then imagine holds some loose, generalized conventional views of what’s basically non-problematic versus what’s “divisive.” They imagine themselves as raceless, sexless, genderless, identity-less Everymen who “represent” Salina as a vapid entity made up of whatever vibe they’ve absorbed as middle-aged dudes. They are “just folks.” They think their thinking and their judgment is by definition reasonable and normal because they are the standard for reasonable and normal. They think, because they got elected, that this confers upon them the community’s confidence in their worldview and outlook and judgment, but again: 14,000 out of almost 50K, and golly, some of those folks in both groups are women, and/or Black or Brown, and/or not Christian or even theist, and/or queer, and/or poor as hell, and/or don’t view Palestinians as synonymous with Hamas (as Longbine framed it in Study Session #1), and so on. The commissioners’ resulting watchword is to run like hell away from anything unfamiliar and “divisive” and toward anything that’s so bland that it can offend the political tastebuds of precisely no one but loonies.

What People With Guts Would Have Done

But gosh darn it. One of the loonies got elected and now holds the mayor’s gavel, and Bill Longbine confessed some vague ickiness over the subject of Pride, or whatever his pathological media habits have told him Pride allegedly is. So now they have to contort themselves into some technocratic, legalese pretzel of a policy to weasel their way out of ever having to face such an uncomfortable situation ever again, for such might force them to…actually take a controversial stand.

They have effectively eliminated the nice, fuzzy City Proclamations because they’re scared shitless to say anything in the form of “government speech” that might cause a kerfuffle. They get the flop sweats over the idea that the mayor might have to sign a document that his conscience tells him not to sign!

Instead, they’ll create a separate free speech forum, held away from the commissioners, where they’ll never have to see or hear a word of it, and where any speech restrictions raise so many scary first amendment legal worries that pretty much anything is permitted. Basically, a “designated protest zone” verrrry far away from the people anyone is protesting. If it’s used, it will either be deadly dull or hilarious and possibly go viral now and then, but it will have zero bearing on anything the commissioners have to think about, because they’re building it that way. I personally hope really rebellious high schoolers just plain go to town with it in brilliantly creative ways. The best, of course, would be to persistently and hilarious mock the city commission.

All so no one will ever find out that the pablum candidate they thought might have reactionary sensibilities really wants to eliminate trans folk from public life and public space and maybe period.

This is what they damn well should have done.

1. Define City Proclamations as non-binding, symbolic resolutions.

   This, at the level of definition, lets everyone know that the city is not “mandating” or “coercing” anyone or anything, as if the city could actually require us to celebrate or commemorate anything. How exactly would that work, you ninnies? Cops at every doorstep, forcing us out in our jammies at the crack of dawn to stand at attention whilst we raise the flag of National Library Week? The fact that there is a National Library Week kinda gives you a clue: a non-binding resolution recognizing such a thing went through the Congress of the federal government and nobody’s pitching a fit over bibliotech tyranny. Get over yourselves.

2. Clarify the “invitation.”

   If you want to raise the bar a bit, define criteria for who is invited to submit a Proclamation as though they are analogous to citizen-generated referenda folks hope the commission will smile upon. Verified Salina residents only. Those willing to appear in chambers and on camera, giving their full name for the record. Hell, to cut down staff hand-holding, draw up an MLA-style sheet and hand it out to folks wanting to submit, then reject anything that doesn’t follow the rules. Or reserve the right to as needed. (“Sorry, wrong format/grammar/etc.”)

3. Put Proclamations in the consent agenda.

   Implication being that they are presumed to be fluffy, normie, nice things that everybody can agree to, as a rule.

4. Object and remove them from the consent agenda when a commissioner has a problem.

   Next time Bill Longbine has an issue with Pride or other human rights acknowledgements, he can have the proclamation removed from the consent agenda, debated and voted on by the commission. That means he will get to state for the record precisely what his issues are. Other commissioners can respond, question, etc. Maybe public comment can be heard. If it becomes a whole thing, good! That tells voters something really damn important about the bland, blank, issue-dodging candidates they elected and gives them a chance to do something meaningful with their votes next time.

5. If Mayor Longbine objects and loses the vote, tough noogies.

   The Mayoralty in Salina is entirely a ceremonial position anyway. So are these Proclamations. They carry no force. If a majority of the commission rejects Longbine’s arguments against a Proclamation and passes it, then he’ll have to sign this meaningless piece of paper with his (in this case) meaningless signature just as he has to sign meaningful contracts he votes against and loses. If a majority of the commission approves of the sentiments or statements in a Proclamation, theoretically, they speak for a majority of Longbine’s constituents, and he must behave the same way on Proclamations as he would for regular business when he dissents. The “speech” he claims is coerced, or the assent he’s claiming he is forced to give is bullshit: he’s on record objecting and arguing against it all, and if he loses, he just dons his ceremonial mayor hat and signs the utterly meaningless announcement that has zero effect whatsoever.

If NAMBLA tries to get the City of Salina to endorse its nonsense, or if the Klan tries to “commemorate” Nathan Bedford Forrest’s bar mitzvah, then hopefully all commissioners will oppose. Maybe it can be killed for lack of a second or something, and the Proclamation gets shot down as it should.

Oh my god, commissioners will actually have to do some homework, vet things, and talk with community members and groups. It’s not like staff won’t give them a heads-up of Proclamations in the pipeline. The scandal of having to do actual work and learn something. It’s not like you don’t have a house attorney there to advise you when things get super crazy, and the proposers of the Proclamations will have to identify themselves, exposing themselves to community shame and obloquy.

You wimps have agency. You have the ability to actually take stands. That they may be controversial is the essence of democracy, but you’ve spent so much time stressing some false unity that imagines Salina is sheltered and sealed away from the larger world simply because you view yourselves as unobjectionable median-voter technocrats twiddling eco-devo dials, you don’t realize how pitiful you’ve become. Hell, you could even vote No on the grounds that…you think the community is “not in accord on the matter” and you don’t think it’s a good look for the city to take even a symbolic, ceremonial, non-binding position on it!—i.e., the most milquetoast reason to oppose ever given.

This is why corporations don’t have much of a problem with fascist governments. Let free speech, free assembly, freedom of religion—all that stuff—get restricted, so long as they can cozy up to an authoritarian who has managed to gain power and continue to make profit. They’re afraid of the grubby masses, the potential disorder they represent, the inability to predict and control everything, so they want to remain insulated from anything that might light a spark. The commission made nice with Bill Longbine instead of facing the controversy he revealed. The community is losing a nice, fuzzy thing as a result, and the entire rationale for it reveals the flaws in how the city has retreated from any notion of democratic representation as if it carried the plague.

Salina Sucks At Solidarity

Another lens we can look through, thanks to Mayor Longbine’s actions and the brave, brave retreat of the rest of the commission, is that of resistance. What can people do in the face of unaccountable elected leaders? How can you make them give answer? What can Salinans do when their LGBT+ friends and family members get dissed so publicly by a guy who got elected via silence and democratic fraud? (Not unlike the SCOTUS majority on the question of Roe, you should note, although they were directly asked, while we just assumed Longbine wouldn’t be this much of a nutter…dumb assumption.)

Generally speaking, the answer to a minority getting picked on is for lots of others to team up with that minority to fight back against the bully. It’s called solidarity. Salina sucks at solidarity.

Look, every church in this town probably considers issues of LGBTQIA+ rights and democratic representation to be really morally salient and relevant. I know the NAACP does. Probably the League of Women Voters. The local Democratic Party. The small but active DSA. Was Longbine’s dis of Pride last year a topic of serious moral-ethical discussion for these groups? If not, why not? If so, what came of that?

Even if a group’s membership is divided on the question of whether trans folk are, I dunno, real or something, people couldn’t have come together to object to Longbine singling out Pride for his stunt? To his utter silence on substantive reasons for the objections, just vague references to “deeply held” yadda-yadda? Y’all might not be that woke on transfolk, but surely this crap gives you the democratic heebie-jeebies. Can’t you put together a coalition of folks who at least reject Longbine’s targeting when not a word in the language of the old Proclamation is anything objectionable?

Or did y’all just think it was a queer issue? If so, cue the Niemoller poem.

Suppose you had such a coalition of folks. Gathered from sympatico people from many different groups. Start by getting them all to sign something. A petition maybe. Work out whatever wording you could live with. Have some teach-ins about LGBT folk so members of the coalition could learn more about these demonized communities. And start pressuring the commission and especially Longbine over his actions.

Especially since Longbine took the Mayor’s gavel.

Every time the City Commission agenda dropped, Longbine opponents could send word to the groups slated to receive a Proclamation from Bill’s bigoted fingers. It would be an appeal to these groups explaining what had happened last Pride, how Longbine had refused to even be present in the room, all the issues, how Longbine had never been held accountable, never explained himself. It would note that LGBTQ+ folks are all over, members of our community, members of practically every community. They and their loved ones are present in every group, probably including the group being addressed.

The ask would be simple: when receiving your Proclamation, politely request, given that your group has no beef with and/or supports LBGT+ folks and their loved ones, that the Proclamation be presented by a commissioner other than the mayor, who has made his disrespect for that community well known. Deny Longbine his photo op. Embarrass him. Remind him that the citizens remember how he did the queers dirty last year and that such behavior is unacceptable.

If the to-be-Proclamation’d group does this, thank and praise them and ask them to join the effort to get other groups on board. If they don’t go along, consider outing them as complicit in Longbine’s normalization, depending on how much fight you want to bring on. If you’re taken to task for “politicizing” the Proclamation process, simply point out that Longbine fucking started it, despite his responsibilities to be fair and unbiased and represent all, and there’s no other peaceful way to hold him accountable, since nobody else seems to be doing it.

In other words, fight against this “it’s not our business…we’re just Altrusa International…or Salina Downtown, Inc….or Child Advocacy and Parenting Services…that’s outside our mission…we don’t get political” bullshit. It’s this corporate-minded, self-enclosed, silo’d mindset of compartmentalized organizations—all of which make up our community’s mediating institutions—that fuels the retreat from democratic responsiveness and civic principles we see eroding all around us.

Minding our own business is precisely the opposite of building a caring community, and no, the corrective is not to stick your nose in everybody else’s—that’s the path of the Granny Brigade. The corrective is to stand together when abuse occurs, when some are singled out for unfair treatment, and yes, that means work and learning and sometimes discomfort and conflict, but the alternative is to let bullies and bigots dominate the public square while the rest of us retreat to our private domains.

At least for as long as they let us.

1. Despite the shocked noises made by those who were raised to believe “hate” is a four-letter word, I embrace it. I’m also happy to let the hate go, as soon as the behavior I loathe ceases and the perpetrator makes amends to the impacted population through acknowledging the harm and engaging in consistent, contrite, reparative action. If you wanna tiptoe in the Christian fashion, I hate Bill’s “sins” a great deal. As for Bill himself, he’s statistically likely to be nice to dogs and his family and friends. But how many of us aren’t? It’s a pitifully low bar. I judge behaviors and their implications. And sure, I may be wrong, but that’s why he damn well should be saying more, not hiding more. What a tool.

2. As a special peace offering to Bill, I offer him this song.

3. All the details here, I owe to the indispensable 5-4 Pod, specifically, this episode.

4. 5-4 Pod again. Thanks, folks!