“WE’RE not going to be the first edge of social change,” concedes Jim Gray, mayor of Lexington, Kentucky’s second-biggest city. “But over time we adapt.” He illustrates that; Mr Gray, a successful businessman, who has won plaudits for his leadership of a rare liberal outpost in Kentucky, is the state’s first openly gay elected official. Yet a clanking new face-off in the culture wars, opened by California against Kentucky and another seven Republican states, suggests the smooth transition he describes is by no means assured.
On June 22nd California’s attorney-general, Xavier Becerra, announced he had added Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota and Texas to a blacklist of states he adjudged to have passed anti-gay legislation. Under a recently passed state law, California will not pay non-essential travel costs for government employees to any such proscribed states, which also include Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee. Most of them recently passed laws...Continue reading
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