Jack Lessenberry

Let’s say there had been a Michigan Civil Rights Commission in 1961, and it announced that it was going to start investigating claims of discrimination against black people. Undoubtedly that would have met considerable opposition, since there was, as yet, no legal basis to try to prevent someone from hiring you, or renting to you, because you were black. I don’t know how successful their efforts would have been. Probably not very, at least at first. They would have risked verbal attacks, or worse. But I know that we would look back on them today as heroes. And their efforts might have gotten us thinking about open housing and employment anti-discrimination acts sooner than we did. Well, something like that happened yesterday. The Michigan Civil Rights Commission voted to start taking claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity. We now live in a crazy parallel universe where you can marry someone of the same sex anywhere in Michigan, but you can still be