CON GAMES: Aspen Is So Gay!

August 30th, 2006 at 06:41am Michael Conniff 2

You’ve got to love Aspen City Council, especially if you love the idea that individual citizens should have the right to sleep with whomever they choose, regardless of race, color, creed—or sexual combination.

Aspen City Council is now on the record as endorsing Colorado Referendum I, the one that will allow domestic partnerships to flourish with abandon—meaning hospital visitation rights and the inheritance of property and assets would become a matter of law. It’s worth pointing out from here in the heart of darkness (Aspen) of a red state (Colorado) that Ref I is limited to Colorado only and eschews “gay marriage.” The dreaded joint tax return is not included.

Put another way, when it comes to things gay, Referendum 1 is about as mild a sedative as you’re ever going to find anywhere. Coloradans for Fairness is trying to gather 100,000 signatures not only to get the measure on the ballot—but also to negate the referendum from Coloradans for Marriage, by which they mean marriage between a man and a woman. Another group, Protecting Colorado Children, is working hard to ban domestic partnerships entirely.

Enter the Aspen City Council. The governing body of Aspen voted for the domestic partnership resolution affirming Referendum 1 because "gays or lesbians who die without a will are more likely to have their property left to the government than to their partner."

Fair enough: the resolution certainly represents a nice fuzzy view that I happen to agree with. But what do our local politicos have to do with Referendum 1? Absolutely nothing. Their affirmation is symbolic at best and has little to do with making the trains run on time.

Of course, this kind of out-of-bounds posturing is part and parcel of politics all across the United States. City councilors and state legislators and ward alderman and Senators and Congressmen can’t wait to weigh in on matters that bind no better than the best laxative. Pontificating and posturing go together in politics like hot fudge and nuts, but the opinion of local pols about matters beyond their scope is of no moment whatsoever.

Consider the matter of time. Have you ever sat through a City Council session here or anywhere else? I have—and these are times that try men’s and women’s souls regardless of their sexual tastes. If you want to make government work better, my suggestion is term limits and time limits. If the City Council can’t their business done within a two-hour session, then we need to throw them out on their ears.

Sometimes technology is the best answer. Local politics, in Aspen and elsewhere, might best be served by the institution of a mandatory egg-timer. And taking the random political act out of the political process can only be seen as a good thing.

Aspen provides the very best example of what a mobilized governing body can do. Unlike the impotent support for Referendum I, City Council and Mayor Helen Klanderud have been intimately involved with the institution of the Canary Initiative, the city’s attempt to get a handle on energy consumption so as to diminish Aspen’s carbon footprint. The Council and the Mayor get kudos for that.

But—please!—no more affirmations of referenda that have nothing to do with the governance of Aspen. We’ve got no time for that.

Entry Filed under: Politics, Aspen, Homosexuality