Democracy in El Paso

In America we mostly practice representative democracy, although occasionally the voters directly decide things by voting, which is called direct democracy.

In many different elections over the past 2 or 3 years, the voters in America have been asked whether they want to authorize things like gay marriage or taxpayer paid health insurance benefits for partners of gay and lesbian government workers. In the vast majority of cases the voters have clearly rejected any sort of approval or affirmation of the homosexual, lesbian, and gay lifestyle.

The city council in El Paso, Texas authorized health insurance benefits to the partners of gay city employees. The voters got this issue put on the ballot, and they rejected the idea. Now several elected officials want to find some tricky way to go ahead and do it anyway. Regardless of what the voters want.

To some people this is a religious issue. Other voters say, “Private industry doesn't offer these benefits to live in partners of our homosexual employees, why should my tax dollars go to fund this outrageously generous employee benefit for city workers?” For some it is just fiscal responsibility.

One thing is clear. The city council did something the voters didn't like. Once it was placed on the ballot the voters reaffirmed that this was not their desire. There are now almost half of the members of the city council who are perfectly happy to blow off the wishes of the voters and implement it anyway.

This feels like arrogance. Opposing democracy in a high handed and blatant way like this is dangerous to their future political careers. This feels like the city council telling the voters just how its going to be, when in fact things need to go the other way around. The voters tell our representatives what to do. Or the bums are voted out of office.

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