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The Detroit News
www.detnews.com
Must female hunters fear equality under Mich. law?
By Thomas Bray
Published April 26, 2006
There will be more than the usual share of hot-button issues on state ballots this fall, but none quite so hot as the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which would bar the use of race in university admissions and state hiring and contracting.
Similar ballot issues passed by large margins in California in 1996 and the state of Washington in 1998 despite the opposition of both the Democratic and Republican establishment, civil rights organizations, most business leaders and virtually all newspapers. A similar coalition, calling itself One United Michigan, is leaving no fear unturned in its efforts to portray the Michigan measure as the end of civilization as we know it.
One United Michigan lately has been stressing the threat that the initiative supposedly poses to females. A recent press alert issued by its spokesman even proclaimed that -- horror of horrors! -- the state's Department of Natural Resources might have to abandon a program to train women in hunting and other outdoor sports if the initiative is approved.
It is probably news to most people, including women, that the state feels a need to spend taxpayer money training anybody how to hunt or otherwise recreate. But opponents calculate this is the sort of thing that will provide an easy out for moderates and even some conservative Republicans afraid of being labeled racist if they stand up for the idea that all individuals should be treated equally before the law.
Mike Bouchard, the Oakland County sheriff and former state senator who appears to be leading in the race for the Republican senatorial nomination in Michigan, came out against the initiative early in his campaign.
"I believe that people should be judged on merit," he says, but then quickly adds that he opposes the civil rights initiative because of possible "unintended consequences" -- such as the threat he says it poses to single-sex schools of the sort his daughter attends.
But the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Virginia Military Institute decision several years ago, outlawed single-sex education at taxpayer expense anyway, making that a moot issue. And the Michigan initiative specifically targets "public education," not the private Catholic school his daughter attends.
Anything that detracts from a focus on the state's miserable economy, Republicans figure, is a loser for them. They regularly attribute former U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham's loss to the current incumbent, Democrat Deborah Stabenow, to the 2000 referendum over educational vouchers, which was defeated by a 2-1 margin. (Al Gore won the state.)
The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative could still fall short. Most polls show it leading with 55-60 percent support, a fairly narrow margin as such things go. Among other things, the U.S. Supreme Court may have taken some of the edge off the issue with its 2003 decision in the University of Michigan cases barring outright quotas but allowing states the option of pursuing "diversity."
But it seems doubtful that scare talk about the civil rights initiative's threat to females will be persuasive with either sex, particularly as they focus on the fact that women now outnumber men at most universities. By the way, that losing voucher campaign a few years back was headed by businessman Dick DeVos -- who is now running neck-and-neck with Democrat Jennifer Granholm for governor.
Thomas Bray is a News columnist. Reach him at (313) 222-2544 and tbray@detnews.com.
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