FOLIO
A week ago Sunday, former Arkansas governor/former Fox News talk show host/Beyoncé critic/once and future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was in town to score the wink-wink quasi-endorsement of the politically powerful First Baptist Church of Jacksonville (quasi only because an actual endorsement might endanger the church’s lucrative tax-exempt status). There he signed copies of his latest pre-campaign book, God, Guns, Grits and Gravy, was — ahem — encouraged by Senior Pastor Mac Brunson to seek the Oval Office, and inveighed against the coastal liberal hegemony that is apparently suffocating wholesome heartland Christian values.
“Sometimes, because the culture that we are surrounded with and bombarded with is so overwhelming, we just don’t think anybody believes like us any more,” the Times-Union quoted him as saying. “We think that we are marginal, insignificant, that we simply don’t even matter.”
But they do matter, Huckabee continued: “I would suggest to you that we make a huge mistake when we walk away and simply don’t show up and take the stand God wishes us to take.”
He was referring most directly to same-sex marriage. But he also was speaking to a larger sense, a fear, really, that coastal elites are leaving Middle America — conservative, patriotic, religious Middle America — behind.
And I don’t think that, for the Mike Huckabees of this world, that fear is misplaced. Consider this: Huckabee is never going to be president. Neither is Ben Carson nor Rick Santorum nor any of the other Republican hopefuls whose primary appeal is rooted in opposing gay marriage or abortion or putting prayer back in schools. Sure, the eventual Republican nominee will nod in that direction, just enough to keep interest groups in line, but those aren’t the issues on which the 2016 election will turn. They weren’t the issues on which the 2014 midterms turned, either.
Real talk: Huckabee won’t even place in Iowa, and he’ll probably be back on Fox by this time next year. His shtick no longer has agency.
The culture war is now a sideshow.
You see that same dynamic playing out, to some degree anyway, in the Jacksonville mayoral contest. Yes, the city’s religious inclinations seep into the political sphere; this cannot be denied — witness, for instance, City Council President Clay Yarborough’s temper tantrum over a Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville exhibit he deemed pornographic late last year, or Mayor Alvin Brown’s refusal to endorse an expansion of the human rights ordinance for fear of riling the antigay bigots.
But while Lenny Curry is hardly a full-throttle champion of antidiscrimination, neither is he actively campaigning against it, choosing instead the cautious middle ground of nothingness that has defined so much of his candidacy to date.
And given that the JAX Chamber — whose political arm recently endorsed Curry — and the Jacksonville Civic Council both supported the HRO last time around as an economic necessity, and given the changing moral tides over the last two-and-a-half years and the fact that the last effort fell only one vote short, it’s not unlikely that the next City Council will get it right on the second try, no matter how many blue-ribboned protesters First Baptist carts down to City Hall. And when that happens, the city will respond just like the state responded last month, after a federal court ruling allowed gay couples to marry: not with outrage, but with a shrug.
Perhaps the so-called Moral Majority isn’t going away. Maybe it’s just not that much of a majority any more.
Reefer Madness
Speaking of moralizing do-gooders, let’s talk for a moment about Florida Sheriff’s Association, which last week announced under what conditions it would be OK with the residents of this fine state partaking of “medical” marijuana (scare quotes theirs): basically none.
Well, OK, that’s not really true. If you have cancer, epilepsy, HIV/AIDS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or paraplegia or quadriplegia, maybe. Also, “exceptions could be made for the terminally ill,” according to the association’s press release. Could be made. How generous of them.
Oh, and the state’s sheriffs, being medical experts, have determined that “smoked marijuana is not medicine,” so while pot may have medicinal components, the state should mandate that patients stick to edibles. By the way, “A patient must not receive medical marijuana for general ‘pain’ because pain is not a disease.” (Perhaps they’d rather you take oxycodone, or maybe just toughen up and deal?)
And if you don’t agree, the bad guys win. “Florida Sheriffs and their staff put their lives on the line to ensure public safety,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in a statement. These guidelines would ensure “safe and effective marijuana legislation that is both compassionate and appropriate.”
See, the sheriffs opposed Amendment 2 last year because they knew better than 58 percent of you; they knew the amendment had “too many loopholes,” and these loopholes would drive addiction and crime and general terribleness, as St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar, president of the sheriff’s association, said in the release.
And so, any legislation that comes out of the Florida Legislature this year that moves the needle on medical weed must not move it that much, lest the state go to hell in a handbasket.
How about this: What if, instead of letting the cops dictate our medicinal use of a substance that is, according to government data, far safer than alcohol or tobacco, we start thinking about getting the state out of the moral approbation business? Because so long as you’re not bothering or endangering anybody, I couldn’t care less what David Shoar thinks about what you do in the privacy of your own home.
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