(Senator) Mike (Gabbard) and Me
Last week, I met with Senator Mike Gabbard to discuss the future of health-climate labels (a.k.a., ‘warming labels’) on gas pumps in Hawaii. As some of you may know, the Senator has sponsored the bill over the last few years. In this year’s legislative session, it never got scheduled for a hearing in a key House environmental committee, so it's over for 2024. Last year, the warming labels bill passed the Senate but was deferred in an environmental committee in the House. Ever the strident but frustrated climate activist, I blogged critically about a committee chair. One that determines whether bills like ours get passed into law. Since 2014, I have personally observed that when this idea enters the political process, the fossil fuel industry has the power to influence it. Hewing to this historical evidence in California and Canada, I published a blog critical of this politician, inferring fossil fuel interests had compromised them and blithely, without evidence, continued my public bickering this year. As if my little old blog had any influence?! Surprise, the bill didn’t get scheduled in that committee.
I met with Senator Gabbard to ask him about the future of warming labels in Hawaii, and he told me he wants to go forward next year. All “good bills,” he explained, take at least 4-5 years to pass in Hawaii as lawmakers become more comfortable and some of the inevitable policy kinks emerge and get worked out. Surprisingly, my activist hijinks pissed off this politician in the now apparent “small town” of the Hawaii legislative process. I was embarrassed. Gabbard told me that passing a bill in Hawaii takes patience, persistence, and, I’ll add…. don’t piss off any politicians. While the fossil fuel industry may very well have political influence here, as it did elsewhere, alienating key committee chairs was not going to get a bill passed in Hawaii.
The conversation veered off into other topics. We talked about doing and saying stupid stuff and then trying to redeem ourselves when we say and do stupid stuff that seemed, well, a good idea at the time. We talked about same-sex marriage. As some of you may know, Senator Gabbard has been embroiled in a same-sex marriage controversy for decades. Many of my mainland gay friends, way outside of Hawaii politics, view him notoriously as a political enemy. In the 90’s, he became an infamous gay marriage opponent, stating in an awful kind of way that the practice “promoted” homosexuality. One of the oldest homophobic tropes in the book, one that is sadly resonating with anti-gay panic today, in our meeting, he spoke about how much he had suffered from those remarks, and let’s say, I didn’t feel much sympathy. As a gay man, his rhetoric was personal. It threatened violence, inciting historic, deeply rooted, and sadly mainstream prejudices. Such rhetoric poured gasoline on the homophobic flame (yes, I use the word ‘flame’).
But, like I mentioned, I thought the meeting was fortuitous. I told Gabbard that Pip-squeak Hawaii is an unheralded progressive policy leader, even with global influence. He seemed to agree. Ironically, the State (er, sovereign nation) was the first to debate same-sex marriage. Regarding environmental policy, I might add that Hawaii is the first state in the U.S. to debate warming labels. I told Gabbard his past anti-gay rhetoric, not very Hawaiian, didn’t just auger his personal, and I presume deeply felt, Christian beliefs. I told him it can direct political violence towards people like me.
But going into his office to talk about environmental policy, it wasn’t my intention to tell Gabbard in the nicest way possible; his past words terrorized gay people. But I sorta did. Gabbard responded by telling me he doesn’t think the government should be involved in the private lives of citizens. Hardly a full-throated, pro-LGBTQ+ rights declaration, but embedded in it, I felt, was Gabbard’s tacit acknowledgment of LGBTQ+ right to existence and the need for equal treatment under the law. As I stared at a block of hemp-based concrete sitting on his desk — he told me proudly that it is stronger than conventional concrete, and it sequesters carbon! — I thought a consequent religious man was embracing gay rights, not to mention a former Republican championing progressive environmental policy. Very Hawaiian. When someone is accountable for how their personal convictions are undermining something bigger than themselves, like personal liberties or environmental justice, they deserve credit. But when such genuine confessions come from our political opposition, this can be treacherously hard to see. I’ll be naïve and say that when we do recognize heartfelt contrition in our supposed political enemies, this creates a wake that could further the cause of justice.
Author: James Brooks, Chairperson, Think Beyond the Pump
