During a candidate forum earlier this month, San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor explained to a crowd of people that poverty in her city was due in large part to people being “broken” because they had no “relationship with their Creator.” Following national outrage over her comments, Taylor doubled down on Facebook proclaiming her comments were edited. After posting the full 90 minute video of the forum (which demonstrated her comments weren’t actually edited), Taylor once again argued that religious non-believers are “broken” people.

The controversy started when Megan Legacy, director of San Antonio Christian Resource Center, asked Taylor, “What do you see as the deepest, systemic causes of generational poverty in San Antonio?”

“Since you’re with the Christian Coalition I’ll go ahead and put it out there,” Taylor began. “To me, it’s broken people…people not being in a relationship with their Creator, and therefore not being in a good relationship with their families and their communities….and not being productive members of society.” She concluded, “I think that’s the ultimate answer.”

Rather than begin by discussing economic or educational factors that keep people in poverty, Taylor instead chose to alienate not only the non-Christian segment of her constituency, but potentially a large portion of low income San Antonio residents that identify as Christian. Only thereafter did she segue into issues that might actually affect poverty after admitting she couldn’t use her position to address that particular problem the way she’d like (that is, codifying her personal religious beliefs).

Her response labeling atheists as “broken” follow statements and a vote in 2013 attempting to discriminate against the LGBTQ community.

The San Antonio Current noted this reporting:

This comes from a mayor who’s already on thin ice for using her religious beliefs to discriminate against the city’s LGBT community. In 2013, when Taylor was still a councilwoman, she voted against a nondiscrimination ordinance that would protect LGBT San Antonians from being discriminated against by public and private business owners. Her reasoning? People shouldn’t be forced to treat everyone equally if it goes against their faith or “moral values.” It’s the same excuse far-right conservative state lawmakers have used in writing bills to keep transgender kids out of public bathrooms.

Once again it appears Taylor is taking her personal religious beliefs and using them to marginalize a section of her constituency she disagrees with.

Subsequent to the outrage caused by the statements, Taylor released a statement making accusations of misleading editing:

The video clip that surfaced on social media this weekend is a dishonest, politically motivated misrepresentation of my record on combatting [sic] poverty. It was intentionally edited to mislead viewers. I have devoted my life to breaking the chains of generational poverty – as an urban planner, the District 2 Councilwoman, and now Mayor. I’ve done so because of my faith in God and my belief in Jesus’s ministry on Earth. I believe we are all called on to help lift our brothers and sisters out of poverty. The video was edited to cut out the rest of my answer – what I’ve done as Mayor to help alleviate poverty in San Antonio. That includes taking on teen pregnancy and our high-school dropout rates, advocating job-training for young people who aren’t college-bound, and fighting crime.

A video included with the statement contained the full 90 minute forum.

She expanded on that statement on her Facebook page stating:

The video clip that surfaced on social media this weekend is a dishonest, politically motivated misrepresentation of my record on combatting [sic] poverty. It was intentionally edited to mislead viewers. I have devoted my life to breaking the chains of generational poverty – as an urban planner, the District 2 Councilwoman, and now Mayor. I’ve done so because of my faith in God and my belief in Jesus’s ministry on Earth. I believe we are all called on to help lift our brothers and sisters out of poverty. I also believe in Original Sin, and that was the context for my comment in the YouTube video clip. We’re all “broken,” from the richest among us to the poorest, until we forge a relationship with our Maker. I could have expressed myself more clearly in explaining my belief at the forum. The video was edited to cut out the rest of my answer – what I’ve done as Mayor to help alleviate poverty in San Antonio. That includes taking on teen pregnancy and our high-school dropout rates, advocating job-training for young people who aren’t college-bound, and fighting crime. San Antonians need look no further than my work on the East Side for evidence of my commitment to this issue. To see my full answer, please click on the video below. Thank you.

She linked to the same full forum video in that statement as well.

At issue, Taylor believes that her inclusion of other potential mitigating poverty factors makes her commentary about non-believers palatable. Moreover, comparing the shorter video to the full forum video Taylor provided demonstrates no evidence of so-called “intentionally edited” footage. Her comments berating non-believers are the same with and without the context of the rest of her answer to the question.

However, it shouldn’t go unnoticed that in the full video, Taylor makes other questionable statements about how she conducts secular government business.

At one point, citing a Bible verse, Taylor comments, “I am a born again Christian, a believer in Jesus Christ. I draw very heavily on that as far as the strength to do this job.” She added that those beliefs and that Bible verse help her “on a daily basis.”

Rather than being guided by rule of law, Taylor allows her personal religious beliefs to guide her decisions and actions. That explains (in part) why she chose not only to vote against legal protections for LGBTQ people, but to rationalize the very existence of poverty by claiming non-believers are “broken.”

The backlash against Taylor’s comments speak to an ongoing conversation about religious privilege – one that Christians like Ivy Taylor often frame as persecution. Dr. Benjamin L. Corey wrote about this last year in an article titled, “America Isn’t Growing Hostile Towards Christians, It’s Growing Hostile Towards Religious Bullies.”

In it he explained that despite being in the majority both in terms of the general population as well as the composition of the entire government, Christians often argue they’re the target of undue discrimination. Dr. Corey said in part:

If America were truly hostile towards Christians, that would be a massive indictment against Christians themselves— because America is near-entirely controlled by Christians. The idea that America is hostile to Christians and that the liberty to practice Christianity is under attack is misguided at best, and a complete fabrication designed to control the fearful and ignorant at worst. Like all distorted thinking, this idea that America is growing hostile towards Christians is rooted in a degree of truth– most broken thinking is.

He went on to explain:

There’s a massive difference between freedom to practice one’s religion in a pluralistic society where we all equally have that right, versus enshrining one’s extremist religious views in laws that are imposed on the rest of us. There’s a big difference between saying that you want to be free and not forced to marry someone of the same sex, versus wanting to deny that right to someone else you don’t even know. There’s a big difference between wanting the freedom to own a business and conduct commerce freely in the public square, versus demanding to run a business that discriminates and infringes on the basic rights and dignities of everyone else. No one is trying to stop you from being a Christian. The country is not growing hostile towards Christians. It’s just growing hostile towards extremist, religious bullies, who are trying to hijack the nation and force everyone to live under their own set of morals and ethics.

Dr. Corey’s commentary on religious bullies applies wholly to Ivy Taylor – a politician who chose to lead her answer to a question about poverty by labeling non-believers as “broken.”

While it’s true she segued into discussing education and teen pregnancy, her decision to malign poor people as Godless and non-believers as “broken” is just as bad as her vote to disenfranchise LGBTQ people several years ago. It demonstrates a pattern of placing personal beliefs over rule of law and the rights of all people regardless of minority status.

Though she’s a registered Democrat, Ivy Taylor has consistently expressed conservative views on subjects ranging from social politics to economic policy. Perhaps it’s time for a real Democrat to run for office in San Antonio – one that understands calling people “broken” is not good politics.

Taylor’s comments begin at the 1:07:45 mark:

Peacock Panache readers:

Tim Peacock is the Managing Editor and founder of Peacock Panache and has worked as a civil rights advocate for over twenty years. During that time he’s worn several hats including leading on campus LGBTQ advocacy in the University of Missouri campus system, interning with the Colorado Civil Rights Division, and volunteering at advocacy organizations. You can learn more about him at his personal website.

Like this: Like Loading...

Related

We hope you enjoyed reading this article! If you would like to support our ongoing work, please consider buying us a cup of coffee. It's not much, but we don't do this for the money. We do, however, need caffeine to keep going some days!If you do donate, send us a message through our Contact Us page or via social media so we can thank you!