Steve Pokin

SPOKIN@NEWS-LEADER.COM

Fifty people. Oh my God.

I wrote the column which follows on Friday, prior to 50 people being killed early Sunday in a gay nightclub in Orlando. It was supposed to have run in Monday's newspaper.

My editors decided to hold it a day for print because of the sad, violent tragedy in Orlando, our nation's worst mass shooting.

I don't know the true motives of the shooter in Orlando, who was killed by a police SWAT team. Apparently, he had pledged his allegiance to the Islamic state. Apparently, he was mentally unstable. Apparently, he hated gays and lesbians.

With an extra day to think about what I wrote on Friday, all I want to add is that I believe when you systemically discriminate against a certain type of people — whether it's blacks or gays and whether you can find support for it in the Bible or not — it gives a running start to those already harboring dislike and fear of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

In my view, it makes it easier for fear and dislike to build momentum to hate.

Here's my column:

Reader John Wyrsch recently sent me a document that made me wonder how so many conservative Christians cannot see discrimination against gays and lesbians as clearly as they see discrimination against blacks.

Many want a law passed to protect them should they, in their view, exercise their religious liberty by not doing business with gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people.

To me, that would be nothing more than discrimination.

Wyrsch, 68, sent me a copy of the 1958 Springfield Chamber of Commerce's Report on Integration. I found it fascinating for several reasons.

In the first place, why did the Springfield chamber — serving one of the most conservative areas of Missouri — ask local business if they served blacks?

Then, I also was surprised that 116 restaurants responded, as did 22 hotels, 57 motels and six theaters.

Remember, this was six years prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, sex or national origin.

Here's why the Springfield chamber did the study: Because the Rev. Thomas Zimmerman asked it to.

Zimmerman was chairman of the chamber's Civic Affairs Committee. And guess what denomination the reverend was?

He was with the Assemblies of God.

Not only was Zimmerman an Assembles of God minister, the next year, 1959, he started a 26-year tenure as superintendent of the Assemblies of God. He died in 1991.

In contrast to Zimmerman's push for the study, the Assemblies of God in recent years had dug in to oppose gay marriage, which the U.S. Supreme Court made the law of the land in 2015.

The denomination, based here in Springfield, today strongly opposes laws that would protect the LGBT community. Its most prominent pastor in the Ozarks — the Rev. John Lindell, who heads James River Church, with a Sunday attendance of 9,200 — last year from the pulpit encouraged his congregation to repeal SOGI.

SOGI was a City Council-approved law passed to protect the LGBT community from discrimination in Springfield. Voters narrowly repealed the law in April 2015.

I know what you're thinking.

Hey Pokin! Two different issues. In the eyes of conservative Christians, being black is not a sin, but homosexuality is.

First, our form of government protects citizens from the will of the religious majority. We are a nation of law. Live your faith through the way you live your life, not by how you marginalize someone else's life.

Also, I believe that the Bible packs a powerful punch. But don't use it to harm others. Don't pick verses to hurt those already on the fringes.

For example, too many pastors did just that to try to uphold slavery, citing verses like this from the Book of Peter: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.”

Take-out only

But back to the 1958 Chamber of Commerce Report. It revealed what most everyone knew. Blacks were not treated as full citizens in Springfield.

Of the 116 restaurants that responded: 76 white-owned restaurants did not serve blacks and 26 did. There were three black-owned restaurants that served blacks and 11 white-owned restaurants that did "under certain conditions."

Several owners detailed those conditions. Some served blacks "take-out only"; Bob's Place said "only in a separate dining room"'; Carl's Cafe responded "only in one certain booth, or at the counter"'; and the Colonial Dinner House said only "a colored servant traveling with a white family, or a group of colored people large enough to fill one of their private dining rooms,which may be closed off."

Regarding the 22 hotel owners, only one white-owned business would rent a room to a black person. That was the YWCA. The YMCA would not provide a room to a black person.

Of the 57 motels surveyed, 46 owned by whites did not provide lodging to blacks. Eight white-owned businesses said they did (including, oddly enough, the Snow White Lodge) and two said they occasionally did. The one black-owned business served blacks.

At Springfield's six theaters, three allowed blacks and three didn't.

The Landers Theatre had a balcony section open to blacks on certain nights. The Springfield Drive-In Theatre and the Sunset Drive-In Theatre allowed blacks.

The Fox, Gillioz and Tower theaters did not.

The chamber committee concluded with these words, written under the name of chairman Phillip L. Roper, then president of the Roper Electric Company. He died in 2010.

"The findings of our study are shameful for a city which boasts of its many churches and Christian atmosphere, and which takes such pride in the display of its having been chosen as one of the few 'All-American' cities.

"We feel that it is shameful that all human beings, regardless of color, who have the price of a meal, the price of a night's lodging, or the price of a theater ticket can't go into any place of their choosing and receive the same services and treatment accorded all persons."

Change is coming in our nation, where all men and women are created equal. So we are told. Let's not lag behind that ideal here in the Ozarks.

These are the views of Steve Pokin, the News-Leader's columnist. Pokin has been at the paper four years and over the course of his career has covered just about everything — from courts and cops to features and fitness. He can be reached at 836-1253, spokin@gannett.com, on Twitter @stevepokinNL or by mail at 651 N. Boonville, Springfield, MO 65806.

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