Ahmed Ellali

A pro-democracy demonstration organized by civil society groups protests against the holding of Dec. 17 elections for what independent observers say will be a rubber-stamp parliament, in downtown Tunis, Tunisia, Dec. 10, 2022.

Overcoming years of division and infighting, Tunisia’s civil society and political parties are uniting to confront President Kais Saied, whose power grab since his election, observers say, is turning back the clock on the last democracy standing from the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions.

The catalyst for this newfound unity is a round of parliamentary elections being pushed through by the populist president tomorrow that dramatically reduces what’s left of Tunisia’s democracy.

Under a new, restrictive constitution, what was a multiparty parliament that drafted laws and directed policy is becoming a ceremonial chamber with little legislative powers, subservient to the president.

Independent observers warn further that the new election format is unfree and unfair, adding that the result of the elections will be a rubber-stamp parliament that will be the final nail in the coffin of their democracy.

However, the rights groups, coalitions, and political parties now joining forces to oppose Mr. Saied lack a consensus national leader around whom they can coalesce, and their main leverage, beyond protests, is to boycott Saturday’s vote and brand it as illegitimate.

Mr. Saied also still retains significant public support from citizens who bought into his anti-establishment rhetoric.

Protesters say they are nevertheless determined to prevent the last of Tunisia’s democratic institutions from falling under the increasingly autocratic president’s control.

“If political groups and civil society don’t unify, then this dictatorship will continue and we will be taken backwards to before the 2011 revolution,” says 19-year-old Suha Ben Kadim, a protester at an anti-election demonstration held by civil society groups and the National Salvation Front in downtown Tunis last Saturday. “Civil society organizations have no option but to work together as one hand.”

Electoral change

Saturday’s polls are being held to replace the parliament that steered the country and was a beacon for democracy, individual rights, and pluralism in the Arab world. Under the new constitution penned by Mr. Saied, the new chamber will have no oversight powers or power to impeach, its legislative role reduced to advising and approving laws introduced by the president.

Under the election law designed by Mr. Saied, who is openly disdainful of political parties, citizens can vote only for individual independent candidates within their district, and not for a party or national electoral list.

As a result, political parties are boycotting the election, and a group of largely unknowns – Saied supporters and loyalists – are on the ballot.

Mandel Ngan/AP

Tunisian President Kais Saied (center) attends the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, Dec. 14, 2022. The populist Mr. Saied has rewritten Tunisia's Constitution as he has consolidated power.

The country’s Independent Electoral Commission, once a model for the region, had its directors sacked by Mr. Saied and replaced with loyalists. The commission proceeded to approve Mr. Saied’s electoral law and regulations without review, independent Tunisian election experts say, moves that led most international observers to pass up monitoring the polls.

Mr. Saied’s government has barred international journalists from interviewing candidates, and Tunisia’s journalists union says authorities have harassed reporters and media outlets critical of the elections.

Many political liberals who supported Mr. Saied’s earlier moves to concentrate power in the presidency say this shift in election format reneges on the president’s promise of a new, inclusive, and devolved democratic system. Public figures who once supported the president are speaking out against him.

“Today, in general, civil society, political society, media, academics, and elites are all against the decisions of Kais Saied; there is much concern about these elections,” says Amine Ghali, director of Al Kawakibi Democracy Transition Center, a Tunis-based democracy nongovernmental organization.

Protests and rallies led by civil society groups and political parties have brought thousands to the streets. And activists ranging from women’s rights advocates to Islamists are canvassing, urging citizens to boycott the Saturday vote, highlighting the harm they say Mr. Saied’s restrictive system will have on their individual constituencies.

This flurry of activity comes 17 months after Mr. Saied assumed emergency powers under the pretext of the COVID-19 pandemic – in what was then termed a “constitutional coup” – before he scrapped the constitution altogether and wrote a new one himself.

Blunting expressions of concern over Tunisia’s rapid backslide toward dictatorship was the fact that Mr. Saied’s power grab was widely popular among a public fatigued with political infighting and alleged corruption by political parties. Large swaths of the public also have bought into his conspiracy-oriented narrative that political parties and a deep state were to blame for Tunisia’s woes even after he took power.

The president’s bitterly divided opponents were slow to act after the “coup,” wary of turning the public against themselves.

Shift in sentiment

But now conditions, and the public mood, have changed.

A deepening economic crisis is on Tunisians’ minds, not Mr. Saied’s maneuvers, with inflation and chronic food shortages hitting every household.

Supermarket shelves are empty. Citizens rush to grocery stores to compete for a few bags of sugar, semolina, or a milk carton. Inflation is at a record 9.8%.

Amid mounting public debt and the government’s mismanagement of supply chains, Mr. Saied has been unable, so far, to secure a badly needed International Monetary Fund loan.

On Thursday, the IMF delayed to January a final decision on a $1.9 billion loan agreed upon with Tunisia.

Zoubeir Souissi/Reuters

Campaign posters are on display in Tunis, Tunisia, on Dec. 10, 2022, ahead of controversial parliamentary elections being held Saturday, Dec. 17.

Civil society groups have been trying to capitalize on the economic discontent to win back the trust of people whose patience with the president is beginning to wear but who had been disenchanted with political parties’ failures to improve living conditions prior to the coup.

“We won the battle of the street; we showed that the majority of Tunisians are really against the president’s project,” says Marwan Bahi, a law student and university activist attending last Saturday’s preelection protest, “but today a national project is needed to get us rid of this catastrophe.”

Tunisia’s General Labor Union, a coalition representing 1 million workers that helped bring down former strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali 11 years ago and had been working with Mr. Saied to encourage a return to the “democratic path,” came out against the elections and the president’s agenda last week.

“We no longer accept the current path because of its ambiguity and individual rule, and the unpleasant surprises it lays in store for the fate of the country and democracy,” union secretary-general Noureddine Taboubi said in a Dec. 2 speech to thousands of unionists.

Boycott, delegitimize

The focus of Mr. Saied’s opponents across the board is to delegitimize Saturday’s elections and the resulting parliament.

Tunisian parliament and elections monitor Al Bawsala was one of many independent watchdogs that announced its refusal to monitor and legitimize polls that it said would be neither free nor fair, citing the replacement of Independent Electoral Commission officials with Saied loyalists and the changing of election rules without review.

“Al Bawsala refuses to stand witness to the path to one-man rule and a cartoon parliament,” it said Wednesday. 

It called on the Tunisian public to “boycott the institution of the next parliament and refuse it a veneer of legitimacy,” adding that it “urges all citizens, men and women, to resist the path of a consolidating authoritarian regime and attempts to return Tunisia backwards to a pre-revolution dictatorship.”

Yet analysts question whether civil society groups and rights advocates can undo a now-entrenched autocratic state with all the democratic institutions compromised.

“I see more of these civil society groups coming together, but at the same time I see these groups becoming weaker and more marginalized,” says Youssef Cherif, director of the Columbia Global Centers-Tunis.

The political parties achieved unity, he says, only after they became “irrelevant and practically nonexistent.”

Unity, but no alternative

Meanwhile, no viable opposition figure has emerged as an alternative to Mr. Saied; Tunisia’s politicians are mostly deeply unpopular and polarizing among the general public.

“Civil society groups can come together as one voice, but they are not providing an alternative to Kais Saied, which means he can continue what he is doing and no one can stop him,” says Mr. Cherif. “Most of the powers are now in the hands of the president, and the parliament will resemble most Arab parliaments: an echo chamber that cannot change politics or remove the president,” he adds.

“After the dissolving of parliament, the passage of a new constitution, and the closure of independent institutions, it may be too late for this united rejection,” adds Mr. Ghali.

Yet with the memory of the Ben Ali dictatorship fresh in the minds of many, Tunisians vow that their resistance will only increase as Mr. Saied solidifies his one-man rule.

“I can’t be quiet today because I have family members who faced injustice and died because of injustice,” Ms. Ben Kadim, the student protester, says of the previous regime. “I see those things may be repeated again.”

Ahmed Ellali contributed to this report from Tunis.

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi used a press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in September to publicly criticize Russia’s war in Ukraine – “Today’s era is not of war,” Mr. Modi said – Washington and other Western capitals cheered the show of independence from Moscow.

But Mr. Modi struck an equally independent stance when the Biden administration sought India’s condemnation of Russia over Ukraine at the United Nations. In a similar fashion, India has stood firm as the United States has ramped up pressure on India to stop buying Russian oil. In fact, Russia moved up several notches to become India’s top oil supplier in October, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

These events and more suggest how India’s vision of its role in the world is changing, as it rises from its longtime status as the world’s largest democracy – though a poor and underdeveloped one – to a middle economic and political power on the cusp of surpassing China as the world’s most populous country.

For decades India was a leader of the “nonaligned movement” of developing countries struggling to advance in a post-World War II international system designed by the U.S. and other wealthy Western powers. Its closest ally was the Soviet Union.

But India under Mr. Modi increasingly sees itself as what officials and diplomats describe as an independent “middle power,” partnering with the U.S. on a range of strategic issues based on common goals and values, but aligning itself with no single power or group of countries.

“India is at a flexion point in its international relationships,” says Indrani Bagchi, CEO of the Ananta Aspen Centre in New Delhi and a prominent analyst of Indian foreign policy. It is “pivoting from its legacy relationships, such as with Russia,” to the political and economic “alliances that will serve India most as it seeks to emerge as a global economic power and further the objective of balancing China,” she says.

“In this emerging context India won’t be ‘nonaligned’ or allied with any one country or power,” she adds, “instead it will be ‘multi-aligned’ according to national interests.”

Officials and foreign policy experts say India will deepen partnerships that fit its needs. That means relations with the U.S., which have warmed and strengthened considerably over the past two decades, are likely to continue their upward trajectory.

“India is trying to create an enabling environment for its own transformation,” says Shivshankar Menon, a former Indian ambassador to China who served as national security adviser to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “It’s a big job, and we can’t do it without good relations with the United States.” 

Opportunity to lead

At the same time, India will try its hand at leading when it believes it can make a difference.

India’s presidency over the next year of the G-20 group of major and middle economies is an example of this brand of leadership, experts say.

Mr. Modi will use the coming year in the global diplomatic spotlight to pursue goals ranging from climate justice and mitigation to equitable green economic development from the perspective of the “global south” economies, Indian observers say. He also sees the G-20 presidency as an opportunity to shape global perspectives of India, they add.

But some say this approach will include a dose of realism and self-awareness of the limits a rising but still developing power like India faces internationally.

“Modi wants to boost India’s international stature, but at the same time he knows that India is not at the point either politically or economically of assuming the role of a great power,” says Pramit Chaudhuri, who heads the Eurasia Group’s India activities in New Delhi. “That means focusing on the international issues that matter most to India, like China and climate change, while downplaying the issues where India realizes it doesn’t have the clout or diplomatic bandwidth to make a difference.”

Alexandr Demyanchuk/Sputnik/Kremlin/AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) speaks to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during their talks on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Sept. 16, 2022. For decades India was a leader of the “nonaligned movement” of developing countries struggling to advance in a post-World War II international system, and its closest ally was the Soviet Union.

He notes, for example, that when the Group of Seven leading industrial nations asked India to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, Mr. Modi declined – recognizing, Mr. Chauduri says, that India was unlikely to succeed in such a high-stakes role.

“India wants to position itself lower down the rungs, away from high-profile roles,” Mr. Chaudhuri says. As evidence, he points to how Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has over recent months “reframed his own description of India from ‘leading power’ to ‘aspiring to be a leading power.’”

Coalition of the willing

India’s focus on alignments that can serve its purpose while not boxing it in makes the Quad grouping of Indo-Pacific powers – the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India – a particularly attractive partnership for New Delhi, Indian experts say. A relative newcomer to global partnerships, the Quad was formalized in 2007 after the four countries worked together successfully on the 2004 Aceh tsunami. 

“In this context where ‘multi-alignment’ is the new mantra, the Quad is the right fit because it offers the flexibility India wants,” says Ms. Bagchi. “For India, the overarching draw of the Quad is its ability to collectively counter China,” she says. But unlike a constraining alliance, the Quad also offers India the “flexibility” that suits it, she adds.

The Quad has 26 working groups that members participate in or not according to their strengths and interests, an organizational model she says works well with India’s vision of its international role.

“It’s what George Bush used to call ‘coalitions of the willing,’” Ms. Bagchi says, “and that’s the kind of ‘coalition’ India is comfortable with as a rising power at its stage of development.”

With its focus on maritime security in the Indo-Pacific region and freedom of maritime navigation, the Quad fits with India’s aim of balancing China in the region. India on its own doesn’t give China much pause in its regional pursuits, Indian analysts say, but India teamed up with the U.S. and the other Quad partners is more to reckon with.

“China sees India as too poor, too undisciplined, too chaotic to deal with as a peer power, but that has changed as we have moved closer to the United States, and to Japan,” Ms. Bagchi says. “As India has warmed to the U.S. and joined the Quad, the Chinese have taken full notice.”

Goals and values

Another factor explaining India’s warming towards the U.S. is a youth population more drawn to the values of freedom and individual merit than to the collectivist ideologies popular in post-independence India. Thus one survey this year showed Indian youth anticipate a growing shift in India away from traditional partners like Russia towards closer links with the U.S. and other Western countries.

During a visit to Washington in September, External Affairs Minister Jaishankar extolled the strengthening and warming of U.S.-India relations over recent decades and credited ever-closer ties between the two countries’ people with providing the foundation for the growing friendship.

India is also tailoring its international partnerships to take full advantage of Western economies’ accelerating decoupling from China as their principal economic partner.

India’s GDP may only be one-fifth of China’s currently, but Indian officials thrill to contrasting their country’s growing young and educated population with China’s aging population. 

And global tech giants and others have taken notice. In September, Apple shifted some of its iPhone 14 production to a Foxconn plant in Chennai, India. In a report the same month, J.P. Morgan projected that Apple’s twofold goal of meeting smartphone demand in the booming Indian market while also shifting manufacturing away from China will result in India producing about 25% of all iPhones by 2025 – up from about 5% today.

For Mr. Chaudhuri, India understands that dampening China’s intentions of becoming the Indo-Pacific region’s dominant power will require India becoming an economic, political, and military power to be reckoned with.

“India now realizes that the best way to challenge China’s regional goals is to keep it wary of you and convinced that you can match them if they push,” he says.

And that, analysts say, explains Mr. Modi’s dual focus on growing India’s economy and its international partnerships with like-minded powers that count with Beijing.

“India and the U.S. see pretty much eye to eye when it comes to the importance of counterbalancing China,” Mr. Chaudhuri says. “That goes a long way in explaining the upward trajectory in U.S.-India relations.”

Pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, violet. 

A 25-foot-long pride flag recently hung for two weeks outside Colorado Springs City Hall. For a city known for years as a conservative, Christian center, it was a notable sign of solidarity with those targeted in the mass shooting there last month at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub. 

Soon after the flag was raised, however, strong winds caused the fabric to tear. The city reached out to a local seamstress who came to the rescue and volunteered her time. After her repairs, the flag was raised again. 

Much like the mending of the flag, Colorado LGBTQ advocates are used to cycles of revolution and repair, victory and setback, while gaining allies along the way. From “hate state” status in the 1990s to the reelection, with a 19-point lead, of the country’s first openly gay, male governor in November, Colorado illustrates the nation’s gradual trend toward equal rights for the LGBTQ community – even as gales of grievance continue to blow.

The partisan split of Colorado’s federal lawmakers over the Respect for Marriage Act, signed into law this week, signaled another nuanced win for LGBTQ advocates.

“Marriage and our right to marry is huge, because it humanizes us,” says Liss Smith, communications manager at Inside Out Youth Services, which serves LGBTQ young people. Yet marriage equality is a “tiny piece of a very big puzzle” of priorities, adds Mx. Smith, which includes ongoing advocacy for inclusive schools and transgender rights.

“We need allies in this work more than we ever have,” says Mx. Smith, who grew up in Colorado Springs and uses a gender-neutral courtesy title. Symbols of that support abound of late. “There are pride flags hanging in downtown businesses right now, which I never could have imagined when I was a kid.” 

An about-face on marriage equality 

When President Joe Biden served as a Democratic senator in 1996, a minority of Americans supported same-sex marriage. That year he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a legal union only between a man and a woman, thereby determining eligibility for certain federal benefits. 

On Tuesday, Mr. Biden formally repealed and replaced that law by signing the Respect for Marriage Act, joined by survivors of the Club Q shooting that killed five people. (Though motive remains undetermined, the alleged shooter has been charged with 305 counts that include murder and hate crimes.)

As same-sex marriage support now swells to around 7 out of 10 Americans nationwide, the bipartisan act of Congress codifies same-sex and interracial marriage rights, compelling states to honor valid unions from other states even if they do not legalize them in their own state. The measure was prompted by some lawmakers’ fear of a potential overturning of Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that confirmed the constitutional right to same-sex marriage.  

Several reasons may explain the growing embrace of marriage equality nationally, scholars say, including increased LGBTQ representation in mass media and more everyday interactions with those who are out. Not all activists have prioritized marriage equality, however.

To some, it was seen as “too radical of a goal, particularly in the late ’80s, early ’90s,” as workplace discrimination and AIDS activism took precedence, says Andrew Flores, a political scientist at American University in Washington, D.C. “For others, it was joining an institution that was very much more mainstream,” which was off-putting.

David Zalubowski/AP/File

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (left) waves to the crowd, accompanied by his partner, Marlon Reis, after Mr. Polis took the oath of office during his January 2019 inauguration ceremony in Denver. Longtime partners, Mr. Polis and Mr. Reis were married last year.

Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis married his husband, Marlon Reis, last year. Mr. Polis rose from tech entrepreneur to philanthropist and major Democratic donor, winning seats on the Colorado State Board of Education and later in the U.S. House and then the governorship in 2018.

His first year in office, Governor Polis signed legislation banning conversion therapy, which seeks to get people who don’t identify as heterosexual to see themselves that way. In other LGBTQ-related moves, he outlawed the “gay or trans panic defense” in state courtrooms and mandated some protections for transgender-related care in certain health care plans. Nationally, however, he may be best known as a pragmatic leader with a libertarian streak.

“I think the interesting thing that we’ve seen is his identity as an openly LGBT person – a married gay man with kids – is almost secondary,” says Brad Clark, president and CEO at the Denver-based Gill Foundation, which focuses on issues of LGBTQ equality. 

That sort of normalization is what advocates have pursued for years, adds Mr. Clark: “What should matter is his leadership.”

The governor, from Boulder County, was born in 1975 – the same year that a straight woman there became an accidental hero of the gay rights cause. 

Colorado Springs: A red pocket in a blue state

Clela Rorex, Boulder County clerk and recorder, became one of the first clerks in the country to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Unaware of any state law to stop her, she issued six such licenses before the state attorney general intervened. As national media picked up the story, she became a target of hate at home.

Years later, she recalled how she was tested by a “cowboy” who came in asking to marry his 8-year-old horse. “I put my pen down, calm as could be, and said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, but that’s too young without parental approval,’” she said with a chuckle.

Two decades after Ms. Rorex issued those six licenses, city ordinances barring discrimination based on sexual orientation had passed in Aspen, Denver, and Boulder, spurring conservative backlash.  

Colorado Springs resident Kevin Tebedo co-founded a group called Colorado for Family Values, which put forth the 1992 Amendment 2 ballot initiative aimed at the LGBTQ community. It called for barring state entities from allowing people to claim discrimination based on “homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices, or relationships.”

The goal wasn’t to “deny homosexuals any rights,” says Mr. Tebedo, a business consultant in the city. Rather, “our amendment was written specifically to prohibit homosexuality from being counted as an immutable, readily identifiable characteristic for the purposes of strict scrutiny under the law.”

What Americans like him deem behavior, LGBTQ people and allies see as personal identity (the latter is supported by the American Psychological Association). That meant Amendment 2 was personal for Coloradans like Aaron Marcus, then in his 20s, who recalls how the approaching vote made him officially come out to his family as gay.

“It was so important,” says Mr. Marcus, Gill Foundation associate curator of LGBTQ+ History at History Colorado, a state organization. “I wanted them to know if they vote yes on this and legalize discrimination, it could impact their son, their cousin, their brother, their nephew.”

Amendment 2 passed with 53% of the vote, igniting a national boycott of Colorado, which garnered the nickname “the hate state.” Mr. Tebedo, who describes himself as neither liberal nor conservative, but a “follower of Christ,” still takes exception to the hate label.

“To act like if somebody approaches something from a biblical worldview is somehow bigoted and evil, but somebody that approaches something from a humanist worldview is not – that’s a false dichotomy,” he says.

Linda Fowler, a lesbian activist who was catalyzed by Amendment 2 to join a lawsuit against the state as a plaintiff, recalls her conviction that her side would win. 

“We firmly believed that it was illegal under the Constitution,” she says. In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. The ruling in Romer v. Evans deemed the amendment unconstitutional under the equal protection clause. 

By then, however, Colorado Springs already had deep roots of resistance to LGBTQ rights.

Around the same time Amendment 2 passed, Focus on the Family and other conservative Christian ministries established themselves in the city. Over the years, the organization has tried to update its messaging on sexual orientation, emphasizing more tolerance, President Jim Daly told The Associated Press last month. 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

People gather at an interfaith vigil in Denver on Nov. 21, 2022, two days after the Colorado Springs Club Q mass shooting. At the vigil, the Rev. Dr. Sam Lopez of the Progressive Christian Alliance noted, "The more involved I am in progressive causes and events in the community … I have less and less contact with [evangelical friends]. Because they're not here."

“I think in a pluralistic culture now, the idea is: How do we all live without treading on each other?” said Mr. Daly, adding that he mourned the Club Q shooting. 

That shift in language does not indicate a shift in core beliefs, however.

“While others have changed their views on marriage, we still hold to more than 5,000 years of Judeo-Christian teaching that marriage uniquely unites the two sexes – a male and a female,” Jeff Johnston, Focus on the Family culture and policy analyst, said in an email via a spokesperson.

By contrast, based just outside of Denver, the Rev. Dr. Sam Lopez, leadership council co-chair of the Progressive Christian Alliance, has officiated same-sex weddings for years, though he is not a member of the LGBTQ community.

“The more involved I am in progressive causes and events in the community … I have less and less contact with [evangelical friends]. Because they’re not here,” he told the Monitor during a Club Q vigil in Denver.

Varying views of equality

Attorney Mario Nicolais says his faith as an Episcopalian – particularly the call to “love one another” – influenced his support for civil unions in the state, along with marriage equality. In 2012, the self-described “classical conservative” helped form the advocacy group Coloradans for Freedom, which pressed for civil union legislation that became law the following year.

“I think to be a conservative, you have to believe in equality,” says Mr. Nicolais. “You can’t have liberty without equality first.”

Mr. Nicolais, a “Never Trumper,” switched his voter registration from GOP to unaffiliated before Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. The fact that Colorado’s three Republican U.S. representatives voted against the Respect for Marriage Act – while the four Democrats voted in favor – didn’t surprise him. 

Those politicians answer to a Republican base that is “very siloed from the rest of the state, but also is a shrinking percentage of the state,” says Mr. Nicolais, an opinion columnist for The Colorado Sun. Today, even with deep-red rural areas, Colorado is a solidly blue state where Democrats control seats for governor, secretary of state, and both legislative chambers. 

Yet the Centennial State continues to source plaintiffs for Supreme Court cases that have forced a national grappling over the promise and limits of LGBTQ equality.

In 2018, the high court narrowly ruled in favor of Colorado baker Jack Phillips in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Mr. Phillips, a devout Christian, had declined to create a custom cake celebrating a same-sex marriage, which the state found in violation of public-accommodation law. The top court ruled on free exercise grounds that the state had shown “hostility” to the baker, but it didn’t settle the free speech issue. 

Now justices are revisiting free speech in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, whose Colorado plaintiff Lorie Smith, a graphic artist, is the owner and founder of 303 Creative. She would like to begin designing custom wedding websites for clients, but based on her Christian conviction that marriage should only be between a man and a woman, she would also like to be able to legally decline creating sites with same-sex marriage messages. Her legal team argues that the Colorado public-accommodation law is censoring her speech.

“No government should be allowed to punish its citizens for creating artwork that’s consistent with what they believe,” says Ms. Smith, whose case was argued before the Supreme Court this month. “That goes for me, that goes for the LGBT web designer, the LGBT graphic designer, and the many people out there who hold different views on marriage.”

Alliance Defending Freedom, her counsel, sees this free speech argument as compatible with the value of equality. 

“I think the government treats people equally under the law by protecting everyone’s right to free speech,” says Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Kellie Fiedorek, who was on the call with Ms. Smith. 

Andrew Harnik/AP

Lorie Smith, a Christian website designer in Colorado, speaks to supporters outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Dec. 5, 2022, after having her case heard by the court. Ms. Smith objects to designing wedding websites for gay couples – the latest clash of religion and gay rights to land at the high court.

Critics see a Pandora’s box ready to burst. The pendulum of Colorado state law has “swung in favor of LGBT people,” says Scott Skinner-Thompson, associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School. “The First Amendment in particular is now being weaponized to limit those protections.”

The legal scholar, along with some advocates, believes that Colorado state law should be amended to safeguard same-sex couples out of an abundance of caution. A 2006 state constitutional amendment defines marriage as exclusively between a man and woman. Court challenges in 2014 deemed that provision unconstitutional, as did the Obergefell decision the following year. However, if the Supreme Court ever determines that nothing in the U.S. Constitution prohibits state bans on same-sex marriage, that could reanimate Colorado provisions that discriminate against same-sex couples.

“This happens all the time, where there are laws that are deemed unconstitutional and they sort of languish in the books, but courts, local officials don’t enforce them,” says Mr. Skinner-Thompson. LGBTQ advocates at One Colorado are prioritizing plans to reverse the ban, reports Colorado Public Radio.

“We are often in a space of reaction, rather than action,” says Mx. Smith, from Inside Out Youth Services. In February, for instance, their team paused work on an advocacy plan for the year to respond to local school board members’ transphobic social media posts by organizing a rally and writing an open letter condemning the content.

The nonprofit offers a range of services, including therapy, group meals, school advocacy, community trainings, and lockers for youths experiencing homelessness. The colorful space features common areas with a pool table and gurgling fish tank, along with a pink “unicorn parking only” sign in the kitchen.

But the physical space has been closed since the shooting, as participants are too hesitant to gather here in public after another safe space was violated just six miles away. Inside Out maintains an online community through the Discord platform and expects to reopen early next year.

Meanwhile, love arrives in letters. Mx. Smith reads the latest batch sent from a New York City school.

One says: “I wish I could be there to comfort you as you grieve.”

Business Wire/AP/File

Soledad O'Brien, Dec. 2, 2021.

It is fitting that one of the country’s most well-known investigative journalists would take on a project to uncover the underappreciated legacy and contributions of one of the country’s most well-known civil rights figures.

Armed with autonomy and artistry, Soledad O’Brien was the executive producer of “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks,” a documentary released last month on Peacock. The film was recently nominated for a Critics’ Choice Documentary Award, in the category of Best Biographical Documentary.

Ms. O’Brien is no stranger to pinpoint analysis and presentations. After a decade with NBC and MSNBC, she became a household name with CNN through her work on programs such as “Black In America.” Now, under her eponymous production company, Ms. O’Brien remains committed to “uncovering stories on the divisive issues of race, class, wealth, poverty, and opportunity through personal narratives.”

Ms. O’Brien recently spoke with the Monitor about the documentary and her legacy of investigative journalism. The conversation has been lightly edited.

What inspired the documentary?

The thing that really inspired the documentary was an excellent book by the same name, “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks,” which was written by Jeanne Theoharis in 2013. One of the directors of the movie, Johanna Hamilton, always found it amazing that Theoharis would tweet all of these facts that you didn’t know, but should know, about Rosa Parks. Johanna was like, “I’m a well-read person, I’ve done a lot of civil rights history, and yet, Jeanne would tweet this list of 25 things, and I knew probably one, maybe two, of them.” [Next, Ms. Hamilton] reached out to Jeanne to talk about turning her book into a documentary, and then reached out to Yoruba Richen, another documentary producer, and the two of them decided they would partner and produce this doc. They brought the project to us and that was the start of it.

Montgomery County Sheriff's office/AP/File

A Sheriff's Department booking photo of Rosa Parks taken Feb. 22, 1956, after she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger on Dec. 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama.

There’s a fearlessness that’s very clear regarding the documentary. Describe the urgency and deliberate nature of using terms such as “white supremacy.”

The beauty when you’re dealing with a documentary about a civil rights icon is I think you’re free to be a truth teller. And especially with this doc and especially with Rosa Parks, what is the point of what you’re doing if you’re not brutally honest? Rosa Parks was taking testimony from women who’d been raped. I can’t clean it up. … I didn’t know that that was her job, that she would travel around the country doing that. It just really changes your take on her, and I think my take was probably a lot like everybody else’s: She was a little old lady who was tired that one day on the bus, and it’s just so inaccurate.

On one hand, if you get the privilege of doing a story about Rosa Parks, you better get it right, and that means using the right words. Also, you know, when you run your own production company and people trust you to do a good job ... They’ve hired us to tell the true story. I’d feel worse if I were dishonest. I’d feel worse if I felt like I was editing things to make people comfortable.

In that same vein, there were radical elements, such as mentioning the Black Panthers and the RNA (Republic of New Afrika). Even within the framework of civil rights, many people don’t know about the “Free the Land” movement.

Exactly. I’m embarrassed to say what I knew about it was very much kind of like a middle school textbook. I just did not know. I very much admire Jeanne, because she really was interested in sharing the story of the actual woman. When Rosa Parks died, The New York Times called her the “accidental mother of civil rights.” Rosa Parks was a lot of things – accidental was not one of them. Her whole life’s work was in this. And so it’s a real misunderstanding of who she was. And I think it’s a tremendous luxury to get the opportunity to fix that, to change that.

Between this documentary and your production company, it seems that you’re able to tell stories that might not be in the national mainframe, even as a journalist who worked for CNN for many years.

CNN was really the place where I got to do documentaries, and it was such a great place to learn. I’m very grateful because I left CNN with like 50 hours of documentaries, and it was a place where I really figured it out and got to work with great people and understood what makes a great documentary. When we did “Black and Missing,” for example, for HBO, that was another documentary that was really successful. Those stories can be tough to sell, and they can be tough to get people to think they might want to watch. We’ve been pretty fortunate on that front so far.

One of your recent presentations on “Matter of Fact” hit really close to home – it was a report about the water crisis in Denmark, South Carolina, which was a point of reference for Democratic presidential candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Tom Steyer.

I think the most powerful thing you can do when you’re a journalist is to bring attention, right? That’s the job. We get to focus the nation’s attention on something that’s important, that maybe people are missing, or maybe people don’t realize that they need to be looking at. Being able to do that and bring attention to a story is very important. It’s essential, and again, I’ve always looked at it as a luxury. I’m often very frustrated by the idea of, you know, [journalists] thinking that people don’t think policy matters to them. It’s why they sometimes cover politics like it’s a joke, you know? I really felt very lucky to be able to go in and tell stories of communities and bring attention there when that attention is sorely needed.

1. Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, by Bushra Rehman

Razia, a Pakistani American, navigates the whirl of growing up across cultures in 1980s New York. As Razia confronts stereotypes, untangles American oddities, and practices her Muslim faith, her first-person narrative vibrates with humor and honesty. 

2. The Circus Train, by Amita Parikh

Welcome aboard the World of Wonders, a theatrics- and splendor-filled circus train crisscrossing Europe in 1938. Yet Lena, the wheelchair-using daughter of the show’s illusionist, eschews magic in favor of science. As war looms, a mysterious Jewish teen joins the troupe and befriends Lena, helping expand her world. The need to persist in spite of hardship underscores the engrossing story.

3. The Seamstress of Sardinia, by Bianca Pitzorno

“I wanted to be considered a worker, an artisan, not a maid,” declares the young seamstress at the heart of Bianca Pitzorno’s novel, translated from Italian by Brigid Maher. In six short-story-length chapters, the seamstress describes her life and work on the island of Sardinia in 1900. The compelling tales reveal the challenges women faced when daring to be different.

4. Scatterlings, by Resoketswe Manenzhe

A multiracial family faces judgment and danger in 1920s South Africa. Weaving myths and journal entries with expressive prose, Resoketswe Manenzhe delivers a powerful, if uneven, novel exploring ancestry, belonging, and home. “The gift of my skin is precisely that – a gift,” says Alisa, the Black matriarch. “I cannot hate it, the world does that well enough.”

5. The Light Pirate, by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Lily Brooks-Dalton’s apocalyptic climate-change adventure story ushers readers into the center of a family’s preparation for a major hurricane in Florida. Amid the storm’s devastation, the mother gives birth to a special girl named Wanda. As the child grows, she’s mentored in survival skills by her neighbor, a biologist. The novel is riveting, imaginative, and encouraging. 

6. The Book of Everlasting Things, by Aanchal Malhotra

Aanchal Malhotra’s novel sweeps across more than a century of a Hindu family of perfumers. When the 1947 Partition rends India, the perfumer’s son is parted from his love, a Muslim calligrapher. Malhotra’s poetic tale of remembrance blends artistry and history to honor the inspiration of love.

7. The Bird Tattoo, by Dunya Mikhail

A Yizidi woman’s peaceful village life in Iraq is upended when she goes in search of her missing husband and is captured by Islamic State. Dunya Mikhail’s story echoes her nonfiction book, “The Beekeeper,” which highlights efforts to rescue Iraqi women. The subject matter may be challenging, but the prose projects hope for the survivors.

8. Screaming on the Inside, by Jessica Grose

This compelling, razor-sharp, and deeply personal book by New York Times opinion writer Jessica Grose examines the impossible demands placed on American mothers, who are expected to be self-sacrificing supermoms even in the absence of adequate structures of social support.

9. The Lion and the Fox, by Alexander Rose

Historian Alexander Rose delivers an atmospheric and entertaining account of a largely forgotten episode of the American Civil War. It concerns a Confederate agent who travels to England on a clandestine mission to acquire warships for the South and the Union agent tasked with stopping him.

10. Accidental Conflict, by Stephen Roach

Stephen Roach unfolds the false, fear-based narratives that China and the United States tell about the other. Roach, a former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, analyzes each country’s economic trajectories and shortcomings, and suggests a way forward. 

Reuters

Computer shoppers in Chicago in November.

The preface for much of the conversation about central banks this year has been how they misread the cues for inflation, and that allowed prices to run away.

One of the most important stories of the year, however, is the absence of consumer panic amid the worst inflation in half a century. Stock markets have bounced up and down. But wages and prices – as barometers of attitudes among shoppers and shopkeepers alike – have not chased each other into a frenzied upward spiral.

That calm is likely rooted in a moral explanation. Confronted by soaring inflation, the world’s monetary policymakers have responded with aggressive interest rate hikes – seven this year in the United States alone. Yet arguably their most effective tool has been honesty. “I wish there were a completely painless way to restore price stability,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday. “There isn’t.”

“Central banks have become increasingly open about their ... objectives, strategy, economic models and projections, and policy deliberations,” according to a study published in April by the European Money and Finance Forum, known by its French acronym SUERF. “Transparency enables accountability, which lends legitimacy to independent central banks and further enhances their credibility.”

That openness has enabled business owners and individuals to shape their own financial decisions with more certainty, resulting in wisdom, patience, and even compassion. Across the United States, for example, there have been countless examples of small-business owners making small adjustments to avoid passing on higher business costs to consumers through higher prices.

“Before I spent more time out in the dining room,” Wayne Shumar, a restaurant owner in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, told Fortune recently. “That’s what a family restaurant entails. Now I spend more time sitting here, looking at a computer screen, trying to keep costs down.”

A survey of consumer behavior by the University of Michigan in November found that, while “inflation has clearly inflicted much pain on the personal finances of consumers,” their long-run expectations about inflation have not dramatically changed this year despite a peak rate of 9.1% in June. A key reason is clarity. “Their views are informed not only by their own experiences but also by their observations and impressions of the economic environment around them, including news they encounter,” the survey found.

“Democracy,” the Supreme Court noted in its 2003 decision in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, “is premised on responsiveness.” Strong institutions result in stability. That may be why a year of soaring inflation has not resulted in panic. From the United States to Japan, the transparency of central bankers has been a source of reassurance for consumers.