There’s a terrific opinion piece in the Brighton-Pittsford Post about Maggie’s new anti-gay initiative:

It’s been said so many times that the message is beginning to sound like a broken record: If the Greater Rochester region is to thrive in a high-tech global economy, it has to be considered an accepting place for the bright and talented people who make it work.

But at some point, businesses seeking to relocate here will look past the delegations of business and government folks who greet them with open arms – and tax-break enticements – and witness how business really gets done around here lately. There’s too much political gamesmanship, the kind that turns people away.

The latest case in point: The county is stubbornly appealing a recent state Appellate Court decision that went against the county-run Monroe Community College in a suit filed by an employee, Pat Martinez of Chili, for spousal health-care benefits for her partner, Lisa Ann Golden. The couple were legally married in a ceremony performed in Ontario, Canada, and the court determined unanimously that New York has recognized marriages from other jurisdictions and must cover the benefits.

This is something that people don’t talk about enough. It pains me to say this, but locally I see far too much of a backwards-looking attitude that alienates the bright, young, ambitious people who drive the contemporary information economy.

We can’t go back in time to the 1950s and expect to have a cutting edge economy. Sadly, much of what passes for commentary at the D&C (sorry to keep beating them up today), for example, consists of “why can’t the world be exactly like the world I grew up in.” The answer is that it can’t and that efforts to turn back the clock merely turn away business.