I wrote last week about the City of Whitewater’s survey for information about a community calendar on the municipal website. See, Community Calendars.
FREE WHITEWATER’s not really a community calendar, but there are private ones already available, so the city’s suggestion that it might produce its own version is odd.
There’s no insuperable impediment to a municipal calendar, but there is a clear requirement that will be almost impossible for Whitewater’s administration to fulfill: a calendar will have to be content-neutral. The City of Whitewater will not be able to select groups’ events for display based on a preference for some creeds, points of view, or ideologies. There’s no lawful way around the requirement that Whiteater would have to display calendar events from all church groups, all civic groups, groups that disagree with each other, or ones that are objectionable to some residents.
This requirement is so obvious that it must have occurred to the city’s employees and others in town. It’s also hard to see how a public calendar like this will happen in Whitewater. (Private publications are not similarly constrained.)
Expecting this municipal administration to have the strength of will and principle to be impartial, in the face of complaints from irate residents, is like expecting tiny pigs to fly. They sometimes do so in cyberspace, but nowhere else.
The gentlemen who now run Whitewater will find the going hard, and will have to show greater impartiality and strength of will than they’ve ever shown before.