One thing about Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s (overly) ambitious population goal — a net gain of 10,000 families from 2012 to 2023 — it sure encourages a welcoming attitude. In 2012, the mayor signed an order “prohibiting police and social agencies from asking anyone about immigration status,” in part to make a Baltimore more attractive to Latino immigrants. And now she’s gone on NBC’s Meet the Press to invite Arizona’s LGBT residents to look for greener pastures in Baltimore after the state came within a hair’s breadth of implementing legislation that would have grant businesses the right to refuse service to queer residents.
She said she couldn’t “promise you the weather” but assured any prospective Baltimoreans that “there’s no war going on” here. I disagree, I think we can “promise” them the weather. We can promise them that the weather is going to be horrendous. But still, I think I’d prefer it to living in a desert.
