You're not the boss of me.'

Usually this statement is heard coming out of the mouths of bratty kids or rebellious teenagers, not the Attorney General and Secretary of State.
However, that's more or less the attitude that Attorney General Mike Cox and Sec. of State Terri Lynn Land are taking when it comes to Gov. Granholm's executive order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation for state workers.
This isn't to say that Cox and Land want blanket immunity to discriminate all they want. They don't, or at least that's what they claim. Representatives for both offices told BTL that they do not discriminate against people based on sexual orientation – never have, never will.
So then what's all the fuss about? Well, Cox and Land, both Republicans, apparently don't want the Governor telling them what to do. What it comes down to is a game of partisan politics. They claim the rejection of the order has nothing to do with the order's "content" (homos), and everything to do with "procedural issues" (that's politician speak for "You're not the boss of me").
Let's say that Cox and Land are right in their interpretation of the constitution and that they are not bound by Granholm's order (Granholm's representatives say otherwise, but we're being hypothetical here). If they already follow the spirit of the order by not discriminating, if they, in fact, would never discriminate on that basis (both offices said as much), then why don't they write their own non-discrimination policies regarding sexual orientation? Why not just change the discrimination policy of the Civil Service Department to reflect what the offices are already doing? I mean, if it's not the "content" of the order that's the problem, then what, pray tell, is?
Could the fuss over the order be pandering to the Republican party's right-wing faction by two elected officials who want to be reelected when they run again (Land has indicated she plans to run in 2006)? Republicans would never stand in the way of something that is clearly just and long overdue just for the sake of party politics, would they?
Well, yeah. They would.
What it all boils down to is Cox and Land seem to want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want to win the hearts of anti-gay conservatives by rejecting the order, while at the same time appealing to their more moderate constituents by pointing out how homosexuals have always gotten a fair shake in their offices by way of their own good graces.
Excuse us if LGBT people, historically under represented and still blatantly discriminated against in the majority of the states in this country, want it in writing. Otherwise Land and Cox are just talking the talk without walking the walk, aren't they?