One of the things that scarred me in my youth was the ending of the first Superman movie, back in 1978, when Lex Luthor releases a nuclear bomb that brings down the Golden Gate Bridge,* the iconic span joining San Francisco and Marin. It didn’t help that, in 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed part of the Bay Bridge, which ties San Francisco to the East Bay. Forever after, when I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge (which I often did), I held my breath.

I would have held it even more if I had still been living in the San Francisco Bay Area when the DEI craze took hold. That’s because the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, which operates and maintains the bridge, passed a bunch of DEI resolutions enshrining anti-white racism and LGBTQ+ obsessions as part of its mission. The thought that a qualified white heterosexual man might be passed over for a maintenance job in favor of a less qualified black trans-lesbian would have made those drives my own personal horror movie.

Image by Frank Schulenburg. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Now, though, perhaps I can lay those fears to rest (should I ever return to the Bay Area and cross that Golden Gate Bridge again). Given its dependence on federal funds, Golden Gate Bridge officials have announced that they will DEI no more:

The district that operates the Golden Gate Bridge has removed diversity, equity and inclusion language in policy documents to avoid backlash from the Trump administration.

A $400 million federal grant to support the final five-year phase of the seismic retrofit of the iconic span was potentially at stake, said Denis Mulligan, general manager of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.

Bridge tolls are the district’s primary source of revenue, and, unlike most other transit agencies, the district receives no dedicated state or local tax funding. When the district buys new buses or ferries or does work on the bridge, about 80% of the money comes from federal sources, Mulligan said.

With that in mind, the district board voted 11-3 on Friday to rescind resolutions that referenced race, gender identity and sexual orientation, and approved a new resolution that states broad commitments.

Of course, the reality is that I should still be afraid, very afraid. The Golden Gate Bridge board members may have removed the language from the official district records, but the values live on in their hearts.

Mulligan, the general manager mentioned above, admitted that the language was removed only to satisfy federal funding requirements, not because of any change of heart. Indeed, a Marin-based board member made it very clear that not giving special privileges to people based on melanin and what they do with their genitals is fascism:

“We must always uphold our values of diversity, justice, equality, and never back down in the face of fascism, bullies and elected officials who try to condition funding or withhold funds solely based on adherence to a conservative racist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-everything-that-is-good political agenda,” [Holli] Thier said.

“We are a district that welcomes everyone regardless of race, religion, gender, age, sexuality, ability and more — but if we do not say it, no one knows it, and if we retract it, no one will believe us,” Thier said.

Yes, it’s now fascist to say that governments should not put their thumbs on the scale based upon people’s skin color or sexual orientation. This is today’s left.

Let’s hope that, separate from the Democrat extremists on the board, the people actually working on the Bridge itself take to heart the fact that they can hire the best people, regardless of race, color, creed, sex, or sexual predilections.

And of course, this continues Donald Trump’s record of wins. Just yesterday, as we reported, UPenn rescinded the medals and records granted to Will Thomas, a fetishistic man who announced that he was a woman and, henceforth, was entitled to a place on the women’s swim team. It also promised that, as an institution, it would sin no more, leaving women’s sports to...you know, women.

Much remains to be done to return America to focusing on merit, but this is a good start.

*Thank goodness I never saw the bridge collapse in the 1959 Japanese Sci-Fi movie, Battle in Outer Space. I would have been traumatized at a much younger age!