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Loading ...Ballot Measure Would Cancel Gainesville LGBT Protections
07.30.2008 3:51pm EDT
(Gainesville, Florida) A social conservative voters group opposed to a Gainesville law protecting the rights of transpeople in employment and housing has mounted a repeal effort that could terminate rights of all LGBT people in the city.
The measure would tie the city’s human rights law to the protections offered by the state.
Unlike city law, Florida state law does not include either gender identity or sexual orientation in proptected categories categories.
Citizens for Good Public Policy says that it has never fought sexual orientation in Gainesville’s human rights ordinance in the 10 years that it has been on the books, but adding trans rights went too far.
Gender identity was added to the ordinance last January.
Cain Davis, the president of Citizens for Good Public Policy, said that the main concern is the use of restrooms by transpeople in restaurants and other places.
Davis told the Gainesville Sun that under the ordinance a biological male with an “inner sense” of being female could legally use the women’s restroom.
“Tell the woman who gets raped, tell the family who gets their spouse killed, that it’s no big deal,” Davis told The Sun.
The signatures submitted this week still need to be verified.
If the measure gets on the ballot LGBT activists say they will mount an aggressive campaign to preserve the law.
Sex crimes committed BY transsexual people are so rare they aren’t even on the RADAR; sex crimes AGAINST transsexual people are steadily rising, especially among teenagers. Cain Davis needs to sit with the family of a transsexual teenager who has been brutally raped and murdered before he cites his non-statistics.
Father Raymond Clark CR+
Superior (retired)
Community of the Resurrection
San Diego CA USA
What has this got to do with bathrooms. It has to do with these people having fair access to employment, and not being discriminated against in renting non-owner occupied housing.
Lies from the religious right freaks, not at all different then what they say or said about gay people
We should first do something about the massive number of rapes committed by good macho str8 men. And we should do something about how so many trans people cannot find jobs, and may end up in prostitution, and then get murdered by str8 people when they discover with whom they are violating their so called sanctity of marriage.
This is all about fear and ignorance. And don’t let the purveyors of that fear say they haven’t been opposed to gay people being treated fairly. They just have a different organization to do their dirty work there.