But, wait! There are more bills in the air: Michigan has one seeking to repeal its constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and New Hampshire has one seeking to repeal its newly approved-but-not-yet-enacted marriage equality law.

And, of course, there is still Maine, a dropped ball.

Ever since last Tuesday, when voters in Maine voted to repeal the state’s newly approved-but-not-yet-enacted marriage equality law, opponents of same-sex marriage have touted the vote as a decisive renunciation of equal rights for gay couples.

They claim Maine was a “liberal New England state” where they were “grossly outspent.” Supporters of equal rights, who did eventually concede the defeat, the struggle is “about love and family and that will always be something worth fighting for.”

Both sides of the same-sex marriage issue have re-positioned their resources from Maine to these five other states.

New York

In New York State on Tuesday, the Senate was slated to take up a marriage equality bill. The bill  already passed the state Assembly, but the volatile Senate –where Democrats cling to a 32 to 30 majority—has been reluctant to take it up.

That reluctance continued: The Senate did not take up the bill Tuesday. Instead, Senate leaders huddled with Gov. David Paterson and, according to the New York Times, came up with yet another “vague agreement” to vote on the bill “before the end of the year.”

That may be as soon as Monday of next week, but many observers say they doubt the Senate will put the bill on the floor unless the Democratic leadership knows the bill has 32 votes.  Two Democrats have already said they would not vote for the measure, and the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage sent out a statement this week, saying it would “build a $500,000 war chest to fund a primary challenge to any Republican senator who votes for gay marriage –regardless of the outcome” of the Senate vote.

Washington, D.C.

 Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., counting votes is not an issue. A D.C. council committee voted 4 to 1 on Tuesday to approve a marriage equality bill there. The full Council will vote on Dec. 1; 10 of the 13 Councilmembers are sponsors of the legislation.

But inevitability is not translating into a smooth victory. The Council Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary heard more than 160 witnesses over two days of hearings testify for and against a bill that will provide for gay couples to be able to obtain marriage licenses. Simultaneously, the D.C. elections board heard testimony for and against a proposal to let D.C. voters decide by initiative whether to ban same-sex marriage.

Wait! Wasn’t it just last month that the elections board said there could be no ballot battle over same-sex marriage? Yes, but that was only in regard to D.C.’s just recently passed law recognizing marriage licenses same-sex couples obtain elsewhere, like in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, or Iowa. (New Hampshire’s law doesn’t go into effect until Jan. 1.)

Now, opponents are before the elections board seeking an initiative to establish a statute limiting the definition of marriage to straight couples. The board is expected to rule on that request in the next two weeks, says Human Rights Campaign regional field director Sultan Shakir.  Those opponents are being aided by the aid of the National Organization of Marriage and have the legal aid of another staunch conservative anti-gay group, the Alliance Defense Fund.

Perhaps trying to head off some of the controversy, the Council Committee on Tuesday agreed to amend the marriage equality bill by giving religious institutions more leeway to discriminate against same-sex couples. The original bill allowed religious institutions to refuse to accommodate same-sex weddings through such services as rental of space as long as they did not accommodate straight couples.

 But the Committee agreed to allow religious institutions to refuse only gay couples in spaces owned by the institution. One committee member tried to expand that even further to non-religious institutions, but the Committee said no.

The Committee also amended the legislation to continue providing a domestic partnership option for both straight and gay couples.

 New Jersey

Gay marriage supporters are considering a hurried run at the New Jersey legislature –a hurry necessitated by the defeat of incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine (D) in the Nov. 3 election. Corzine has said he would support of equal rights for gay couples, but his successor, Chris Christie (R), has promised to veto any such legislation.

 The New Jersey legislature passed a civil unions law after the state supreme court ruled that the state constitution required gay couples be able to obtain the same benefits of marriage as straight couples can obtain. Momentum has been growing, however, for full marriage equality.

But New Jersey is also the original home-base for the National Organization for Marriage and that group is already playing its “save the children” radio ads warning that allowing gay couples to marry will lead to homosexuality being “forced” on school children.

The Star-Ledger in Newark reported that NOM funded robo-calls to “every household in selected legislative districts” and that the Catholic church has been distributing letters statewide to rally opposition to any marriage equality bill.

Like New York, passage of a marriage equality bill in New Jersey will require some Republican votes.

Oregon, Michigan, New Hampshire

Meanwhile, efforts are underway in a couple of states to untie the constitutional binds that currently prevent states from treating same-sex couples the same as straight couples when it comes to marriage licensing.

In Oregon, the statewide gay group Basic Rights Oregon announced last week that it is launching a petition drive to put on the ballot in 2012 an initiative to repeal the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage there. Voters approved the ban by initiative in 2004, but in 2007, the state legislature approved a law to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and another law to allow same-sex couples to register as domestic partners.

In Michigan, the House speaker pro tem, State Rep. Pam Byrnes, made good on a promise she announced in June: She introduced a measure seeking repeal of the constitutional ban approved by voters there in 2004. If the bill receives two-thirds approval in the House and Senate, it will then go to voters in 2010.

But in New Hampshire, there is an attempt to repeal a marriage equality law approved earlier this year. The law is set to go into effect Jan. 1.

The idea for the bill emerged long before the vote in Maine, but the conservative Union Leader newspaper got the ball rolling last week with a blistering editorial, claiming that the repeal vote in Maine jostles the neighboring domino.

The paper said at least two bills are already being drafted to undo the marriage equality law –one by legislative repeal, one by voter repeal.

Openly gay State Rep. Jim Splaine, who sponsored the marriage equality bill earlier this year, said he expects opponents to file the repeal bill in January. Because the marriage equality bill passed on very close votes last spring, said Splaine, “we shouldn’t take anything for granted.”

© 2009 Keen News Service

But how do you think yesterday’s election results will influence gay travel patterns? Will queer innkeepers in the very LGBT-friendly and gay-welcoming town of Ogunquit, Maine suffer thanks to the same-sex marriage defeat? Will you change your Ogunquit travel plans and head to Provincetown instead, since Massachusetts has legal gay marriage? Does that even make sense when planning your vacation?

Ben Finzel is senior vice president and head of the public affairs practice at Widmeyer Communications, and has specialized in LGBT communications practice and travel, working with tourism bureaus and following travel trends. “Travel is a personal decision, particularly for our community,” offers Finzel. “Maine is a naturally beautiful state with many wonderful attractions and lots of great people – many of whom are LGBT. I think gay travelers need to make up their own minds to either choose to travel to Maine to demonstrate the positive power of our travel or choose to stay away to demonstrate the negative financial impact we can have on destinations that oppose LGBT equality. You can make a strong case for either position.”

Finzel continues: “Whether or not gay travelers choose to visit Maine in the future, I think we should all make a point of being out, visible and vocal in our travel decisions. Choose service providers that engage with our community and tell them that’s why we chose them. Consider whether or not we feel comfortable visiting specific destinations and engage people in those destinations as we’re considering where to go.”

Need some new possible places to consider as a result of Tuesday’s elections? Quite a few cities saw some gay victories. Chapel Hill, North Carolina will have a gay mayor as the newly elected Mark Kleinschmidt takes office. And Houston, America’s fourth-largest city, could have an openly lesbian mayor; Annise Parker scored the most votes in her race against her opponent; she now faces a heated run-off come December. These are good steps.

Meanwhile, other gays candidates won never-before-held city offices in Detroit, Akron, Ohio and St. Petersburg, Florida. And bless Kalamazoo, Michigan for passing a highly debated ordinance protecting LGBT rights. Now in Kalamazoo it will be illegal to discriminate against gay, lesbian and transgendered individuals in the areas of hiring, housing and public accommodation in the Michigan city. And Washington State saw its domestic partnership laws upheld, too.

But what does this mean for LGBT travel. Do election results influence where you go?

Certainly, the LGBT community always pays attention to how gay-friendly a destination is, legislatively or culturally. And we’ve gotten quite good at picking out which companies we travel with based on their queer-friendly practices. That needn’t change.

“Increasingly, gay travelers are thinking much more strategically about where we spend our travel dollars,” says Finzel. “We look at the level of engagement that airlines and car rental companies have with our community, we consider the role of hoteliers in anti-gay ballot initiatives and we consider how gay-friendly a destination might be based on factors such as safety, role of pro-gay companies in their communities, etc. With so many travel providers and destinations taking an active role in proactively and positively seeking our business, we are realizing we have choices and can choose not to support anti-gay companies or destinations with our travel dollars.”

“I think the next big trend is going to be our community looking for, and demanding, that companies and destinations that want our business earn it with active involvement in opposing anti-gay ballot initiatives and related efforts,” Finzel says. “It won’t be enough for travel industry leaders (or other corporate leaders, for that matter) to say they are gay-friendly: they’ll have to demonstrate they mean it by actively supporting a No On 1 effort (Maine) or a Yes on 71 effort (Washington) and speaking out against attempts to legislate hate.”

Hear that gay-positive travel companies? We commend you on your great LGBT-supportive business practices. But, it’s time to take your gay investment up a notch. It’s getting personal.

So… See you in Maine next summer! Maybe.

Plus, Lisa Keen is on the ground in Maine. Look for her story late tonight.

Of course, there are pleasant surprises along the way, like the scraggly welding major who came up after one talk and said, “I’m a former homophobe. Thanks for being here.” On the other hand, it’s hard not to react visibly when an audience member tries to establish his scholarly bona fides by announcing, “My views on this are very well thought out. I studied the Bible carefully when I was in prison.”

My travels through the Midwest got me thinking about national LGBT movement’s tendency to focus on California and the Northeast. There are good reasons for this bias, insofar as these are populous and influential regions. But having discussed Maine in my last column, (http://www.365gay.com/opinion/corvino-stand-up-for-maine-and-for-marriage/), I decided to spend this week discussing the other two gay-related ballot initiatives currently going on—in Kalamazoo, Michigan and in Washington State. They both deserve more attention than they’re getting.

Kalamazoo:

The Kalamazoo initiative is close to home for me—I live in Detroit, about two-and-a-half hours away. Kalamazoo is a small town in a conservative part of the state. Nevertheless, as the home of Kalamazoo College, Western Michigan University, and the Arcus Foundation, it has a vibrant progressive streak.

About three years ago citizens began discussions with city representatives about expanding Kalamazoo’s non-discrimination ordinance (which prohibits discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations) to include protections for sexual orientation and gender expression. In December of 2008, the Kalamazoo city commission unanimously approved the expanded ordinance, but opposition forced the city to subject it to public review.

As a result, in June of this year a new ordinance was introduced with stronger exemptions for churches and other religious organizations. Once again, the ordinance passed unanimously, and once again, opposition groups derailed it, this time by collecting enough signatures to suspend the ordinance until it can be put to a public vote in November. A YES vote would preserve the ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender expression; a NO vote would strike it down.

Opposition has largely been organized by the Michigan American Family Association (AFA)—a small-minded, sex-obsessed group that even some right wingers I know prefer to steer clear of.  (See http://www.afamichigan.org/)  They’ve been trying to instill fear in voters by raising the specter of men with “psycho-emotional delusions” preying on women and children in restrooms.

Reasonable minds can differ about whether, and to what extent, legal action is the right response to discrimination by private employers, landlords, and so on. But if we’re going to have non-discrimination laws at all, they should surely include sexual orientation and gender expression. I therefore urge readers to visit the One Kalamazoo site (http://www.onekalamazoo.com/) and support their efforts.

Washington State:

For some years Washington State has had limited domestic partnership rights which include hospital visitation, inheritance rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations, and legal standing under probate and trust law. This year legislators expanded the law so that domestic partners would be granted the remaining statewide legal incidents of marriage (though not under the name “marriage”)—including access to unpaid sick leave to care for an ailing partner, various legal process rights, pension benefits, insurance benefits, and adoption and child-support rights and responsibilities, among others.

Opponents then collected signatures to force the new law on the ballot. As in Kalamazoo, a YES vote here is the pro-gay vote: it would support the expanded domestic-partner law. A NO vote would kill the expanded domestic-partner law, leaving Washington staters with the far more limited domestic-partner rights they previously had.

The opposition’s campaign is ugly. Take a moment to visit

http://protectmarriagewa.com/ and click on the video on the right with the smiling white couple in wedding attire. There you will learn that “God established, and defined marriage, between a man and a woman….Senate Bill 5688 violates GOD’s mandate.”

Incidentally, you will also learn that Adam and Eve look like they should be doing Breck commercials—at least as depicted in a certain Lowell Bruce Bennett painting owned by the Mormon Church.

The visuals may be funny, but ignorance and discrimination are not. Visit http://approvereferendum71.org/ and support efforts to preserve robust domestic-partnership legislation in Washington State.

Polls for both of these initiatives show us close enough to win—but if, and only if, we support them.

******

John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays on 365gay.com.

For more about John Corvino, or to see clips from his “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?” DVD, visit www.johncorvino.com.

His upcoming speaking appearances include:

October 20: Illinois State University

November 10: Central Washington University (debate with Glenn Stanton)

November 11: Colorado State University, Pueblo (debate with Glenn Stanton)

November 12: Miami University of Ohio

November 16: Bergen Community College (NJ)

Check school websites for rooms and times.

In Maine, voters will decide whether or not to uphold the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage. In Washington state, a so-called “everything but marriage” law that expands the state’s current domestic partnership law will be on the ballot. And in Kalamazoo, Mich., voters will decide on an ordinance that prohibits discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals.

“In off-year elections, ballot measures gain much more attention, regardless of the topic,” said University of Washington political science professor Matt Barreto. But California’s battle over Proposition 8 is “certainly an important backdrop.”

Under a California Supreme Court decision, California had allowed same-sex marriages for five months before 52 percent of voters reversed the ruling in the contentious $83 million Prop. 8 battle last November. The state’s Supreme Court upheld the vote earlier this year.

Gay rights supporters see one silver lining in the loss in California.

“It has sparked a greater public conversation about gay people,” said Dan Hawes, a field director with the Washington, D.C.-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “While we have lost in previous ballot measures, because the margin of loss continues to shrink, it does indicate that there is growing acceptance.”

Barreto said that the money involved in this year’s ballot measures won’t come close to Prop. 8 – California is a much more expensive market to run TV ads in, and the Prop. 8 ads came during a high profile presidential election year, driving the cost astronomically higher, he said.

In Maine, opponents of gay marriage had raised more than $343,000 through the end of the last quarterly reporting period in July, with $160,000 from the National Organization for Marriage, one of the groups that backed Prop. 8. Supporters of gay marriage raised $143,290 in that same period.

In addition to the loss in California, gay-rights supporters suffered setbacks elsewhere last fall, with amendments banning gay marriage being approved in Arizona and Florida. Arkansas voters approved a measure banning unmarried couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents.

“When the people have voted, they have voted to defend marriage,” said Carrie Gordon Earll, senior director of public policy for Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family.

Thirty states have voter-approved gay marriage bans in their constitutions. Several other states, including Washington, have bans that were passed by state lawmakers.

The 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, bars federal recognition of gay unions and denies gay couples access to federal pensions, health insurance and other government benefits.

Since then, six states have enacted laws or issued court rulings that permit same-sex marriage, including Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut and Iowa. New Hampshire’s law takes effect Jan. 1.

Maine’s gay marriage law was scheduled to go into effect on Sept. 12, but it was put on hold once opponents got enough signatures to force a public vote.

“There’s going to be victories and there’s going to be reversals,” said Washington state Sen. Ed Murray, one of the Legislature’s six gay lawmakers, who successfully spearheaded a gay rights law and three domestic partnership laws. “There is an impression that somehow because we elected a Democratic president and Democratic Congress, this is all solved. It isn’t.”

Lawmakers in Washington state have taken an incremental approach to increasing gay rights without actually taking on the state’s marriage ban, which was upheld by the state Supreme Court in 2006. The following year, lawmakers passed the state’s first domestic partnership law granting a handful of rights, like hospital visitation, to gay and lesbian couples.

In 2008, that law was expanded to add more rights, and this year the latest law added such partnerships to all remaining areas of state law where currently only married couples are mentioned. The statutes range from labor and employment rights to pensions and other public employee benefits.

Nearly 12,000 people in Washington state are registered as domestic partners, and while the underlying law that was passed in 2007 allows some older heterosexual couples to register as domestic partners, most of the couples are gay.

Conservative Christians rallied to get Referendum 71 on the November ballot, arguing that Washington state’s latest move is the last step before full civil marriage for gay and lesbian couples in the state.

Opponents of the state’s law are also fighting in court to try to continue shielding the names of people who signed petitions to force a public vote.

Attorneys for Protect Marriage Washington say that referendum signers’ names and addresses should be exempt from the state’s public records disclosure law because release of the information would put them at risk of harassment, amounting to an unconstitutional infringement of free speech rights.

A federal judge in Tacoma granted the sponsors’ request earlier this month. But the state is appealing, citing the state’s open-government laws. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hold a hearing on the case in Pasadena, Calif. next month.

The constitutional argument is similar to that made by the National Organization for Marriage and other groups that sponsored Prop. 8. Those groups had sought to block their campaign finance records from public view, saying previous reports led to the harassment of donors. A federal judge in that case ruled earlier this year the names had to be disclosed. A lawsuit on the case is moving forward.

“No one should have to suffer vandalism and death threats just because they support government protection of traditional marriage,” attorney James Bopp Jr., representing Protect Marriage, said in a recent press release. Bopp was also involved in the effort to shield California donors.

If R-71 is rejected, only the most recent law would be rolled back; the two prior domestic partnership laws would not be affected.

Washington state, along with California, Oregon, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia, have laws that either recognize civil unions or domestic partnerships that afford same-sex couples similar rights to marriage.

While Maine and Washington state will get most of the focus in November’s election, a gay rights ordinance in the southwestern Michigan city of Kalamazoo is getting national attention from groups on both sides as well.

The city’s ordinance, which outlaws employment, housing and public-accommodation discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identification, took effect July 9 but was suspended once opponents turned in enough signed petitions to force a public vote.

The boy says the 15- and 16-year-old males called him slurs as they struck him about 20 times in the head and face Aug. 13 in the parking lot of a Portage apartment complex.

The Kalamazoo Gazette reports the two teens were charged as juveniles with aggravated assault. The 16-year-old pleaded guilty to the charge Tuesday and will be sentenced in Kalamazoo County Circuit Court Family Division on Sept. 14.

Police say the suspects may have targeted the boy for his sexual orientation. But Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Fink says the suspects aren’t charged with a hate crime because the state’s ethnic-intimidation law doesn’t address sexual orientation.

The proposal announced by State Rep. Pam Byrnes faces an uphill climb. Michigan voters in 2004 passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman, effectively banning the legal recognition of same-sex marriage.

But Byrnes launched an effort to repeal that provision at the annual gay rights Michigan Pride event at the state’s Capitol last weekend.

The joint resolution by the Democrat from Washtenaw County’s Lyndon Township would have to be approved by two-thirds of the Michigan Legislature before it would be put to voters in the 2010 election.

The proposal would be opposed at every step by many of the same groups that successfully supported the 2004 campaign, including the Catholic Church. The 2004 ballot measure passed by a 59 percent to 41 percent margin.

Byrnes said same-sex couples deserve the same rights as opposite-sex couples in state law.

“No doubt, it will be a fight,” Byrnes said. “But we’re seeing some attitudes change.”

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, said he doubts even a simple majority of the Democrat-led House would overturn the 2004 statewide vote.

“But it does make for high drama, as political theater goes, to announce such radical legislation during a homosexual ‘rights’ rally, even though it’ll never see the light of day thereafter,” Glenn said.

“For our children’s sake, Michigan voters remain firmly committed to preserving the institution of marriage between one man and one woman.”

I know the majority of you could care less and want to read something newsy and gay. Well in my life gaysey news takes second to a few things: jazz, Charles Johnson,  the New York Mets, cherry pie, and basketball. Last night UNC took Michigan State to the woodshed, beating them 89 to 72.

As the story went a Spartan win was to make up for a Michigan economy on the skids. That is one of the reasons I hate sports writers. They take a game that big children play and infuse it with meaning. When Jackie Robinson came to the plate in 1947, that had significance beyond the box score. And when that first out player sinks a 3-pointer, that will count for something off the court. Excluding those exceptions games are just that. But to hear the sports news world, a Michigan State win would cut the state’s unemployment in half and bring GM back to the top. Tom Izzo’s team is very good, but they are not wizards.

The Tar Heels, thankfully,  didn’t let the miracle story get in their way.

“If you would tell me that if Michigan State wins, it’s gonna satisfy the nation’s economy, then I’d say, ‘Hell, let’s stay poor for a little while longer,”’ said UNC coach Roy Williams.

Sorry to any Spartan fans ( hey Chitown Kev: do you want to take back that prediction?), and don’t worry. There will be no gloating from me. Well at least not publicly. TAR HEELS BABY! Okay. I’m done.

PS: Happy birthday Billie Holiday.

PSS: University of Connecticut goes for an unbeaten season tonight. This game could be over in the first 2 minutes.

The American Civil Liberties Union says the 2006 state law is unconstitutional. It was approved with bipartisan support in response to an anti-gay church that has protested at funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Although the Legislature may have had honorable motives in passing the law, this case is a textbook example of what happens when the state gives police officers unchecked power to arrest people who express unpopular views,” said Michael Steinberg, legal director for the ACLU of Michigan.

The ACLU filed the federal lawsuit in Bay City against Clare County and two sheriff’s deputies on behalf of a 64-year-old Army veteran Lewis Lowden and his late wife, Jean.

They were arrested in September 2007 in Harrison, about 140 miles northwest of Detroit, on their way to the burial of Army Cpl. Todd Motley, 23, of Clare, who died in Muqdadiyah of wounds suffered when a bomb exploded near his vehicle during combat.

The suit, which seeks unspecified damages from the county, says the Lowdens were close family friends. Jean Lowden home-schooled Motley in high school and Lewis Lowden took him on fishing and camping trips.

Lewis Lowden for years had taped homemade political signs to the inside windows of his van criticizing the president and government policies, the lawsuit said. They made statements such as “Impeach Cheney-Bush” and “G.W. Bush: The Reason Why Murphy Wrote His Law.”

No one complained about the signs when the Lowdens arrived for the funeral, according to the suit.

But during the funeral procession, viewed by hundreds of onlookers, the Lowdens were pulled over and arrested. They missed the burial service. In a statement released by the ACLU, Lewis Lowden said he “can never express the shame and humiliation” he and his wife felt when they were arrested.

Criminal charges were later dropped; the ACLU said Motley’s family had asked prosecutors to drop them.

A message seeking comment from the Clare County Sheriff’s Department was not immediately returned Wednesday.

The federal government and at least 37 states have enacted funeral-protest laws in response to the Westboro Baptist Church’s picketing of military funerals. The Rev. Fred Phelps and his followers claim U.S. combat deaths are God’s punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. Some states’ laws have been struck down.

Michigan’s law makes it a felony to “disturb, disrupt or adversely affect” a funeral within 500 feet of the ceremony or procession. The ACLU says it violates free speech rights and is unconstitutionally vague.

“This is a law you would expect in a totalitarian regime but not in the United States,” Steinberg said. He said the law could have been written narrowly to bar “true disruptions” of a funeral such as loud noise keeping people from being able to listen to the ceremony.

One of the law’s sponsors, Republican Sen. Jud Gilbert of Algonac, said the Lowdens’ case is “very unique.” He said lawmakers were trying to stop protesters from hurling insults at grieving families and did not think of the scenario that played out in Harrison.

“We recognize the right of free speech, that people have a right to demonstrate,” Gilbert said. “If something is not constitutional, I hope the court would give guidance of how we could meet their test.”

The unanimous move was not a change in position, but an attempt to halt a move by a socially conservative group to force the issue onto the ballot in the next election.

When the ordinance was first presented, commissioners held two public meetings. No one showed up to oppose it.

But after it was passed, the American Family Association of Michigan began speaking out and collected about 1,600 signatures seeking the law’s repeal. 

If at least 1,273 signatures were validated, the commission would have had to rescind the law or put it on the ballot.

The decision to repeal the ordinance avoided putting the issue to voters in the city of 7,200 people.

Unlike the first vote, the council chamber was packed for Monday night’s vote. Most of those present were opposed to the ordinance.

Mayor Bobby Hopewell supported the repeal but said that he hopes public opposition would change.

“My intent is that we will have an ordinance that will provide protections to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals,” Hopewell said.

Opponents said that if the measure is reintroduced they will begin a second initiative to have it repealed.