Two more jurisdiction in Utah have signaled that they will follow the lead of Salt Lake City and adopt laws to prohibit discrimination in housing and employment based on a person’s sexual orientation.
Salt Lake City’s council voted unanimously Tuesday night to adopt a pair of anti-discrimination ordinances that outlaw eviction or firing based on sexuality. Although over 100 cities and counties in the US and several states have similar ordinances, Salt Lake City’s law would become the first of its kind in Utah.
Now the ski-resort town of Park City and Salt Lake County, which covers some of the sprawling suburbs of the city, have indicated they many soon adopt similar measures, Salt Lake Tribune reports.
“We very much want to bring it forward at the county,” Democratic County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson told the Tribune. Wilson was instrumental in ushering in Salt Lake County’s domestic-partner benefits. She says county officials have been closely watching the city's effort and have been talking with Equality Utah, the state’s largest LGBT advocacy group.
There is even movement in the Utah legislature to consider a state-wide ban housing and employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, the church-owned Deseret News reports.
But any gay-friendly law is likely to face significant opposition in the conservative state legislature.
Cities, counties may join Salt Lake City with anti-bias laws, but not legislature [contd.]
Asked about the possibility of a state anti-discrimination law, a powerful state senator made it clear just how difficult it would be to pass an anti-bias law in the statehouse.
Senate President Michael Waddoups (R-Taylorsville), who also runs a property management, company told Deseret News:
He wants the “right to protect the image of my company” against gay employees “out flaunting the gay lifestyle” during work hours. He said he also had concerns about similar behavior among his tenants. “I’m not going to put up with that on any of my properties,” Waddoups said.
Waddroups told the News that he expects the issue to come up next session, but said the fate of such a proposal would depend “on whether they try to plow new ground with it.”
Far from following the city in extending anti-bias protections, some legislators are expected to introduce bills to repeal the Salt Lake City ordinance and ban all other local governments from passing anything like it.
Even the LDS church is remaining neutral, so far, on a statewide anti-bias law, Deseret News reports. “The church statement (Tuesday) night addressed the employment and housing ordinances in Salt Lake City and that statement speaks for itself,” said church spokesman Scott Trotter. “As to any other legislation, the church would reserve judgment. We are not prepared to speculate on something we haven’t seen.”
During the the legislative session last winter and spring, LGBT activists introduced a suite of legislative anti-discrimination proposals known as the Common Ground Initiative. LGBT groups, including Equality Utah, had expressed hope that the church would support the measures because of statements it had issued after passage of Prop. 8.
LGBT activists were hopeful last winter of gaining support for the initiative from the church because of a Nov. 5, 2008 statement posted on the church's official website, saying that the church “does not object to rights for same-sex couples regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights.”
The church, however, did not offer any support for the measures and they went down to stinging defeats.
If passed, the measures would have provided employment and housing protection for gay and transgender people, rights for gay couples to adopt children, and would have repealed of the part of Amendment 3 that bans state domestic partnerships or civil unions in Utah.
Other measures that were part of the package would have established for gay and lesbian couples rights related to hospitalization and medical care, wrongful death benefits, and adoption rights.
But despite the November statement, the church responded to the Common Ground Initiative with studied silence, even as right-wing activists who are often allied with the church launched withering attacks on the measures.
Without support from the LDS church and with what was thought to be tacit support for right-wing attacks on the measures, the Common Ground Initiative went down to a quick series of defeats in the legislature.
Passage this week of Salt Lake City’s ordinance, on the other hand, wasn’t much of a surprise. The issue was a significant campaign plank last year for Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker.
But what was surprising was the support offered for the ordinances by the Mormon church. Many who heard a church official deliver a statement of support Tuesday for the ordinances called the statement “stunning”.
Although the church, which is based in Salt Lake City, is known to play a dominant role in Utah politics, it usually does so from behind the scenes.
Deseret News explains, “Tuesday night's statement was a rarity; church leaders or representatives seldom speak publicly on city ordinances or state legislation.”
The statement was significant enough that it reverberates through state politics.
“The big surprise of course is the LDS Church, which I'm excited about,” said Wilson, the county council member. “The recognition by the LDS Church that we need to protect people who are in the community living their lives ... is very important and substantial and a sign that there’s progress made,” she told the Tribune.
Deseret News reports that a mother of two gay children traveled 65 miles from Santaquin, Utah to hear Michael Otterson, managing director of the LDS Church's public affairs office, deliver his statement at the Salt Lake City council meeting. Tammy Hinckley called the church’s statement an “historic event, when the church actually says this is fair and this is just.”
The church paper also quotes Doug Wirthlin, a resident of Salt Lake City’s Capitol Hill gayborhood: “It’s been a long time since I could actually say I stand shoulder to shoulder with my former church.”
Rep. Jackie Biskupski (D-Salt Lake), one of the out gay members of the legislature, lauded the council’s decision and the church's support.
“This appears to be an olive branch being offered by the LDS Church,” Biskupski told the News. “It’s a very positive move and one I am extremely thankful for. This is the kind of messaging our community, and the entire state of Utah, really needs.”
LGBT activist Jim Debakis, called the statement “a great moment, I think, in our city's history,” the News reports. He helped facilitate meetings this summer among LGBT activists mid-level church officials—meeting that are thought to have laid the groundwork for Tuesday’s statement by Otterson.
But an editorial published today in Deseret News, a daily newspaper that also publishes an official church organ called Mormon Times, reiterates that the church supported the ordinances only because they offer what church officials believe is adequate protections to assure that the church won’t have to abide by the anti-discrimination laws.
Deseret News writes:
In particular, the ordinance addressed the constitutional protection of religion. Not only was the proposed ordinance fairly and narrowly drafted, the mayor engaged in a transparent process, taking into account all the various perspectives. The process was free of the histrionics that often accompany the discussion of gay rights.
But in the same editorial, the paper also took another shot at those who had criticized the Mormon church’s dominant support of Proposition 8 last year in California:
Notwithstanding the often withering invective of its opponents, the church has always responded in a kindly way. Its public comments have always been civil, even while being clear on differences. In its statement to the City Council, the church noted that it “remains unequivocally committed to defending the bedrock foundation of marriage between a man and a woman.”
The church’s statement to the city council was criticized by one of the groups that was thought to have been allied with it last year in defeating the Common Ground Initiative.
Opposition to measures in the initiative was led by a right-wing Salt Lake “think tank” called Sutherland Institute, which, according to Deseret News, “argued the bills would undermine the tenet of ‘traditional marriage’ between a man and a woman, and launched a push-back campaign it called the Sacred Ground Initiative.”
Sutherland once again went on the attack after the Salt Lake City council passed it ordinances Tuesday, calling them “unsound in principle, clarity and effect”.
But in a public statement this time around, Sutherland also leveled gentle criticism at the LDS Church:
“As a public relations opportunity, the LDS Church’s statement before the Salt Lake City Council may assuage the minds and soften the hearts of ‘gay rights’ in Utah,” the Sutherland statement read. “As a policy statement, it is problematic.”
The president of the right-wing activist group Eagle Forum also criticized the church according to Deseret News.
Gayle Ruzicka, president of the group’s Utah chapter, accused the church of being selfish for supporting a law that she said will not affect the church “because religions were carved out of the law”.
But she worries that she and other Utahans who want to discriminate as business owners against LGBT people “become the victims of” the law.
“The housing the LDS Church owns around Brigham Young University would not have to rent to a couple living the homosexual lifestyle,” Ruzicka told the News. “But I as a private property owner would, even if I disapproved of that lifestyle”. And she calls that “discrimination” against the property owner.
Which helps indicate how far that deep red state still is from embracing equality.
Source: Salt Lake County, Park City may be next to OK anti-bias laws - Salt Lake Tribune