Voters Reject Anti-Gay Ballot Initiative

Thankfully, the voters of Gainesville, Florida resoundingly rejected a ballot initiative that would have repealed non-discrimination protections for LGBT citizens. Combined with the pro-gay marriage votes in the New Hampshire and Vermont legislatures this will mark a turning point where voters begin to reject the hate based and divisive message of the Christianists and their GOP allies. I truly hope that people are learning that hate is not a family value and that the quest of the far right to demonize and strip segments of society of their civil rights must be stopped. Here are some highlights from the Gainesville Sun:

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A jubilant cry erupted from Brophy's Irish Pub as City Commissioner Craig Lowe announced the defeat of an amendment that would have terminated the city's anti-discrimination laws. . . . "Today we showed what we are really made of. This has been an experience that none of us has asked for, but we have established that in Gainesville every person matters." Lowe was referring to the approximately 58 percent of city voters who said no Tuesday to Amendment 1 — a ballot initiative that would have made Gainesville's anti-discrimination ordinance the same as Florida's Civil Rights Act.

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It's been a divisive year and a half for Lowe. who in January 2008 paved the way for the city to enact anti-discrimination protections for transgender individuals. Almost immediately following that vote, a conservative political action committee, Citizens for Good Public Policy, launched a campaign to put an amendment on the ballot that would repeal not only the city rights for transgender people but also rights for gay, lesbian and bisexual people who had been protected in the city since 1998.

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Mark Minck, chair for Citizens for Good Public Policy, said Tuesday at a local precinct that regardless of the outcome, he was happy with the turnout. Minck has said throughout the campaign that the goal of the ordinance was not to allow discrimination but rather to keep men out of women's restrooms.

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As with Focus on the Family, note the use of transgender individuals as the bogey man. I'd love to see some ballot initiatives to revoke civil rights of fundamentalist Christians just to give these bigots a taste of their own medicine.