A.G. Gancarski
This week a Dallas-based website launched a purported attempt to crowdfund 10 votes in favor of expansion of Jacksonville’s Human Rights Ordinance.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Jacksonville Coalition for Equality released a statement condemning “in the strongest terms possible any unethical or illegal attempt to influence the outcome” of the HRO vote.
Coalition Legislative Director Jimmy Midyette said, “In addition to being a shameful attempt by a Dallas businessman to make a quick buck by injecting himself, uninvited, into our Jacksonville community conversation, his apparent offer to bribe our elected leaders is likely illegal under Chapter 838, Florida Statutes.”
The JCE described itself in the statement as “aligned” with the mayor’s office’s “vision for the process,” which includes community conversations such as the one being held on Thursday evening at Edward Waters College, as local leaders attempt to craft a “Jacksonville solution” to the problem of a lack of statutory recourse against anti-LGBT discrimination.
Regarding the Thursday community conversation, which deals with religious freedom concerns, the JCE threw some shade at Brunswick, Georgia, minister Kenneth Adkins, who has attempted to interject himself into the contentious dialogue, and bring in pastors from Houston, where the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance was repealed in referendum, to offer guidance.
“We don’t need to hear from faith leaders based in Houston and Georgia,” the JCE statement said.
As well, the JCE statement addressed other impediments to civil discourse that have surfaced in recent weeks.
“We reject threats of violence made to this process. We reject the interference of outside hate groups such as the KKK and Liberty Counsel. We stand with Mayor Curry in rejecting tactics that amount to, as he said in the press, the ‘lowest forms of human behavior and bigotry.’ ”
