A.G. Gancarski
Perhaps it was the cold weather. Perhaps advocates were at home Feeling the Bern. Whatever the case, Jax Council heard fewer HRO public comments than usual.
The opponents talking about how Human Rights Ordinance expansion would corrode Jacksonville’s “family-friendly” nature? Not there.
Perhaps it was a matter of “in case of Rapture, Council Chambers unmanned.”
Whatever the case, the seats in Council Chambers were as empty as a late-season Florida Marlins home game. The core activists showed up to make their cases. Yet the popular enthusiasm clearly was held in abeyance, at least until the next Committee of the Whole on Feb. 18.
The Rev. Avery Garner, who ministers for a church that addresses the needs of the LGBT community, noted the fear mongering at the heart of the arguments of HRO opponents.
Then a woman who had spoken before, against the HRO expansion, brought forth a scenario in which a particularly principled gynecologist balked at artificially inseminating a member of a lesbian couple.
“We don’t ask an animal rights activist to produce a video [glorifying] the meat industry,” she said, making the case for the right to “profess and live by what they believe and hold dear.”
An advocate, a Barry Mccullough, lamented the “biblical illiteracy” underscoring the arguments of some opponents at previous community discussions.
Meredith O’Malley Johnson, a former city hall employee and head of the Jax Young Voters Coalition, debunked the “bathroom” myth that underscores the anti-HRO arguments.
And Jimmy Midyette, of the Jacksonville Coalition for Equality, attacked the “unintended consequences” motif, as well as attacking the idea of religious exemptions by discussing how a white supremacist “church” could avoid serving an interracial couple.
“I worry about the religious exemption,” Midyette said, as well as the “slippery slope.”
Midyette noted the countless hours of testimony heard in 2012 and this year as proof of the need for HRO expansion.
David Vandygriff noted the intemperate comments of Council members of the past, while noting that the leading citywide vote-getter last May was, in fact, the pro-HRO Tommy Hazouri.
“Will you continue the discrimination expressed by previous members of this chamber… or will you be on the right side of history?” Vandygriff said.
And JCE member Dan Merkan brought up the strong statements of support for HRO expansion from the Jacksonville Civic Council and the Chamber of Commerce, saying that expansion is “good for business,” creating a variety of improved health and other outcomes where protections exist.
“What I’ve seen first hand is a cycle of abuse,” Merkan said of his work with JASMYN, that is “unacceptable,” especially as it relates to the transgender youth, who disproportionately are forced to turn to “underground economies” as a way of getting by.
