OK City Council Expresses Views About LGBT People
Posted By Eric Ethington (Author) on September 29, 2010
Norman, Oklahoma – The city council voted 7-1 to designate October as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History Month. But it came at a cost – including threats to several council members.
Well done to the Norman City Council for standing up for equality and special rights for none!
Ward 7 Councilman Doug Cubberley said some messages left on his answering machine “threatened my livelihood.”
Hal Ezzell in Ward 3 said many vowed to unseat council members who supported the proclamation.
In the end, all of them said they voted their conscience.
The proclamation passed Tuesday with a 7-1 vote. Councilman Dan Quinn dissented. Councilwoman Carol Dillingham was absent.
Councilman Tom Kovach said the proclamation was about “good behavior. That is what this proclamation supports. Don’t those members of the community and their families have a right to feel safe in this community?”
Kovach said many of the protesters at Tuesday’s meeting asked why the council was wasting its time on such a proclamation.
“The only time we’re spending on it is because the public is asking us to debate it. I’d trade you equal rights for gays for this proclamation any day. Truth is, they don’t have equal rights,” he said.
The council should uphold the rights of everyone “whether they agree with them or not,” Cubberley said.
"Eric, trying to have this (civil rights) conversation with you is ultimately like trying to teach a pig to dance, it just annoys the pig. So Eric, sorry to annoy you."
-Paul Mero, The Sutherland Institute.
Its good to see a positive story on LGBT issues coming out of Oklahoma. Since I moved here last year, there have been few of them that I’ve seen. I never expected when I moved here from Salt Lake City that it would be a move to a MORE regressive area. I think that just like in Salt Lake City, as more of the world interacts with Oklahoma, the more we’ll see stories like this one.
[...] the ordinance eventually passed, the bigoted and hateful comments took their toll. Zach, who just graduated High School in 2009, [...]