Anti-Gay Leaders Continue to Seek Ballot Measures to Repeal LGBT Rights

If Prop 8's passage woke the LGBT community up and told us that we need to learn how to organize better, it also reaffirmed a core belief among anti-gay forces that the ballot box can be used as a weapon to repeal gay rights.  Anti-gay activists have never been a stranger to ballot measures that seek to repeal civil rights.  From Anita Bryant's crusade in the 1970s to repeal Miami-Dade's anti-discrimination measure, to the infamous Briggs Amendment, to the whirlwind of anti-gay marriage measures on the 2004 ballot, to 2008, which saw anti-gay ballot measures pass in four states.

Sadly, it's a trend that's going to continue into 2009, most likely.

Here's a brief tale of two recent gay rights initiatives that are facing backlash from anti-gay groups.  The first is a Kalamazoo, Michigan ordinance passed earlier this month that expands civil rights protections to LGBT citizens in regards to housing and employment discrimination.  It's a simple anti-discrimination bill, but conservative activists, led by the American Family Association of Michigan (AFAM), are seeking to repeal the ordinance. Apparently discrimination is still fashionable for the AFAM.  Activists with the AFAM need to get 1,300 signatures by today to put a repeal of the ordinance on the ballot.  (Note: Read this article for a recap on how folks with the AFAM are lying and manipulating voters in order to get their needed signatures.  They're actually appealing to fears that residents will have to share a bathroom with someone of the opposite sex if the ordinance is allowed to stand.  Ridiculous.)

The second tale is from Cleveland. Earlier this month, the City Council of Cleveland voted 13-7 to establish a domestic partnership registry. It's a largely symbolic act, since the registry is non-binding, but the hope is that the registry fosters an inclusive reputation for Cleveland and provides a space where other businesses and employers might feel welcome to provide health care benefits to the same-sex partners of their employees.  But now a group of pastors are pushing back against the registry, and are trying to obtain 11,000 signatures by next Wednesday (January 7) to put a repeal of the registry on the next municipal ballot. Their reasoning for wanting to repeal a non-binding, largely symbolic registry?  Well, according to Pastor C. Jay Matthews, "that [homosexual] lifestyle goes against God."

Both of these examples are frightening, in that in both cities you have radical conservative elements waging a fight not over the issue of marriage, but on the basic issue of whether LGBT persons deserve basic civil rights.  But this is also a moment to show that the movement for LGBT rights can fight fire with fire.  The evidence?  Both AFAM and the pastors in Cleveland are in the minority in their opposition to these measures, and LGBT rights groups will be better organized in 2009 than they've ever been before.

Right now, 87 percent of U.S. citizens think that LGBT people shouldn't be discriminated against in the workplace.  And 73 percent favor some sort of domestic partnership that allows same-sex couples to share benefits, Social Security, health visitation privileges, and inheritance rights. That's not only a majority of the country, that's a landslide of the population.

Pastor Matthews and the AFAM are just simply wrong on these issues, both politically and religiously.  Let's hope their signature campaigns fall flat.  But barring that, if it's a fight they want, it's a fight they'll get on these issues.