On Tuesday evening, two LGBT activists encouraged New Albany’s City Council to consider an anti-discrimination ordinance in the same vein as legislation recently passed by the Bexley City Council. Omar Faruk, founder of the LGBT organization Wenited, told the Council he knows New Albany to be a welcoming community, but the city would be advised to act now before it runs into trouble.
Faruk referenced the February incident which a Bexley wedding videographer denied service to an engaged couple because they were gay. The incident received national attention and caused Bexley to realize it had no nondiscrimination policy other than state law, which does not protect LGBT rights.
“At the end of the day it was deeply embarrassing for Bexley,” said Faruk. “The point I’m trying to make and the reason I’m here is that we hope you’d address these problems before there’s an incident.”
Faruk pointed out that many of the larger businesses in New Albany have internal nondiscrimination policies, but, like Bexley, there is no city-wide policy.
“Plain and simple, it’s completely legal in Ohio, in the majority of Ohio and under Ohio law, to be denied a job, be fired… denied housing or even be prevented from walking in somewhere to eat simply because you’re gay or you identify as a certain sex or gender,” said Faruk.
Faruk said his organization did not have a model legislation to show the Council, but did bring examples of similar laws from other Ohio cities for the Council to examine.
After Faruk, Linda Cox addressed the Council, saying she helped Bexley’s Council develop their nondiscrimination ordinance. Cox told the Council about how she had been released from a job because, as a transgender woman, she was unable to use the restroom in her workplace.
“I’ve been discriminated all through my lifetime,” said Cox.
The other two speakers at the Council meeting urged caution with regard to LGBT nondiscrimination laws. A man who introduced himself as Mike Brown encouraged the Council to move forward with the policy, but also to do a thorough job of making sure businesses can still operate in a manner that suits them. Another man, who wished to be identified only as Ben, said a nondiscrimination ordinance would be a “double-edged sword” that might take freedoms away from others, specifically business owners who choose not to hire someone for their own reasons.
“I just think that it’s starting to get a little out of hand with something that hasn’t happened yet,” said Ben.
New Albany Mayor Nancy Ferguson thanked all the speakers for expressing their opinions on the issue, saying, “it’s very good to inspire thought on our council.” Ferguson thanked Faruk and Cox for bringing “deeper insight, but also [getting] us thinking about an important issue that is so important to so many residents and the world.”
“We will continue to think about this, we are going to pursue this idea and we are going to read some model legislation, we’re going to talk to people who are our residents, we are going to talk to people who are in our businesses and we will…talk among ourselves as to how we might take some action,” said Ferguson.
After addressing the Council, Faruk said the concerns expressed by the other speakers were understandable.
“Those were valid thoughts, and the concerns for religious freedom are shared by me as well,” said Faruk. He also described the push for a nondiscrimination ordinance in New Albany was “a test model.”
“Most of our approach is going to be through education, so we want to have a statewide summit where we invite city attorneys, municipal attorneys and council people to come and just learn,” said Faruk. “These are most likely going to be those that are already interested or they either don’t know that there’s an issue or they’re interested [and] they don’t know how to go about it. At that point we’ll see what municipalities do when they have that training and the next step is to go for cities that weren’t really thinking about it. At that point that’s where you’re going to have to push people a little bit, push municipalities.”
Faruk said the biggest approach will be to contact local businesses, especially larger ones, because “any municipality is likely to pick up the phone for their largest employer.”
When asked about whether marriage equality activists will organize for nondiscrimination laws, having recently won the right to marry from the Supreme Court, Cox said, “I think they will once they are discriminated against.”
“Once the firing starts and the discrimination starts, they’ll have to come out,” she continued. “There’s some of them in job positions where the discrimination will come out. There are some that once they tell their boss that, ‘hey I got married to my partner,’ yeah there’s gonna be some discrimination and they’re gonna be fired…they’ve got to find a need for it.”
Faruk added that, “the Supreme Court only addressed marriage equality, not discrimination, so there’s gonna be other ways to express that hatred and this is gonna be the next easiest thing.”