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Advocates: Civil rights protections for LGBT community important as uncertainty looms

By ERIN BECK

Charleston Gazette-Mail

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — After the Charlotte City Council voted to expand the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance to protect LGBT residents, North Carolina spent most of the rest of 2016 embroiled in the ensuing controversy and backlash against the state.

Meanwhile, in West Virginia in 2016, five ordinances were passed that expanded protections in housing, public accommodations and employment to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents. The cities were Lewisburg, Martinsburg, Shepherdstown, Charles Town and, most recently, Wheeling.

Ian Palmquist, senior director of programs at the Equality Federation, a network of LGBT rights organizations, is based in North Carolina. Palmquist said the organization keeps track of ordinances passed throughout the country, and he isn’t aware of municipalities in any states passing them at the same rate as West Virginia in the past year.

“I think it’s great that other states are able to move forward,” he said. “I think it’s reflective that this is not a radical issue. Nondiscrimination is something that people even in conservative states support. I wish our Legislature here in North Carolina had heard that message before they passed HB 2.”

Palmquist grew up in North Carolina. He said he now feels like his home state is known for House Bill 2, the bill that state lawmakers passed to invalidate Charlotte’s ordinance and require transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding with the gender on their birth certificate.

In the fallout, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit; companies, including PayPal, canceled plans for new facilities; musicians canceled concerts; and the NBA canceled plans to hold its All-Star Game in Charlotte.

On Wednesday, the Charlotte City Council voted to rescind its ordinance, after brokering a deal with state lawmakers to drop the bathroom bill. But lawmakers failed to follow through on their end of the deal, and did not repeal HB 2.

Palmquist said many people might not know that, like in West Virginia, many businesses and most of the people oppose HB 2. In Charleston, many businesses placed “All Kinds Welcome Here” stickers on their windows, to signal opposition to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the 2016 legislative session. In North Carolina, many businesses have established gender-neutral restrooms.

Palmquist said he is ashamed of the political leaders who haven’t heard the message. He worries that young people are thinking about HB 2 when they decide where to take that first job or where to go to school.

“I think people are drawn to more inclusive communities and cities, but it’s hard when the state government is working against it,” he said. 

Those who would require transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding with their birth certificates have relied on the argument that it would allow men to put on women’s clothing, sneak into women’s restrooms and assault women and children. 

Hundreds of organizations that work with victims of sexual violence have signed a statement saying they don’t support legislation similar to HB 2.

“I think we haven’t seen that false argument from the opposition taking hold in West Virginia,” Palmquist said. “I think, nationwide now, we’re seeing that more and more people are recognizing that argument doesn’t hold water and is really not relevant to what these ordinances are trying to do, which is protect people from discrimination.” 

In West Virginia, one ordinance has passed since the Nov. 8 general election — Wheeling’s. But they all could become more important once the new presidential administration takes office, according to Joseph Cohen, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia. 

Under President Barack Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sexual orientation discrimination was counted as sex discrimination because the commission ruled that sexual orientation cannot be understood without relation to sex. Numerous courts have looked to the EEOC’s stance for guidance. 

“[Protection ordinances] are definitely more important, because we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen but there’s a very real possibility that the EEOC interpretations may change with the new administration,” Cohen said. 

Cohen, who also is a lawyer, noted that the EEOC interpretations never had to be followed by the courts.

Andrew Schneider, executive director of the LGBT rights organization Fairness West Virginia, also noted that the LGBT community already lacked protections in public accommodations, housing and employment, although he also noted “that there are those in the incoming administration who have a clear anti-gay track record.” 

Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who has long opposed LGBT rights, stood by Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act even as other states enacted travel bans, companies opposed the law and conventions chose not to locate there. 

President-elect Donald Trump has said he would pick Supreme Court justices who would overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, a 5-4 Supreme Court decision saying the right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by the Constitution. 

“That’s why we say you can get married on Sunday and fired on Monday,” Schneider said. “That’s the fear that we in the LGBT community live with and still live with in most of West Virginia.”

The local ordinances have been a source of hope.

“There’s definitely sort of a spirit in West Virginia in which one treats another with kindness and respect,” he said. “If you look at all the crises that West Virginia has been through, and we’ve been through a lot — the floods were an example — how many people came to the aid of their neighbor? That same spirit has helped to move the advancement of LGBT nondiscrimination.” 

At a public hearing preceding the final vote in Wheeling, Mayor Glenn Elliott said he’d heard only one person mention the bathroom predator argument. He said 37 of 44 speakers were in support of the ordinance. Council members passed the ordinance unanimously on Dec. 20.

While he said the incoming administration makes the ordinances more “relevant,” the ordinance was in the works for several months. Elliott said they didn’t want people to have to live in the closet anymore.

“It was important to me that we are a city where people can be comfortable being who they are and not having to live in that type of a closet,” he said. 

He said the ordinance was more of a response to what the Legislature has failed to do by not passing bills that seek to expand civil protection to the LGBT community.

“Looking at what’s happened in North Carolina and Indiana, I hope we don’t go down that road,” he said. 

Fairness West Virginia said there are 11 cities in West Virginia with LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances. 

The Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT rights organization, does not count Morgantown’s, because it says the provisions are not enforceable. Mayor Marti Shamberger has declined in the past to answer specific questions about it, referring questions to the city’s Human Rights Commission — and the Human Rights Commission consistently has not returned calls.

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