Michigan’s LGBT community has taken yet another blow on their fight towards equality—because taking away the Supreme Court-granted right to marry wasn’t enough.
Mlive reported that in the early morning hours of Tuesday, May 20, the Saginaw city council voted 9-0 to kill an ordinance that would have “protected anyone against discriminatory employment and public accommodation practices based on their sexual orientation or gender identity,” for a second time.
The second vote came after just a few weeks after the first 7-2 vote on April, 21 that postponed the ordinance indefinitely, and no amendments were done to it before Councilman Dan Fitzpatrick made the motion to reintroduce it.
Councilwoman Annie Boensch, the woman who fashioned the ordinance voted against it this time because it was too soon after the first. She called the quick revote a “smack in the face” to those that supported it and said she was “disappointed” and “frustrated” with the results of the vote but would remain diligent about the issue.
"...I'm committed to it and I'm committed to seeing it pass in some capacity. It may not be with this Council, but the issue is clearly not going to go away. I think we have the majority of citizens on our side,” she told the News.
Though the ordinance was killed, members of the LGBT community at the council’s meeting call this a victory.
Charin Davenport, a local college professor and transgender woman told Mlive that many of the council members had never been in the same room as gay or transgender people, until now.
“Any time learning is going on, progress is being made. That's why we won," she said in the article. Read the full story.
