A resounding cheer erupted inside Houston City Hall Wednesday night as the mayor and city council passed a sweeping anti-discrimination ordinance that ignited a passionate debate over the rights of gay and transgendered Houstonians.
The hotly contested vote on Mayor Annise Parker’s equal rights ordinance brought an overflowing crowd into the council chambers, where hundreds of citizens signed up to speak out. But the daylong debate apparently didn’t change any council members’ minds and certainly didn’t affect the widely expected outcome, as the mayor’s proposal passed by an 11- 6 margin.
“This is not the most important thing I have done or I will do as mayor,” said Parker, who was visibly moved after the ordinance was adopted. “But it is the most personally satisfying and most personally meaningful thing that I will do as mayor.”
Opponents vowed to continue fighting the ordinance at the ballot box, possibly petitioning for a referendum putting the issue before voters. Some of the mayor’s critics have also discussed launching a recall movement against her and some council members, but even they admit removing city elected officials from office would be very difficult. The story of Chrissy Polaris transgender male living as a female whom was attacked by two females in a McDonald's restroom for using the facilities of and I qoute real women. My Monday goes deeper with this dilemma. I think of the children whom will Onegin witnessing this taking place. Yes this is America, land of the free. We have our freedom of choice our rights to live our lives as we so decide. But let us not loose sight of whom are decisions effect. And yes Mayor Parker's I'm directing this to you along with the city counselors who ruled in favor of this ordinance. Houston we must override this decision at the polls.
The mayor suggested the idea began with complaints from African-American men who said they were turned away from nightclubs based upon their race. But the debate has centered mainly on the rights of gay and transgendered people. The mayor herself acknowledged and essentially encouraged that perception with a pointed remark that “the debate is about me.”
“It feels great,” said Travis Sheive, a politically active gay man celebrating the ordinance’s passage at City Hall. “I mean, I feel like the city that I love and the city I worked so hard for has just stood up and told everyone that they’re going to protect me and that they’re going to treat me equally under the law.”
But for once I want the Mayor to come and have a look at the dangers of this decision from a very different viewpoint. I feel as though her approach towards this decision was a bit vague. There are so many reports of transgender male/females whom find themselves victims of hate crimes. Just recently in Santa Francisco
a 15-year-old student was assaulted, who is biologically female but identifies as male, told officers he was leaving a boy's bathroom at Hercules Middle/High School when three teenage boys pushed him inside a large stall and assailed him.
