INDIANA: Lafayette City Council Unanimously Approves Transgender Rights In Preliminary Vote

The Lafayette Journal-Courier reports:

Twenty-three years after Lafayette adopted anti-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians, city council members Monday night unanimously said they were ready to defend the transgender population with similar protections based on gender identity.

Dressed largely in green, the color of the transgender movement, supporters of an amended Human Relations Ordinance overcame concerns by several pastors, who urged the council to hold off and do more study about bathroom rights and consider how the city was moving away from godly norms. The council simply echoed Mayor Tony Roswarski’s determination: “I feel it’s time we do this.”

“To me, the biggest thing was just the force of the people who came out for this tonight,” Skye Brown, program director of support group Trans Lafayette, said after the preliminary, 8-0 vote. The city council must consider the ordinance a second time. That vote is scheduled for September.

Arguing against the move, of course, were pastors from several local churches. Gays were added to the city’s human rights ordinance in 1993. A repeal effort failed three years later. (Tipped by JMG reader Ed)