Monday night, South Euclid’s city
council unanimously passed Ordinance 12-17, outlawing discrimination in a broad
sector of categories including sexual orientation and gender identity. The law replaces South Euclid’s previous
anti-discrimination ordinances, which were scattered, piecemeal, and
inconsistent. As indicated by the last
two digits of the ordinance, it had been under consideration since 2017 – June
to be precise. Passage of this ordinance
makes South Euclid the 20th of Ohio’s 938 municipalities to have a
law that specifically protects our city’s LGBT persons. I have never been prouder to be a South
Euclid resident than I was when this ordinance was passed. For a city council and mayor who have taken
brick-bats from the extreme right and extreme left, I can only say: Bravo and
well done.
The ordinance has been described in the
media as controversial. It was only
controversial based on the shouting of a few people, many of whom are not
residents of South Euclid, and nearly every one of whom is a member of South
Euclid’s Sacred Heart of
Jesus Catholic church or the Lyceum
school – which is located on church grounds. At four separate council meetings, I saw the
same people rise in opposition to the bill, often raising arbitrary
points about bathroom usage by transgender people and the hypothetical bakery. I saw
these opponents for what they were: a well-organized flash mob orchestrated by
Sacred Heart, Lyceum, and Cleveland Right to Life (which separated from National Right to Life due to the
Cleveland group’s extremism).
Addressing the December 11, 2017 council meeting.
By January, Sacred Heart and Lyceum saw
the handwriting on the wall and appeared to assent to passage if a religious
exemption was added. (The Lyceum school
did not help their case when it became known in December that an email was sent
to a city council person threatening to sue the city if the ordinance was
passed. Even some of those who had
reservations about the ordinance thought it was heavy handed for a tax-exempt organization
to threaten to sue over legislation put into place by a council elected by
South Euclid taxpayers.) The language in
the proposed exemption was so broad that one could stretch the ordinance from
South Euclid to the Vatican without technically breaking it. Councilpersons Ruth Gray and Jason Russell
were the first to point this out in January.
The exemption was discussed for almost the entirely of Monday’s
Committee of the Whole meeting before council decided to remove it from the
legislation by a vote of 5-2.
Following that vote, the ordinance’s
opponents went ballistic. Father Dave
Ireland of Sacred Heart (the same Father Ireland who tried to smooth talk his
way past the incidents at
the Sacred Heart of Jesus festival in 2014) intoned that he’d been “a
proud member of the community for the past 13 years, up until now". The terms “pontificating” and “pompous” were
created for men just like him. The
director of the Lyceum School, Luke Macik, who’d previously tried to couch his
opposition in pseudo-intellectual claptrap (e.g., being LGBT is entirely
subjective, as if belief in a religious doctrine and a supernatural creator who
cannot be seen is anything other than
subjective), stated that “marriage is sacred” and pronounced the proceedings
“shameful” – forgetting that marriage, which the Supreme Court has already
stated is a Constitutional right, had nothing to do with the ordinance.
As I pointed out in my remarks to the
Council, Ordinance 12-17 already has a reasonable exemption for religious
institutions and adheres to the exemptions provided for in the Ohio Revised Code. I reminded Council and the audience that
without compromise, Social Security would not have been signed into law. Compromise helped our country to endure the
Great Depression, obliterate Fascism, defeat Communism, and land a man on the
Moon. Many people of faith, including
two members of Clergy who spoke, were in favor of the ordinance. Indeed, numerous Catholics I spoke to were
also in favor – indicating that the Catholic Church is not entirely undivided
in this matter. These people recognize
that America was intended to be neutral in terms of religion, neither endorsing
nor rejecting any particular religion, as evidenced in the First Amendment –
and that our country does not need to be run by Taliban, either Christian or
otherwise. And we would be well to
remember that religion, including Christianity, has been been used to justify some of
the most egregious monstrosities in human history. In many nations, religion is still a call to
violence, not love.
I have no desire to prevent Catholics,
Protestants, Muslims, Jews, or members of any other faith from practicing their
religion. Passage of Ordinance 12-17
does not mean religions are required to “approve” of LGBT people. It merely means that prejudicial treatment
against LGBT people in terms of housing, public accommodations, and employment,
is against the law.
I don’t particularly care whether a
religious representative approves of me.
What I demand as a taxpaying American is equality before the law, and Ordinance
12-17 moves our region closer to that ideal.
Recently a film was released which
dealt with a young man’s coming out: Love, Simon. Even for contemporary teens with supportive
families and communities, coming out can be traumatic. The film brought back unpleasant memories of
the isolation I felt as I began to realize that I was gay, and the lies I told
as I tried to conceal it. The worry
about being discovered as gay was much worse than coming out – which was
relatively liberating. As I heard the
comments from those in opposition to the ordinance, including one comment from
a Lyceum student, I thought “Thank God I went to Brush.” Even though the Brush High School of 1985
didn’t have the Gay-Straight
Alliance it has today, it was a relatively accepting place. I can only imagine what a student attending
the Lyceum school or a similar institution would encounter, even in today’s “woke”
era.
I am 51 years old. Statistically, my life is more than half
over. My husband and I were together for over four
years before we decided to travel to Vermont to get married – because we couldn’t
marry in Ohio. And it was another five
years before that marriage was nationally recognized. We both have good jobs at great companies that
are both LGBT friendly. Although
Ordinance 12-17 applies to us, I don’t think of it as being for us.
It’s for the young person who knows he or she is “different” and is
considering coming out – or for the person who has come out, and is looking for
an apartment, a job, or shopping for a service from a local company. Passing Ordinance 12-17 has been a long and
emotionally difficult slog, but if this law helps one person, it has been worth
it.
