Yesterday Cleveland, Ohio finally passed an ordinance including gender identity and expression in its city discrimination laws. This is excellent news and I would like to reach out a special thanks to everyone who helped us get this on the books (especially my friends at AskCleveland)!
Surprisingly, Cleveland is the last major Ohio city to include GIE in its city non-discrimination ordinance. Toledo passed one in 1998, Cincinnati in 2006 (originally 2004 but was repealed), Dayton (2007), Columbus (2008), and more recently the college towns of Oxford, Bowling Green, and Yellow Springs. The state of Ohio itself has a statewide ban on discrimination on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression brought by an executive order from Governor Strickland in 2007 but it doesn’t cover many elements needed.
What’s interesting is that the arguably more “liberal” cities in the state, such as Columbus and Cleveland, have been the last to get on board. Its almost inconceivable how Cincinnati (my home town) and Dayton passed legislation before the northern cities. Perhaps more liberal areas take their rights for granted more easily, and simply forget to fight for more.
UPDATE 12/3/09
News story on Fox 8 acknowledges all protections were not covered in the new legislation. I am curious as to how long it will take to ammend.
“The state of Ohio itself has a statewide ban on discrimination on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression brought by an executive order from Governor Strickland in 2007.”…there are currently no statewide protections, this is the purpose of the Equal Housing and Employment Act (EHEA)
Indeed, I actually was thinking of adding something about the EHEA. where’s your link! way to not network, Erin :)
http://www.equalityohio.org/08site/HousingandEmployment.htm
worth adding, from my pal Judith “It was incredible to be there in the Council Chamber when the unanimous votes come in!!! Shame on the LGBT Center of Cleveland and their “leaders” who did nothing to fight back against the tricky public restroom language that was added into an amendment at the eleventh hour. Even sponsors of the bill didn’t know it was added. Thank you AskCleveland for being the the only LGBT rights group to fight the segregationist language. Unfortunately, the language stayed in. Only Cleveland City Council could include discrimination into an anti-discrimination law. However, this is a great step forward and I look forward to the Council of 2010 improving on this legislation.”
If you don’t want your surge of hope crushed, I wouldn’t check the comments on the FOX news site. Though a couple of educated individuals (who actually dont identify with the left) put them in their place.