Like Houston, Jacksonville is a growing Southern city where religion plays a powerful role in public life. And, as in Houston, the battle here pits a well-organized coalition of gays and business forces against energized Christian conservatives who raise issues of religious freedom and the specter of male predators in women’s bathrooms. One major difference: In Houston, voters this month rolled back an existing ordinance; in Jacksonville, for now, the issue is before elected officials.
For Christian conservatives, wounded from repeated losses in the courts culminating in the Supreme Court’s decision in June to make
same-sex marriage legal nationwide, it is a chance to show that Houston was not an isolated victory.
Hundreds of people, many wearing bright orange stickers bearing the sunburst logo of the
Jacksonville Coalition for Equality, a gay rights group, turned out this month for the first of three “community conversations” that Mayor Lenny Curry is convening on the so-called H.R.O. The expanded ordinance is not yet written but is expected to go before the City Council early next year.
Inside a standing-room-only hall, where a five-member panel took questions from a moderator and then the audience, the ripple effects of Houston — where opponents’ rallying cry was
“No Men in Women’s Bathrooms” — were clear.
“It’s a fact of life that predators attack women and children in bathrooms; it happens everywhere,” said one panelist, Roger Gannam, a lawyer and former Jacksonville resident who represents Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He drew jeers when he said an anti-discrimination law “will make that easier” by allowing male criminals to pose as transgender.
Currently, more than 200 cities and 17 states have ordinances barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, with no evidence of any increase in crime, proponents say.
The push here fits into a broader agenda for the national gay rights movement, which is now focused on ending discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations. A new group, Freedom for All Americans, is trying to change laws in the states, with the ultimate goal of winning federal protections, a strategy that worked in the fight for same-sex marriage.
“We need to create a tipping point,” Matt McTighe, the group’s executive director, said. He expects legislatures in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania to consider measures next year.
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