Houston Votes Against LGBT Anti-Discrimination Ordinance

Similar ordinances have already been approved in 200 other cities nationwide. It’s about living one’s life with personal dignity and public respect and having one’s existence and family recognized and protected by the very government they help finance.

The HERO (Houston Equal Rights Ordinance) proposition was rejected by a vote of 61 to 39 percent with 95 percent of the ballots counted. The claim, supporters said, was outrageous and based on a radically incorrect view of transgender people.

Opponents argued the ordinance would allow male sexual predators to dress as women and enter women’s public restrooms.

The result was a potentially troubling sign for Democrats ahead of next year’s presidential election and represented a big win for the GOP as it continues to consolidate political power across the South. The governor’s race in Kentucky was the highest profile contest in Tuesday’s off-year elections.

“We drew a line in the sand, and we said not here not now not in Houston Texas”, said Jared Woodfill who organized opposition to the ordinance. “It’s about allowing men into women’s locker rooms and bathrooms”.

But this isn’t really about men in women’s bathrooms – that’s a conspicuously creepy image used for propaganda purposes.

“In a city this diverse, with 90 languages spoken and all the varied cultural and racial and religious influences, you have to have a city where people respect each other and find mechanisms to communicate and get along with each other”, Parker said in an interview.

For Texans, civil rights, equality, and tolerance can apparently be counted chief among things that are “not right”.

“This will have stained Houston’s reputation as a tolerant, welcoming global city”, Mayor Parker said.

Opponents of the ordinance, including a coalition of conservative pastors, said it infringed on their religious beliefs regarding homosexuality. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, cheered the vote at an election night rally at a Houston hotel. “Sadly, the ugly and divisive tactics of the opponents of HERO succeeded in persuading a majority of Houstonians to vote no. But we have faced disappointments before that did not stop us – this fight for fairness is far from over”.

Houston voters soundly rejected the city’s embattled equal rights law on Tuesday in one of the most heated local political contests in recent memory. Supporters of the ordinance claim Houston will lose tourism and convention business because the vote portrays the city as unwelcoming.

While opponents of the bill said they’re protecting women, there have not been confirmed reports of men pretending to be trans to attack women in female bathrooms or reports of cisgender people being harassed by transgendered people in these spaces, according to The Advocate and Mic.

The National Football League said the ordinance’s defeat will not affect plans for the 2017 Super Bowl.