Tagged: non-discrimination ordinance

Posted: January 7, 2013 at 7:41 pm

Students Campaign to Fix Montana University System’s Non-Discrimination Policy

703 EqualityA group of students is leading the charge to fix the Montana University System’s non-discrimination policy, which is out of date and does not include sexual orientation and gender identity.

These students are absolutely right when they point out that a safe living, working, and learning environment should not be left to circumstance or personal opinion. It should be guaranteed to all within our university system.

The campaign is called 703 Equality because the board of regents adopted the current policy, known as ”Non-Discrimination Policy 703″ back in 1976–and it hasn’t been substantively updated since.

The main focus now is on using social media to get public feedback on this policy change to the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education and the Montana Board of Regents.  Sign the letter here.

Here are some other ways you can get involved:

Twitter: twitter.com/703equality,

Blogosphere: 703equality.blogspot.com

Students have already gathered hundreds of signatures just in the last week for an online letter addressed to the commissioner of higher education and the board of regents.  The campaign has even been featured in a couple of print stories in the Lee Newspapers.

You don’t have to be a student to get involved.  The universities need to hear from alumni, sports fans, family and friends, community members and anyone who pays taxes and cares about equality.  Signing the letter takes 20 seconds.

The change is an obvious one and should be adopted immediately.  As a well thought out opinion piece in The Exponent explains,  there are many reasons one policy covering all campuses makes the most sense. The most important reason:

Students — whether they attend UM-Western or MSU-Billings — should have the same assurance of protection.

Posted: December 3, 2012 at 8:14 am

Decision Time

The Helena City Commission will hold the “first reading” for the nondiscrimination ordinance tonight, Monday, December 3rd at 6:00 pm in the Commission Chambers of the City-County Building.  When the ordinance passes, it will mean Helenans can no longer be fired, refused an apartment, or thrown out of a business simply because they are LGBT.

A YES vote on the ordinance is a no-brainer.  First, because there is no downside to ending discrimination and this policy has been carefully considered for nearly a year.

The politics of this also make a YES vote an easy choice.  Helena is a progressive town, with a large majority of progressive voters.  One doesn’t need polling to see this–just look at the large majorities democratic legislators win by.  And Helena only has one GOP legislator.

True,  sometimes local politicians have trouble distuinguishing between the small, very vocal number of angry TEA Partiers who have nothing better to do than write angry letters and the vast majority of progressive and mainstream Helenans who support the idea but are busy running their businesses and taking care of their families. But I don’t think that will be the case with our commission, as we have some very bright people serving on it right now.

Many of these folks will likely move on to other elected offices and appointments some day, and they know that a NO vote on this ordinance will mean they’d likely lose any future primary and/or be passed over for appointments under democratic administrations if they acted to keep discrimination legal in the Capital City.  As any Helenan who follows politics knows, our political battles are fought in democratic primaries.

Of course, if politics were ruled by rational thought, we’d have a different legislature.  These things are won and lost by the people who show up. So head over to tonight’s meeting after work and show the TEA Party for the small out-of-touch faction they really are.   Don’t be the person who doesn’t attend because you’ve already planned to spend the evening clearing space on your DVR for more episodes of Homeland.  The TEA-Baggers aren’t going to miss this because they think ending discrimination portends some kind of end-of-the-world scenario.

The meeting is tonight, December 3, at 6pm, at the City-County Building at 316 North Park in Helena.

Posted: August 14, 2012 at 7:34 am

Baloney

The leader of a local right-wing group claims in a podcast that gay people are not the targets of violence and that actual cases of anti-gay violence don’t exist.

Pointing to one case of a young adult in Missoula who made up the story of being attacked because he was gay, Montana birther Jeff Laszloffy tells us (clip) “these false claims are becoming all too frequent because actual cases don’t exist”:

The notion that it does comes from repeated claims by groups like the Montana Human Rights Network. The reason this latest case  got so much publicity was that the promoters of anti-gay discrimination ordinances thought that they finally had an actual case that they could point to. (clip)

Laszloffy, head of the far-right Montana Family Foundation, wants us to believe that non-profit organizations are ginning up fake claims of anti-gay violence in Missoula to to pass a non-discrimination ordinance in Helena.

He points to two other cases of anti-gay violence in Montana that he says were made up.

Though Laszloffy declines to cite his sources, presumably he means the 2001 case of the Carroll College student who,

was hit in the head with a bottle, knocked unconscious and further beaten, according to a report filed by the student with school administrators. The words “Die Fag” were written on his body, and the student later required surgery because of the cuts on his eye.

The 2001 Helena IR report on this case is pasted below the fold.

He claims that police believed that a lesbian couple in Missoula actually set their own house on fire. The couple was forced to escape through a window with their infant son.

Laszloffy presents no evidence to back up his statement that these people committed crimes by making false reports to police.   Instead, he says we should be suspicious of them because they left the state after the attacks.   However, as the Helena IR reports, the Carroll student left because he feared for his safety, “fearing for his safety, he withdrew from Carroll and returned to his Spokane-area home.” And in the case of the Missoula couple, the prosecutor, a Missoula County Attorney, found no evidence to back up the claims of those who said that they had made up their story.

Laszloffy doesn’t think we understand that people move away after becoming a hate crime victim because they want to distance themselves from that terrible experience. Who wants to be known mostly as a public reminder of fear and the existence of bigots?  They move away because they don’t want to be reminded every day of what happened to them and to avoid having to encounter the perpetrators.

Here’s where his remarks really go south. Laszloffy says that the Helena non-discrimination ordinance is not to protect people who are gay but rather to “put churches and those who oppose homosexuality on religious grounds at risk for  harassment.”   He says that, “The gay community is now pushing those in the faith community not only to accept what they see as sin, but to participate in it as well.”

Back in Montana on Planet Earth, people who are gay can be denied housing and employment, fired, or kicked out of establishments — all because of their sexual orientation.  Religion is a protected class by both bias-crime laws and non-discrimination laws in Montana.  This means laws already protect people from being discriminated against because of  their faith.   And if a religious person was attacked in a bias-based crime, the assailant would receive a sentence enhancement.

To find out more about Helena’s non-discrimination ordinance and how you can help, visit the Montana Human Rights Network website here.  

 

 

 

Posted: August 4, 2012 at 9:33 am

Satire at Its Best

Remember the conservative Helena City Commissioner who said he opposed Helena’s non-disrcrimination ordinance for LGBT citizens because it lacked protections for people who are bald or left handed? He is continuing to take heat this week.

The Helena Vigilante’s Shane Castle has a created a facetious campaign ad send up based on Commissioner Dan Ellison’s stated position on the ordinance.  You can see the ad here.

Last week,

The Independent Record ran a front-page story Saturday correcting [an] error and outlining Ellison’s concerns, as expressed Friday in a telephone interview.  In particular, [Mr. Ellison] asked whether a nondiscrimination ordinance should also apply to various other groups — he mentioned the bald and the left-handed, among others — that might also suffer discrimination.

Posted: July 24, 2012 at 6:17 am

A Commissioner’s Wrath

There’s an interesting article in today’s Helena IR about Helena City Commissioner Dan Ellison (the conservative on the commission).  Mr. Ellison used last night’s City Commission meeting to  publicly assail one of the IR‘s best reporters, Sanjay Talwani.

It looks like Mr. Ellison felt that the reporter mischaracterized him in an article last week.  The blurb stated that he “abstained” from a vote on the non-discrimination ordinance, which will help protect LGBT people from discrimination. In fact, he did not voice his support but also did not oppose (which one might call an abstention). Mr. Ellison took issue with that, because technically it was not a “vote” under procedural rules.

It seems Mr. Ellison complained directly to IR publisher Randy Rickman.  The IR then took what appears to me to be an unprecedented step.   Instead of issuing a correction, today’s IR reports,

The Independent Record ran a front-page story Saturday correcting the error and outlining Ellison’s concerns, as expressed Friday in a telephone interview.  In particular, [Mr. Ellison] asked whether a nondiscrimination ordinance should also apply to various other groups — he mentioned the bald and the left-handed, among others — that might also suffer discrimination.

I hadn’t realized that left-handed people can’t find a landlord who will rent to them.  But I’m glad Mr. Ellison was given front page real estate in the capital city’s newspaper to discuss this important problem.

Not satisfied with the whole extra article he got, he used the commission meeting not to work on expanding the Helena non-discrimination ordinance to the bald and left-handed, for whom he had previously voiced concern, but to lecture everyone else about the “injustice” that was done to him.

Posted: April 24, 2012 at 7:06 am

Political Quick Hits

Judge Rules Against Head of Local Anti-Gay Movement

A district judge has ruled against Robert Dellwo, the leader of the opposition to the Helena non-discrimination ordinance. Dellwo is the head of the unaccredited Helena Christian School, which is affiliated with East Helena’s Canyon Ferry Baptist Church. Apparently the school borrowed money to build a subdivision but didn’t pay it back. At one time, the church proposed that 800 new homes be built in an area already struggling with water shortages.   The school wanted to build the subdivision on the site of an old cyanide mine, which also raised concerns about contaminated soil.

What the church and Christian school  will do with their own subdivision is unknown.  Montanans tend to be wary of religious colonies after the Church Universal and Triumphant started one outside Yellowstone Park. CUT was the bunch who believed that the world was going to end of a nuclear holocaust at a particular hour and minute on April 23, 1990. They built a massive underground bomb shelter up near Gardiner, MT and stocked it to the rafters with illegally purchased semi-automatic weapons, in preparation for The End (as reported by the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Feb. 27, 1995; Bozeman Daily Chronicle, March 14, 1995).

Dellwo is appealing the ruling.

Today’s Must Read Political Blog Posts

Montanafesto and Intelligent Discontent have today’s must-read posts. Both look at the allegations of corrupt campaign finance practices by GOP Gubernatorial hopeful Ken Miller. The Montanafesto piece is a hilarious look at the contrast between how the Republican portrays himself, and reality. Intelligent Discontent writes about the accusations flying from the other candidates, who have their own troubles.

Three Days Left

The Flathead Democrats are making news for their fun and innovative fundraising. KCFW Missoula TV news  and HXLH Helena both covered the eBay auction of the framed Schweitzer VETO memorabilia set–a reminder of the infamous 2011 legislative session. The auction ends Friday April 27.