Former GOP Leader Ralph Lillig's petition for referendum to repeal Pocatello's anti-discrimination ordinance (
Local 8 News)
Still reeling from the arrest of 44 Add the Words protestors in Boise last Monday (which the AP has picked up in a story that ran in the
Washington Post), and the measure the Idaho house State Affairs Committee put forward Wednesday that threatens to
enshrine discrimination as law, folks in Pocatello, Idaho got the pièce de résistance in a three-pronged assault on LGBT rights when their city council met Thursday.
I'm repeating myself a bit, but the Idaho State Journal reported that on Thursday, the Pocatello city council voted unanimously in favor of a referendum up for vote in May that could repeal the city's hard won non-discrimination ordinance. It will read:
Should the city repeal Ordinance No. 2921, which prohibits discrimination against a person in the areas of housing, employment and public accommodations, based upon that person's sexual orientation and gender identity/expression? A yes vote would mean you want the city to repeal the ordinance. A no vote would mean you want the city to keep the ordinance in effect.
The city council argued that the referendum was necessary due to a petition that was circulated to repeal the ordinance. The petition reportedly got 1600 signatures. But as Pocatello Local 8 television news reported, many feel that
the petition was deceptively presented and if they had known it would lead to the current referendum designed to repeal the ordinance, they would not have signed it.
A Local 8 reporter that looked through the petition recognized the names of people that had spoken out for the ordinance around the time it was passed last June, and smelled something fishy. Two women who signed the petition were interviewed, who are angry that it is being used to try to repeal the ordinance. They say they would not have signed it had they been told that it would be used this way.
One of them was convinced to sign it by a man who knocked on her door the morning of October 9. She was told it was to keep the conversation going about how people felt about the ordinance in the community. You have to understand, Pocatello is very conservative and to say the religious right is strong would be an understatement. While Mormons Building Bridges is working to protect gays and lesbians, that is sadly still a minority view. In Pocatello, if someone shows up at your door asking to keep a conversation about religious views going, if you know what's good for you, you don't say no. The woman tricked into signing the petition told Local 8:
"I asked, "So this is not to change the ordinance, but to keep the conversation going?" and he said, "Right.""
Who can say how many would tell the same story if asked? Pocatello' hometown paper, the Idaho State Journal, reported Sunday that it "contacted several people who signed the petition last October and none of them said they were confused about the effort to place the city’s action on a referendum," but ISJ did not interview the women in Local 8's story. You can watch the story in which signers claim they were deceived into signing the petition here.
I said it before and I'll say it again:
LGBTQ people are being denied the moral imperative that their natural rights be represented and protected. This has to stop. After the 44 were arrested in Boise last Monday, a Moveon.org petition was started to let Idaho legislators know just how much gay and transgender Idahoans and their supporters in the state and the rest of the country want the Four Words "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" added to Idaho’s Human Rights Act without further delay. ...If you haven't signed it, please do so today.
Right now the petition is inching toward 8000 signatures.
LGBT people in Idaho and their supporters don't need backroom maneuvers like deceptive petitions. Or the kind of secret, all-day meetings that the mayor and city council members had with a Washington, DC attorney from the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s American Religious Freedom Program on the very day that a hearing was held on the ordinance last April. Why? To get their marching orders on how to try to scuttle the ordinance before it ever came up for vote.
It's the law now, and it must be enforced and maintained. Keep fighting the good fight.