Thursday, the city of San Antonio, Texas took a stand for civil rights and voted to extend its non-discrimination ordinance to cover both Veterans and the LGBT community. Right-wingers, including outspoken LGBT opponent Elisa Chan continued to squawk ridiculously by accusing the ordinance of violating their religious freedom.

Mayor Julian Castro stated:

This ordinance fundamentally is about ensuring whether you’re white or black, Christian or Jew, straight or gay, this city belongs to you. This ordinance is about saying there are no second-class citizens in San Antonio.

The ordinance grabbed national attention last month when it was made public that City Councilwoman Elisa Chan?now coined as “Runaway Chan” had been recorded making a series of contentious statements regarding the LGBT community and then employing her staff to circulate anti-LGBT propaganda in an effort to make sure the non-discrimination ordinance would be voted down.

Chan then responded to the public outcry in a news conference where she lied about the nature and circumstances of her statements during the recording. She also falsely claimed that her comments were private and an exercise of free speech. They weren’t. Chan is now facing an ethics investigation regarding her conduct displayed in the recording and her subsequent action and claims since then.

Chan’s response to the passage of the bill:

We have shattered the trust of a community.

More than 2,000 citizens from both sides of the argument offered impassioned testimony concerning the ordinance in a heated debate that was often met with cheers from the crowd. Each person who signed up for the Citizens to be Heard meeting was granted 3 minutes of testimony, but Mayor Castro noted that individual time may be cut down to allow every person an opportunity to speak. This week the City Council members listened to testimony until after 1 a.m. in order to hear from each citizen who signed up for the meeting.

The passage of the updated ordinance means that San Antonio has now joined the long list of Texas cities that have already passed similar amendments — including Austin, Dallas, and Houston. The San Antonio Current has an excellent article going back to 1998 detailing a timeline of events in the efforts to pass a non-discrimination ordinance in San Antonio, Texas.

As the vote for the ordinance approached, Councilmen Ray Lopez (District-6) proposed an amendment that would allow the Veterans portion of the ordinance to be voted on as a separate issue. Lopez claimed that he wanted to prove to San Antonio lawmakers and voters that the Veterans portion of the ordinance was not included with the LGBT portion of the ordinance in order to gain equal rights for LGBT people.

The result of the vote concerning the portion for Veterans revealed a lot more questions than answers. Along with one other council member, Carlton Soules (District-10), the now infamous Elisa Chan voted to deny the non-discrimination portion of the ordinance to Veterans.

Lopez was right, though. Separating the ordinance into two separate proposals really did not make any difference. While the vote on the non-discrimination of Veterans proposal was 9-2 in favor, the vote on non-discrimination of LGBT people was 8-3 in favor.

VOTE ON LGBT NON-DISCRIMINATION ORDINANCE:

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro – YES

District 1 Councilman Diego Bernal – YES

District 2 Councilwoman Ivy Taylor – NO

District 3 Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran – YES

District 4 Councilman Rey Saldana – YES

District 5 Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales – YES

District 6 Councilman Ray Lopez – YES

District 7 Councilman Cris Medina – YES

District 8 Councilman Ron Nirenberg – YES

District 9 Councilwoman Elisa Chan – NO

District 10 Councilman Carlton Soules – NO

Christopher Plante, Regional Director for the National Organization for Marriage-Rhode Island, made numerous false claims about the ordinance during a broadcast on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network. Among them, Plante claimed that the ordinance would prohibit anyone with a history of discrimination from holding a public office or doing business with the city of San Antonio.

That’s completely false. That section had been proposed in a very early draft of the amendment, but was removed and never presented in the final proposal to the City Council. If you are unfamiliar with Plante, he has quite a history of false and inflammatory claims as noted by the Commentator Accountability Project.

Liberty Institute President Kelly Shackelford also has quite a misguided history according to Right Wing Watch. In a press statement, he spouted:

The ordinance is a cloudy and confusing collection of poorly thought out and conflicting statements that could have been more clearly and cleanly handled by simply including a broad religious liberty exemption to protect the free speech and religious liberty rights of both individuals and organizations that have religious objections to the requirements mandated by the Ordinance.

Pastor Charles Flowers is of course no stranger to abuse or arrests. Aside from promising to unseat each council member that voted in favor of the ordinance, he claimed:

Such an ordinance divides the city and puts the faith community in a ‘second class citizen’ status.

Mark Longoria told the council:

I am for equality. The problem that I have is you criminalize us if we speak our faith.

Sylvia Villarreal told the audience:

Sadly, the walls of this chamber reek of injustice this morning.

While a number of faith leaders led protests and public prayer meetings in opposition to the ordinance, an even larger number of faith leaders organized support and prayer meetings in favor of the passage of the ordinance. Faith leaders of all kinds organized a sort of spiritual collective to offer support in an effort to pass the non-discrimination ordinance.

Personally, I have never actually heard of a religion or faith that tells its followers that they are required to hate or discriminate against any person for any one reason. For that matter, has anyone?

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Edited by Jeromie Williams