Joel Burgess

jburgess@citizen-times.com

ASHEVILLE - City Council members have no plans to pass a nondiscrimination ordinance such as Charlotte's, which has focused national attention on that city for guaranteeing transgender people the right to the bathroom of their choice in restaurants, retail stores and other businesses.

Questions had circulated about a possible Asheville ordinance since Charlotte's controversial LGBT rules passed Feb. 22. That led Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer to issue a statement three days later saying the council "has taken bold steps" to pass nondiscrimination employment policies and same-sex partner benefits. But the statement didn't address whether the council would take up a similar rule.

Republican state legislators have begun organizing to overturn the Charlotte decision.

In a meeting Tuesday, Asheville City Council members officials addressed the ordinance issue directly, saying the city by default had protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, making a Charlotte-type ordinance unnecessary.

Manheimer said city legal staff told a council subcommittee a decades-old nondiscrimination ordinance in Charlotte intentionally left out bathrooms.

"What that meant for Charlotte is that they had an ordinance on the books that could be interpreted to mean that discrimination could be imposed in the use of bathrooms," the mayor said. "They had something to fix, in other words."

Asheville is not in that position, she said, and is like "anywhere else" in the United States that doesn't have rules about who can or can't use bathrooms available to the public in private businesses and public places.

High public interest

The issue was not on the council's agenda Tuesday but was addressed by Manheimer after several members of the public spoke about a possible rule during a public comment session at the end of the meeting. She said the governance committee, which is made up of her, Vice Mayor Gwen Wisler and Councilman Keith Young, had recommended no action to the full, seven-member council.

But speakers, including two who are transgender, said the city should go further and pass a rule that specifically protects rights to facilities such as bathrooms. That would mean, for example, a person born as a man but who identifies as a woman could use women's restrooms.

After the meeting, one of those speakers, Lacey Winter, said such a rule would safeguard the rights of transgender people as "equal citizens" under the law "and protect us from arbitrary discrimination."

"Right now a business owner or an institution can block us from using facilities that are appropriate for the gender that we identify with based on their own beliefs and viewpoints," Winter said.

The other transgender speaker, Tara Darby, said Charlotte's situation was typical of other cities that passed gay rights rules years ago. Transgender facilities rules were often used as a "bargaining chip," Darby said and were removed from proposed ordinances in order to get enough votes to pass "sexual orientation-type rights."

"It doesn't mean that we don’t need protections. It just means that when the original things were written we were actually excluded from those protections," Darby said.

Opponents: 'Public safety'

Speaking against protections, Andrew Sluder, pastor of Bible Baptist Church in Asheville, said allowing people to pick bathrooms could cause harm, especially for children.

"It's none of my business how you identify your gender," Sluder said. "If you’re a man and you want to identify as a woman, that’s your business. But when it comes to the topic of public safety, a man should use a man’s bathroom and a woman should use a woman’s bathroom."

Opponents nationally have argued rules meant to ensure LGBT people have rights to restroom facilities of their choice give sexual predators access to victims.

In Charlotte, conservative groups took aim at the LGTB Chamber of Commerce president, who promoted the rule and who the groups noted was on a sex offender list, according to a Wednesday article by the Charlotte Observer. In 1998, Chad Sevearance-Turner, then 20, was arrested and later convicted of fondling a 15-year-old boy while he slept, the Observer article said.

He was a church youth minister in Gaffney, South Carolina, and the boy was a church member. Following the recent criticism, Sevearance-Turner stepped down as president.

Councilman Gordon Smith lauded those who spoke in favor of the protections and chided those who spoke against them.

"There are some really brave people who are being who they are in the face of a world that may not recognize or validate their experience," said Smith, who is running in the District 1 county commissioner Democratic primary against LGBT rights advocate the Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara and civil rights activist Isaac Coleman.

Smith, a family and child psychologist, said transgender suicides tend to go up in places where these issues are publicly debated and that in incidents of bathroom violence transgender people are often the victims.

"You have been in bathrooms with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people your entire life," he said. "The city of Asheville respects the dignity of all people and the civil rights of all people and bigotry has no place in Asheville."

Changes follow Supreme Court ruling

The Charlotte rule is part of sweeping changes taking hold nationwide following the Supreme Court's decision legalizing gay marriage. LGBT advocates have sought to build on that momentum by securing broad protections against discrimination in cities and states.

Charlotte's ordinance is broader than just bathrooms, prohibiting hotels, for example, from refusing to rent a room to a lesbian couple, that city's legal staff said.

But bathroom rules have become a focal point that resonate more with voters than other aspects of such laws, advocates say.

Most of the 20 largest U.S. cities now enforce state laws or local ordinances that include allowances for people to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with, according to members of the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign which helped generate support for Charlotte's ordinance.

Charlotte's ordinance added "sexual orientation," ''gender identity" and "marital status" as attributes protected from discrimination when it comes to public accommodations in restaurants, retail stores and other businesses.

Violations could be treated as misdemeanors, punishable by fines of $500 or 30 days in jail, although nobody has ever faced such punishment under other aspects of the city's existing anti-discrimination ordinance, municipal staff said.

The ordinance does not address accommodations in public schools.

North Carolina's cities and counties are creations of the state, and the General Assembly can override local ordinances. Republican lawmakers have passed several laws recently to rein in city councils — particularly those led by Democrats, such as Asheville — who they believe overstepped their authority.

House Speaker Tim Moore has said he and other Republicans will be "exploring legislative intervention to correct this radical course" once the legislature convenes again in late April.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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