While Page has called for the county to “build a culture where all employees know they are valued and respected,” the person he chose in May to lead the county’s inclusion efforts also expressed a belief that it should be legal to discriminate against LGBT people when she served as a Democrat on the County Council.

Hazel Erby, the county’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion, was one of three members of the council who voted against a 2012 bill that added gender identity and sexual orientation to the county’s anti-discrimination regulations and hate crimes law. The bill passed 4-3. Voting in favor of it were the other four of the council’s five Democrats: Pat Dolan, Kathleen Burkett, Mike O’Mara and Steve Stenger.

In October 2007, Erby opposed a similar measure on the council because she said it was wrong to legislate morality. She did not like that the list of people it sought to protect from discrimination included transgendered people.

“I’m totally against discrimination of any kind, but I don’t compare being bisexual or transgender with being African American,” she told a Post-Dispatch journalist then. “I don’t think it’s right that you can hire a man one day and the next day he shows up as a woman.”