In Brief

Staff Reports

Lincoln Nebraska Moves Ahead With Proposed Expansion Of City’s City Rights Ordinance To Include Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity

LINCOLN, NE -- The Lincoln City Council will continue with efforts to pass an expansion of the city's civil rights ordinance to cover gay and transgender people despite state's attorney general Jon Bruning's opinion that the council does not have that power. Bruning, in a statement released Friday, said that Omaha’s sexual orientation and gender identity non-discrimination protections are improper. He said state law does not permit for cities to expand protections beyond what the state already covers.

Lincoln's Mayor, Chris Beutler said Bruning's opinion has no binding effect on cities and that the Lincoln city attorney has a different opinion from the attorney general.

Attorneys for both Omaha and Lincoln are in agreement that "there are lots of things about this opinion that are not correct," Beutler said of the attorney general's opinion released Friday morning. Bruning said cities cannot broaden their anti-discrimination laws without asking voters to expand the city charter, or getting the Legislature to expand the state's civil rights laws. Now, anti-discrimination protection for gender identity or sexual orientation is not a part of either the Lincoln city charter or state law, reports The Lincoln Journal Star. 

The Bruning opinion was released just days before a Lincoln City Council public hearing on a proposal to add gender identity and sexual orientation to the classes of people specifically protected against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

The Omaha City Council recently added similar anti-discrimination protection for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to its civil rights ordinance. The statute used by the attorney general to argue that cities don't have the authority to go beyond state law actually includes words allowing cities to pass ordinances that are more comprehensive than state law, Lincoln City Attorney Rod Confer argued.

"This is an issue of basic fairness," Beutler said. "No one should live in fear of losing a job or housing because of sexual orientation or gender identity. Lincoln is the capital city of the state whose motto is 'Equality before the law.' It's time to make those words ring true." 

Opponents of the Omaha and Lincoln proposals say the attorney general's opinion verifies what they believed all along. 

"You just create a very difficult environment in the state if you start allowing various cities to have new protected classes," said the Rev. Al Riskowski, executive director of the Nebraska Family Council. The attorney general feels strongly that state law does not allow city councils to create new protected classes. But someone may have to take that to court, he said. It is indisputable that a vote of the people is required to change city charter," Riskowski said. 

The Bruning opinion came in response to questions by Omaha Sen. Beau McCoy, who introduced legislation last year that would have prohibited cities and counties from creating protected classes beyond those found in state law. That bill did not get out of the Judiciary Committee and died when the session ended last month. This is not a new issue. In previous years, Lincoln and Omaha have added other protected classes to city laws that are broader than what is in state law or the city charter, Beutler pointed out. Lincoln already offers more protection in the areas of familial status, age, disability and national origin than is provided in state law, Confer said. And none of these categories are part of the city charter, he said. 

Bruning's opinion contradicts a 1981 Nebraska attorney general's opinion that concluded cities could expand their civil rights ordinances beyond in state law. But that opinion left some room for doubt. It suggested an alternative interpretation also is feasible and recommended changing state law to eliminate any doubt. The most recent opinion refers to the 1981 opinion but comes down on the other side. 

"While we continue to believe as we did in 1981 that the legislative history does not provide an entirely clear answer ... it also seems to us that other aspects of the relevant statutes, which we did not discuss in 1981, indicate that the authority of political subdivisions to legislate ... is limited to the civil rights enumerated in state statute, absent changes in a home rule charter." ~The Lincoln Journal Star.

The Lincoln City Council expects to vote on the expanded protected classes at its May 14 meeting. 

"We believe this opinion is in error," said Councilman Carl Eskridge, who sponsored the Lincoln amendment and has said he has support from a majority of the council. "We believe we are on the right ground, the high ground. So we will move on."

Science Fiction Author Says North Carolina Same Sex Marriage Amendment Is About “Anti-Religious Values” Being Forced On Children

Orson Scott Card photo via Wikimedia

GREENSBORO, NC -- Science Fiction Author Orson Scott Card primarily known for his science fiction, is also adamantly anti-gay, although according to Card he claims to “have plenty of gay friends.” Card whose principal residence is located in Greensboro, has been writing numerous op-eds published in the local newspaper, the Rhinoceros Times.

In Card's latest piece, entitled 'What’s Really At Stake' he argues that "there is no need to legalise same sex marriage." According to Card, there are “no laws left standing that discriminate against gay or lesbian couples.

They can visit each other in the hospital. They can benefit from each other's insurance.

No, legalising gay marriage is not about making it possible for gay people to become couples.

It's about giving the left the power to force anti-religious values on our children. Once they legalize gay marriage, it will be the bludgeon they use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools.

Our children will be barraged with the deceptions of the left. Parents will be forbidden to remove their children from the propaganda.

Any child with any gender or sexual confusion will be pushed inexorably away from the decision to establish a traditional family. They'll be told, again and again, that any sign of effeminacy or gender confusion or same-sex attraction is an irrevocable, lifelong compulsion and they might as well shape their lives accordingly.

The left is at war with the family, and they want control of our children's education. That's what those signs on the lawns are about.

I'm not making this up – it's already happening wherever the left has complete control of education. Parents in those places are already forbidden to opt out of sexual and gender propaganda. ~ The Rhinoceros Times

He added; “Same-sex attraction is not a strait jacket; people's desires change over time; gay people still have choices; a reproductive dysfunction like same-sex attraction is not a death sentence for your DNA or for your desire to have a family in which children grow up with male and female parents to model appropriate gender roles. 

Heterosexual pair-bonding has been at the heart of human evolution from the time we divided off from the chimps. Normalizing a dysfunction will only make ours into a society that corrodes any loyalty to it. “Legalizing gay marriage is about driving all contrary evidence or argument out of the public discussion. That's why the gay-marriage lobby tries to stifle discussion – they have no arguments that stand up to serious investigation. They brand their opponents' arguments as religious, and therefore illegitimate; but in fact their own arguments are just as faith-based, just as lacking in evidence, as any Bible-based argument."