City Council votes to expand Reading's anti-discrimination law to sexual orientation, expression

[motely36]

My town rocks!

http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=159140

City Council voted 6-1 Monday to amend the Human Relations Ordinance to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.

SNIP

The bans would apply to employers with five or more employees, to landlords and home sellers and to providers of so-called public accommodations, which could be anything from hotels to schools to numerous other businesses.

Although a religious exemption will apply to pastors and other church and synagogue leaders, it will not necessarily apply to other employees of a religious group.

The vote surprised several council members, since council had agreed in an earlier session Monday to table the ordinance until the city learned what effect it would have on local businesses.

[closeupready]

1. Very nice. :)

Good for them. :hi:

[imdjh]

2. Good news. But transgender bathrooms rears its ugly head as always.

Probably because even most of us enlightened folks can't come up with an answer that satisfies the askers. Sure, I can say, "It's not an issue." as easily as the man in the article did. I could go on to say that I have worked in four places with unisex (men and women using the same multiperson bathrooms at the same time) bathrooms, and it was never a problem. I might point out that I don't think that a woman has ever been raped or molested in a unisex bathroom, and they certainly have in a Ladies Room. And none of this make it through to the folks who are really hung up on the idea of biological males using the women's bathroom. Oddly, you hardly ever hear men complain that biological females might be using the men's room.

But the fear here isn't actually that a MTF tranny will use the Ladies Room, it's that a male rapist/landl/perv will use the law for access to the Ladies Room. Which begs the question if the social custom (I don't know of any actual law) of banning males from the Ladies Room has ever been effective in keeping rapists out. Here in St Pete, I don't think we have a law which specifically allows MTF transexuals, transgenders, or CDs to use the ladies room. And yet, before I allow my mother to go into the ladies room at the beach, she checks to see if there is ANYONE in there, and I stand by the open door.

I see it as a nonissue, but how do we get that across to the folks who are afraid?

[Demoiselle]

3. Good grief! This is a problem? (!!!)

I've been a regular customer at establishments (thoroughly respectable restaurants) that have unisex bathrooms. It has never occurred to me to worry.
Why do Americans have so many hangups about sex?

[imdjh]

4. I think it has to do with more public restrooms, like highway and malls.

We have a big problem with creeps and rapists, and some people think that allowing a male to use a ladies room based solely on his self-identification as a female will make it hard to keep the rapists and creeps out of the ladies room.

But if that were the case, then in my 51 years on the planet, I would expect to have seen a rapist or creep screamed out of the ladies room at least once. And I have not. Not even in major cities.

The answer to your question is that the TG's aren't the problem and aren't even the reason for the problem, but there is a common belief that accommodating them will open the door to rapists and pervs claiming to have a legitimate reason to be in the ladies room.