Faith leaders ask for Scott order to ban LGBT bias

Central Florida’s faith leaders called on Gov. Rick Scott on Monday to honor a pledge his aides reportedly made in the weeks after the Pulse massacre to protect LGBT state employees from discrimination.

“Gov. Scott came to Orlando two days after the Pulse massacre to offer his support of our community,” said the Rev. Terri Steed Pierce of Orlando’s Joy Metropolitan Community Church, a congregation that welcomes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender worshippers. “He came to this very place, sat in this very room … and was kind and sympathetic. He agreed to do what he could to help us heal.”

Though Pierce said Scott made no specific promises to her, a month later the governor’s staff met with leaders of Equality Florida, the state’s LGBT civil-rights organization. Equal-

ity Florida representatives asked two of the governor’s top aides specifically for an executive order banning such discrimination toward state employees and by companies that contract with the state.

At that meeting, Equality Florida’s leaders pointed out that Republican Mayor Lenny Curry of Jacksonville — months before the June 2016 massacre at the gay club that left 49 people dead — had issued a mayoral directive to protect city employees and contractors from discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

Scott’s aides, several witnesses have said, indicated an order was forthcoming — and soon.

“Their response was that they needed time,” said Hannah Willard, public policy director for Equality Florida. “They wanted to see a draft of Mayor Curry’s order. They wanted to see drafts of other executive orders that had been issued in other states, and they wanted us to draft a suggested executive order for the governor. They needed two weeks, they said. Two weeks later, they needed two months. … They indicated this was something they wanted to do. It was just a matter of when.”

In Willard’s follow-up conversations with the governor’s staff, Willard said, there continued to be delays because of more immediate concerns — Hurricane Matthew, the Zika virus and the 2017 session of the Florida Legislature.

Asked for a response, the governor’s press secretary, Lauren Schenone, sent a statement saying, “In accordance with federal guidelines, Florida state agencies do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, and state employees should not be discriminated against in any way.”

She did not answer questions about what Scott or his aides said in the meetings or phone conversations.

Although the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has interpreted the nation’s civilrights law as prohibiting discrimination against LGBT employees, the law does not say so explicitly, and enforcement from state to state has been uneven. The issue could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Amazingly, it is still legal under our state’s law to fire a hardworking employee, deny them an apartment, refuse them service in a restaurant and otherwise discriminate against people simply because they identify as [LGBT],” Pierce said at a news conference Monday. “My faith informs me that justice and equality are things of God, and my heart tells me it’s time to live out our faith in real ways.”

She was joined by the Rev. Bryan Fulwider of the Interfaith Council of Central Florida; Imam Abdurrahman Sykes, founder of the Islamic Society Leading Muslim Americans; the Rev. Jennifer Stiles Williams of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church; and Rudolph Cleare, the first man of Afro-ethnic descent ordained a Catholic priest in Florida. All of them appealed to the governor to sign the order.

In the first six months after the Pulse attack, Pierce said she had regular phone conversations with Scott and that he invited her to the Governor’s Mansion, where she was asked to lead a prayer. Their last in-depth conversation came in December, she said, when she specifically brought up the order.

“I mentioned, ‘It would really be helpful if you could issue an executive order,’ ” Pierce said. “And then I didn’t hear from him again,” until immediately before the June 12 one-year commemoration of the tragedy. Scott never again offered her his support, she said.

Seeing the ongoing suffering of survivors — people still attending physical therapy or still afraid even to leave their homes — moved her to speak out to “make something good come from this horrible act.”

“Now is the time for action,” she said. “With the stroke of his pen, [he] could sign an executive order to easily protect state employees from discrimination ... do as Scripture commands and treat others as we wish to be treated.”