Houston mayor: Anti-bias law to rise from defeat
HOUSTON — Houston Mayor Annise Parker rallied supporters of a defeated ordinance that would have established nondiscrimination protections for gay and transgender people in the city, telling them the fight isn’t over.
The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance was soundly rejected Tuesday by a vote of 61 percent to 39 percent after a nearly 18-month battle in the nation’s fourth-largest city that spawned rallies, legal fights, and accusations of religious intolerance and demonization of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
But Parker, who is gay and championed the ordinance, led a crowd of more than 100 people at an election-night watch party in downtown Houston in a chant that referred to the ordinance’s nickname, HERO, yelling, “A hero fights for justice.”
“I guarantee that justice in Houston will prevail. This ordinance, you have not seen the last of. We’re united. We will prevail,” Parker said.
The state’s top two elected leaders — Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, both Republicans — praised the defeat, with Abbott saying voters “showed values still matter.”
Parker is finishing her final two-year term as mayor, and it’s unclear whether the next mayor and City Council will revisit the issue.
The ordinance would have applied to businesses that serve the public, such as restaurants and hotels, private employers, housing, city employment and city contracting. It would have allowed residents to file complaints if they felt they had been discriminated against on the basis of protected categories. Religious institutions would have been exempt. Violators would have faced fines of up to $5,000.
Supporters said it would have offered increased protections for gay, bisexual and transgender people and protected against discrimination based on sex, race, age, religion and other categories.
Opponents, including a coalition of conservative pastors, said it infringed on their religious beliefs regarding homosexuality. But in the months leading up to Tuesday’s vote, opponents focused their campaign on one part of the ordinance related to the use of public bathrooms by transgender men and women that opponents alleged would allow sexual predators to use women’s restrooms.
Parker, a Democrat, and other supporters described the “bathroom ordinance” campaign as “fear mongering.”
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative political advocacy group, said in a statement that Tuesday’s defeat of the ordinance made Houston “a rallying cry for Americans tired of seeing their freedoms trampled in a politically correct stampede to redefine marriage and sexuality.”
Elsewhere, election results Tuesday indicate that Salt Lake City, the capital of conservative Utah, is poised to narrowly elect its first openly gay mayor.
Former state lawmaker Jackie Biskupski is leading two-term incumbent Ralph Becker by 1,450 votes, according to election results released late Tuesday.
But at least 24,000 ballots countywide need to be counted in the coming days, including an unknown amount in the mayor’s race, Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen said. She said about 20 members of her staff were sorting ballots Wednesday.
In Denver, voters recalled three members of a school board who had worked to weaken the teachers union while boosting funding for charter schools and pushing through other market-driven policy changes for public schools.
By a margin of 64 percent to 36 percent, voters opted to replace Julie Williams, Ken Witt and John Newkirk, who had been elected in 2013 to form a majority power bloc on the five-member Jefferson County School Board.
Activists behind the recall effort alleged that the three board members violated open-meeting laws, spent lavishly on legal expenses and hired a new superintendent at a salary significantly higher than his more experienced predecessor.
Witt said the policy changes were popular among residents, pointing to the fact that the challengers all agreed to maintain equal funding for public charter schools.
Also Tuesday, Airbnb Inc. fought off a San Francisco ballot measure that sought to limit the short-stay rental service in its hometown, an effort to contain housing costs that some say has made the city a playground for techies.
The measure, meant to preserve scarce housing for residents in a hot market, would have imposed a 75-day-peryear limit on Airbnb rentals and forced hosts to register with the city. It was losing 55 percent to 45 percent with all the precincts reporting, according to city election results.
Airbnb, founded in 2008 and operating in more than 34,000 cities as an alternative to pricier hotels, is waging similar battles across the United States. In San Francisco, a surge in highly paid technology workers has driven up housing prices and sparked protests over income inequality and evictions.
“In a decisive victory for the middle class, voters stood up for working families’ right to share their homes and opposed an extreme, hotel industry-backed measure,” Airbnb spokesman Christopher Nulty said in a emailed statement.