Written by Michael A. Monks, LINK nky chief content officer
“Unapologetically, yes.”
Union City Commissioner Brian Garner spoke passionately in favor of a proposed fairness ordinance Monday night, one that he pushed for to extend legal protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
If adopted, Union would be the latest in a rapidly filling line of Northern Kentucky cities to pass such legislation, and the first city in Boone County.
But Garner cast the only vote in favor of it.
The ordinance was first considered in January but one commissioner was absent from that meeting so the final vote was pushed to February 7. Mayor Larry Solomon explained that because the ordinance was discussed in January with public input, only city commissioners would speak on it Monday night. The small commission chamber at the city building was packed with supporters and opponents of the proposed law but no one from the public was permitted to address the city leaders.
By a vote of 3-1 with one abstention, the ordinance failed.
Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, a statewide LGBT advocacy organization, said that Union was the first city in Northern Kentucky to vote down a proposed fairness ordinance.Â
Garner cited mounting pressure from the Boone County Republican Party for the ordinance’s defeat. He said that he had been a member of the party until 2017 and that he worked with conservative members of the community to find common ground in shaping the city’s proposed version of a fairness ordinance. Each government can apply its fairness ordinance differently, with similar goals and outcomes in mind, LINK nky reported in January. In Covington, which was first in the region to adopt such an ordinance in 2003, the city established a human rights commission that hears complaints. In Union, there would not have been such a commission. Rather, an arbitrator would have handled complaints, if necessary. Violations could have resulted in a financial penalty of $500.
It took sixteen years for the next local fairness ordinance after Covington, but Dayton acted in 2019 followed closely by Bellevue, Highland Heights, Fort Thomas, Cold Spring, Newport, Crescent Springs, and Fort Mitchell. Twenty-three cities and local governments have ordinances statewide.
Union would have been number twenty-four, and Garner had argued that his city is not unlike some of the others in the region that have acted.
“Ninety-five percent of the people I know are Republicans, most of them are Catholic. I talked to them and said, what can I do to make this work?,” Garner said Monday night. “The recurring theme was that we expect people to be treated as equal.”
Garner shared emails from supporters and opponents of the ordinance, including one in favor from Warren Moore III, the son of former Mayor Warren Moore and his wife, Madge Moore, who were murdered in 2009 by another son. The city building is named for the former mayor and the outside garden is named for Madge.
“I don’t think there is anyone who can claim to represent this city more than Warren Moore,” Garner said. The former mayor’s son wrote in the email, as read by Garner, that his parents “would be proud of you for the work you are doing to pass the fairness ordinance.” Moore III wrote that his father had been mentored by a gay man and “thought he was the smartest man he had ever met.” His parents, he said, had also offered to take in a gay child who was facing expulsion from his own home.
Other emails read by Garner referred to the ordinance as promoting a deviant, immoral lifestyle.
Mayor Solomon repeated similar sentiments that he had shared in January, that the city had already taken a stand against discrimination of all types by way of a symbolic, nonbinding resolution adopted in 2020. In 2021, the city, he said, conducted a public relations campaign at his request to inform residents that the city believes in fairness and that all should be treated equally.
The word, he said, is “bond.” “I believe that is currently good enough,” Solomon said.
Commissioner Jeremy Ramage agreed.
He said that he had spent a “considerable amount of time talking to residents and reading correspondence.”
“I gained an understanding of what they feel,” Ramage said. “The overwhelming response is that current laws provide for equal rights.”
Hartman, of the Fairness Campaign, explained in January that employment protections are now extended to people who are LGBT through a U.S. Supreme Court decision, and that the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights will now address housing discrimination, but the gap in the law remains in public accommodations.
Solomon and Ramage were joined by Commissioner Eric Dulaney in voting against the ordinance. Commissioner John Mefford abstained. He said that as a teacher for the past seventeen years at Ryle High School in the city, he was torn by the school’s and the school district’s moves towards amplifying diversity, equity, and inclusion, and his role as a representative of the city. He spoke to a variety of residents on the matter, he said.
“I find that if I vote one way, I am in conflict with me employer’s mission statement and values, and I also find if I vote the other way, I have violated the trust of the people who put me into office,” Mefford said.
Advocates vow that Monday night’s vote won’t be the last attempt.
“I think the reasoning is junk,” said Union Presbyterian Church Reverend Lisa Stenner. “It’s great to have a resolution that says we believe in fairness, it’s another thing to say we are going to give it some teeth. I’m a firm believer in good intentions but so the pathway to Hell is paved.
“This is round one. I think what we’ve seen tonight is the need for those of us who are from a more progressive bent need to mobilize and we need to be heard.
Hartman, who was also in attendance again on Monday night, was also disappointed but noted that Louisville, the state’s first to adopt such legislation in 1999, failed to do so in the first three attempts.
“I can’t deny that this is disappointing but I will say that I always have hope,” Hartman said. He also blamed the local Republican Party for its role in sinking the legislation and noted that the arguments against such laws are taking different approaches than in the past, arguing that they are a government overreach and unnecessary.
“It’s no longer framed in terms of outright hate or unacceptance, it’s now couched in the idea that these ordinances are an overreach, or give special rights to some folks, completely ignoring the fact that we’ve had protected classes in civil rights laws for more than fifty years in this country, and that it’s necessary to protect our marginalized communities,” Hartman said. “This is also the first city that we have worked a fairness ordinance where the local Republican Party has expressly took action and put out a missive against it. I think that had unfortunately a lot of influence on the commissioners that were voting tonight, again couching it in more subtle or acceptable terms than outright LGBTQ animus.
“But I think the LGBTQ folks in the crowd tonight heard that animus even though it wasn’t being said out loud. They heard the quiet part out loud, that’s for sure.”
Photo:Â Commissioner Brian Garner reads emails to the crowd at the Union city building on Monday night (LINK nky)