St. Augustine Beach Fair Housing Ordinance (2013-1) Protects Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered People From Discrimination -- Another Unanimous Vote

City of St. Augustine Beach Ordinance 2013-1, the Fair Housing Orinance, passed unanimously last night, February 4th. 

Ordinance sponsor Undine Pawlowski moved after public comment to amend the proposed ordinance to include "gender identity," thereby protecting Transgendered people as a protected class.

The ordinance forbids housing and related lending discrimination, adding it to "sexual orientation" (heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality) to other protected classes (race, sex, color religion, creed, national origin, disability).  St. Augustine Beach adopted essentially the same ordinance adopted by the City of St. Augustine on December 10, 2012.

Commissioner Undine Pawlowski's motion was seconded by Commissioner Andrea Samuels, and passed unanimously 4-0, also supported by Mayor S. Gary Snodgrass and Vice Mayor Richard O'Brien. (Commissioner Brud Helhoski away on business, but he and all other commissioners voted for the ordinance on first reading on January 7, 2013).  

At last night's St. Augustine Beach City Commission meeting, no one opposed the ordinance.  While one of three public hearing speakers questioned the need for the ordinance, thinking federal laws might already apply, no one spoke in opposition to it.  (There were no anti-Gay "preachers" of the Westboro Baptist Church variety emitting inflammatory invectives, like the man whom Mayor Joseph L. Boles directed to be ejected at the December 10, 2012 St. Augustine City Commission meeting.  See below.)

This is the third unanimous vote in St. Johns County since 2009 of a governmental body opposing invidious discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.  At least one constitutional officer, St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar, forbids sexual orientation discrimination by administrative order.

There are now four (4) St. Johns County government entities that forbid anti-GLB discrimination. One of them went a step further, opposing anti-T discrimination.

That's four more jurisdictions than in Jacksonville and Duval County, Florida.

Jacksonville (and Duval County) is a mighty strange place, even by Florida standards -- our northern neighbor's City Council that voted to reject GLBT rights protections in its Human Rights ordinance on August 15, 2012, .once voting against protecting Transgendered people (17-2) and then once against Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual people (10-9).  This legislative outcome took months of histrionic debate.  As I told Folio Weekly last year, after St. Augustine Commissioners unanimously voted to direct drafting of an ordinance August 28 -- St. Augustinians spent less time talking about it "than people in Jacksonville clearing their throats."
 
Thanks to the Cities of St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach, the Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County, and St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar, our St. Augustine community is a beacon of hope for equality and tolerance in Northeast Florida.  

We have joined the many other Florida and American cities, counties and states that have legislated equality for GLBT people.  The tide of history is on our side. 

Whenever creative people and their enterprises look to relocate, they look for tolerance.  Few creative people will now look in Jacksonville.   Thanks to the courage of our elected officials, creative people and their enterprises will now look here in St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach.


Let's ask St. Johns County to be next to legislate GLBT equality.

It takes a village.

Quo vobis videtor (what do you reckon?)