The Same People Who Killed Houston’s HERO Are Now Working To Repeal Dallas’ Nondiscrimination Law

Anti-LGBT Groups Attack City’s Updated Nondiscrimination Ordinance – Dallas Could Be Next Battleground In Transgender ‘Bathroom Wars’

A week after scoring a major victory in Houston, anti-LGBT groups and Republican Texas lawmakers are threatening to try to overturn Dallas’ 13-year-old nondiscrimination ordinance, which the City Council unanimously amended Tuesday to strengthen transgender protections. 

The Dallas City Council’s vote came just one week after Houston voters overwhelmingly rejected an Equal Rights Ordinance, or HERO, based largely on the debunked “transgender bathroom myth” — with opponents falsely claiming the measure would lead to sexual predators entering women’s restrooms to prey on victims.

In the wake of the Houston vote, LGBT advocates said they feared anti-LGBT groups would attempt to replicate their fear-mongering Houston strategy in other places across the country, and now it appears their first target could be Dallas. However, Dallas has a significantly higher bar than Houston for repealing ordinances by referendum, which would make opponents job that much harder. 

The anti-LGBT hate group Texas Values, which was part of the anti-HERO campaign, issued a statement Tuesday calling the Dallas ordinance “a threat to safety and freedom.” Texas Values also accused the City Council of fast-tracking amendments to the ordinance, which were added to its agenda on Friday and discussed by a committee in executive session Monday. 

“This Dallas bathroom ordinance will allow men into women’s bathrooms and that’s why the Dallas City Council is deliberately trying to avoid the people,” Texas Values President Jonathan Saenz (photo, left) said. “Their fast track method of passing this dangerous bill that threatens the safety of women and children is the same strategy used in Houston to disenfranchise voters with their failed bathroom bill. Creating law behind closed doors and forcing it onto the people the next morning  is a recipe for disaster. These Obama and D.C. style tactics will not work in Texas. Get ready for a Texas-sized response.” 

The Texas Pastor Council, which was behind the petition drive and lawsuit to get HERO on the ballot in Houston, said in an email that the ordinance “removes the doors of women’s restrooms, showers and locker rooms in Dallas, as well as criminalizes businesses, employees as well as eventually, churches who attempt to keep men out.”

“We will work with Dallas pastors to determine how to appropriately respond to the wholesale catering by City Council to the radical, anti-faith, anti-family agenda of the LGBT Human Rights Campaign,’ said Dave Welch, executive director of the Texas Pastor Council. 

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (photo, right), who spent $70,000 on a TV ad opposing HERO, called the Dallas council’s vote “mind-boggling and appalling,” accusing officials of putting “political correctness ahead of both common sense and common decency.” 

“The facts are clear,” Patrick said in a statement. “No woman wants a man to be allowed in a ladies restroom or locker room, no matter the reason. And no man wants his wife, daughter, mother, or sister to be forced by law to contend with such an uncomfortable, disruptive, and potentially dangerous intrusion. This ludicrous ordinance, like the one in Houston, reveals officials who are totally out of touch with Texas values, I have no doubt that if this issue is put to the voters, as opposed to being decided without adequate public notice and discussion, the people of Dallas – like those in Houston – will give it a resounding no.”

Sen. Don Huffines, R-Dallas, who authored an unsuccessful bill that would have barred Texas cities from enforcing LGBT protections, has launched a petition calling for the repeal of the Dallas ordinance. 

“The City Council may have acted in good faith believing that this was a tweak or ‘clean-up,’ but I wish they had let voters fully vet the potentially far-reaching ramifications of today’s policy change,” Huffines wrote on Facebook. “Allowing men in women’s restrooms — and vice versa — is a whole-cloth social change that business owners and families will be forced to endure.”

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings noted that the ordinance, first approved by the council in a 13-2 vote in 2002, already prohibited discrimination against transgender people in employment, housing and public accommodations. However, gender identity was included under the definition of sexual orientation. The amendments approved Tuesday list gender identity and expression alongside sexual orientation and more clearly define the terms. 

Rawlings also noted that in 2014, voters approved an amendment to the Dallas charter, by a margin of 77 percent, prohibiting discrimination against LGBT city employees.

“While we respect others’ points of view, our goal is to protect all of our citizens, including minority groups,” Rawlings said Wednesday. “Yesterday’s unanimous City Council vote did not change the scope of our 13-year-old anti-discrimination ordinance. We took action that is consistent with what our voters approved last year and the protections already afforded to our employees. It is not forthright or honest to minimize this issue to a question about where people relieve themselves.”

 

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