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  1. Theresa
    Theresa September 23, 2012 at 8:16 pm | | Reply

    Civil rights is an issue that has been growing in importance for me. It may be that I’m simply becoming more aware of issues, or it may be that I now live in an area where there is more hostility toward the GLBT community than I could ever have thought possible. There has been a series of rallies, protests, and fiery opinion letters lately in Memphis over a GLBT issue that had come before the city council. Was it about legal marriage for same-sex couples? No. Was it about granting adoption rights to same-sex families? No. The city council was voting on whether to include sexual orientation and gender identity in a city anti-discrimination ordinance. They wanted to protect city employees who are GLBT from being fired on that basis. The vote barely passed and then was delayed for legal reasons, and there was an outpouring from the conservatives in Memphis. Especially, and deplorably, from the conservative Christian clergy. They even went so far as to condemn the pro-ordinance rally at the National Civil Rights Museum, claiming that preventing homosexual or transgendered city employees for being fired because of their orientation or identity is NOT a furthering of civil rights, but an effort on the part of the GLBT community “to permeate the American culture with this UN-Godly life style.” As in the ongoing struggle for same-sex marriage, the conservative voices in Memphis spun this ordinance as gays trying to pervert the law to gain themselves as many “special protections” as possible, when, in fact, it is simply the GLBT community trying to make sure they are as protected under the law as people of every “religion, race, sex, creed or political affiliation.”

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