From: todd@toolz.uucp (Todd Merriman)
Subject: Good News from St. Louis
Organization: Software Toolz, Inc.
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 01:25:50 GMT


St. Louis speaks up for gay rights,
but it's hard to get anyone to notice

ASSOCIATED PRESS

St. Louis--While voters in other cities have loudly debated and
sometimes  rejected civil rights protection for homosexuals, St.
Louis quietly has adopted  one of the strongest gay rights
policies in the nation. 
	 
A city ordinance with gay rights protection was --passed
unanimously by the  Board of Aldermen.  But it drew so little
attention that its adoption went  -unreported for two months
until the St. Louisbased Lesbian and Gay  News-Telegraph carried
a story on it Dec. 3. 

"One doesn't think of St. Louis as being in the progressive rank
of cities,"  said Jim Thomas, editor of the News-Telegraph,
which is distributed in five  states. But he said of the
ordinance's passage -"We didn't even have to fight or  even work
much.' 

The law bars discrimination in housing, credit, - employment,
education and  public access on grounds of physical or mental
disability, race, religion, family  status or sexual
orientation. 

"It clearly is one of the strongest laws of the 130 we have in
the U.S.,"  said Robert Bray, a spokesman for the National Gay
and Lesbian Task Force in  Washington, D.C. 

Laws in many other cities and states are less comprehensive, he
said. Some  may protect homosexuals from housing discrimination,
for example, but not job  discrimination. 

About 260 miles away in Kansas City, a religious group is
calling for repeal  of a civil rights law that doesn't ban
homosexualldiscrimination but could be  amended to do so. It was
during debate of the Kansas City measure that the new  St. Louis
law was first widely mentioned. 

The St. Louis board included a clause in its law to prevent it
from being  repealed by referendum, said James Wilson, the
city's lawyer. 

Mr. Bray said that was unusual and praised the move. 

"Once you have granted civil rights, you can't take them away by
popular  vote," he said. "Women would still be in the kitchen;
blacks would still be on  the plantation." 

Mary Ross, the alderwoman who introduced the measure, said she
wasn't trying  to be a trailblazer. She simply wanted to update
the city's civil rights  protections. 

"I think we covered, hopefully, everybody in this legislation
[who] could  possibly be discriminated against in one manner or
another, and that is the  intent," she said. "It is not a gay
rights thing." 

Ms. Ross said she wasn't lobbied on the issue and hasn't
received any  complaints. 

The law also created a civil rights commission which has the
power to  investigate, fine violators up to $500 and jail them
up to 90 days. 

Reprinted from  the Atlanta Journal.

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Did you hear about the new Masochist's Dictionary?  It's not in alphabetical
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