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Metro Council presses human-rights commission for investigations
In the wake of a letter sent by three Metro Council members to the Metro Human Relations Commission asking it to step up investigations into private-sector discrimination allegations, opponents of Nashville’s new protections for sexual orientation and gender identity have been quick to cry foul.
The letter, authored by Council members Erik Cole, Ronnie Steine and Megan Barry, asked the MHRC to investigate complaints over gender identity in the workplace outside Metro offices. It also nudged the commission to speed up its early efforts at developing private educational programs related to gender-identity discrimination.
With a Metro legal opinion backing them, Barry and her coauthors said that the goal is to begin gathering information so that more can be done to help end the issue in the community, and so that instances of discrimination are recorded for use in future discussions.
Councilmember Jim Hodge, who opposed the expansion of Metro’s nondiscrimination ordinance to include sexual orientation and gender identity, called the move “… part of the national homosexual agenda,” and claimed that the letter’s authors wanted to expand Metro policies into the private sector.
Local GLBT leaders were quick to dispel that notion, saying that this would allow a Metro body to gather and organize just the type of information that foes of such nondiscrimination legislation often demand when fighting protection expansions.
“It’s about data collection and community education,” said Chris Sanders, board chair of the Tennessee Equality Project. “The question posed by the council members doesn’t talk about enforcement, but about gathering data. The critics of nondiscrimination legislation at every level want to know what that data is, and we have no way now of gathering it anywhere in Tennessee. They shouldn’t object to Metro beginning to collect that information and then having it available when future legislation comes up.”
(2010-03-18 / outandaboutnewspaper)
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