Transas City Vice Chairwoman Fiona speaks to the Roeland Park City Council

I’ve previously posted about our activities helping the larger LGBT community to push for the passage of an LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance in the city of Roeland Park. Last night four members of the Transas City cadre joined many others fighting for civil rights, and spoke to the Roeland Park City Council and Mayor in an open forum.

Myself, Fiona, Madeline, and Debi joined the ever-hardworking Sandra Meade, the State Chair of the Kansas Equality Coalition (and the radio host of Trans Talk on KKFI) and other good people (who I’m not naming simply because I do not know if I have permission) for a long and chilly sit in the Roeland Park Community Center. A total of 27 people spoke, most of them in favor of the ordinance, and to be honest the opposition was looking pretty meager.

The supremely ironic moment of the night was when one of the opposition attempted to castigate those in favor of the ordinance for quoting from the Bible, saying that it had no place being used in politics. One wonders if perhaps the speaker was unaware of the fact that the opposition have been using the Bible in their oppositional effort since the start of this process. The frustration of a couple of Council Members who have been opposing this ordinance from the start was apparent, and one can hardly blame any member of the Council – who have been really working on this – of having “issue fatigue.” Sandra tells me that she still has high hopes that this first landmark ordinance will pass when the vote comes up (tentatively scheduled for July 21.)

Previous update on the Roeland Park anti-discrimination efforts.