Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Lincoln, NE LGBT protection ordinance: In 15 days, 2 antigay Christian organizations collect 10k petitions to block law; 4 times number needed

Family First, a Nebraska Focus On The Family affiliate, and the Nebraska Family Council only needed to gather 2,489 signatures to block Lincoln's new LGBT protection ordinance and force a popular vote on the issue.
     Instead, they turned in 10,092 signatures yesterday, which Election Commissioner Dave Shively said would take a week or two to verify.
     Al Riskowski, head of the Nebraska Family Council, said every Catholic church in Lincoln was collecting signatures to block the law. Riskowski is part of the dominionist/7 mountains storehouse faction of fundamentalist Christianity.
     Nancy Hicks, writing in the Lincoln Journal-Star on Thursday, May 24th, reported that City Attorney Rod Confer has written a letter in which he says he thinks the language is flawed, but has refused to explain how.
     Dave Bydalek of Family First evidently thinks Confer should be helping his antigay pressure group by disclosing what he thinks is wrong with the petition language. "A referendum should not become a 'hide the ball' or a a 'gotcha' game," he said.
     Confer says his client is the city, not the Nebraska Family Association or Family First.
     Below: Hannah Buell, of the Nebraska Family Association, argued against the ordinance during its hearing by reciting a by-now familiar right-wing litany of supposed consequences of a gay rights ordinance — many of which had little, if anything, do with the ordinance. The very first "example" was completely bogus: employers can fire people for saying things they think hinder their corporate agenda with or without an LGBT protection ordinance.

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