Voters on Tuesday turned down a measure that could have stripped Gainesville government’s anti-discrimination protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender residents.
With 100 percent of the precincts reporting, the vote was 58 percent against changing the law.
“Gainesville is a place that will not allow discrimination,” said Craig Lowe, a city commissioner who led the group known as Equality is Gainesville’s Business to defeat the charter amendment. “Gainesville has shown itself to be a welcoming place.”
The fight began after the city commission last year revised Gainesville’s anti-discrimination ordinance to protect transgender people, those who are born one sex but identify with the other. That allows the city’s approximately 100 transgender residents to use the public restroom of their choosing, along with protecting them from job and housing discrimination.
The charter amendment would have voided the city’s ordinances barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The vote was 11,717, or 58.32 percent, against changing the law compared with 8,375, or 41.6 percent, in favor.
Jim Gilbert, a spokesman for Citizens for Good Public Policy, had said the message of those supporting repeal has remained consistent: “Keep men out of women’s restrooms!”
The group said it regrets the outcome of the referendum.
Its chairman Mark Minck said in a news release that the group also regrets that “out-of-town money and influence played such a major role in diverting attention away from the real issue of public safety, to highly implausible scenarios of discrimination, which, in fact, pose little threat in a city long known for openness.”
