Heated gay rights debate continues in Missouri and many other states

Ron Calzone came to the Missouri Capitol on Wednesday to stand up for his “God-given freedom” to discriminate.

“Everyone’s afraid to say this, so I’m going to say it,” Calzone, a rancher from Maries County in south-central Missouri and director of conservative think tank Missouri First, told a House committee.

“In America, you have a right to discriminate as a private citizen. In America, if you don’t like the color of someone’s eyes or their hair or the way they talk, you have the right to not associate with them.”

Lawmakers were discussing a bill making it illegal in Missouri to discriminate against someone based on sexual orientation or gender identity just weeks after voters in Springfield narrowly voted to repeal a local nondiscrimination ordinance.

Calzone, a regular fixture in the halls of the Missouri Statehouse, complained that such laws are simply government overreach.

“I have the God-given freedom,” he said, “to discriminate as a private individual against anyone for any reason I want to.”

Calzone may believe God granted Americans the right to discriminate, but at least when it comes to traits such as race, gender or ethnicity, decades of civil rights law begs to differ.

Now, in the Missouri General Assembly and state capitols across the country, a debate is broiling over whether sexual orientation should receive that same level of legal protection.

“Discrimination is wrong,” said Rep. Stephen Webber, a Columbia Democrat. “When we find it, we should stop it. When the state allows that, we should fix it.”

Over the last decade, the landscape on gay rights has shifted rapidly across the nation. What was once considered unthinkable is becoming increasingly commonplace, from gay men and women being allowed to serve openly in the military to the potential for the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage this year in all 50 states.

Despite that change, 29 states — including Missouri and Kansas — have no statewide law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. That means a person can be fired from a job, evicted from an apartment or kicked out of a restaurant for being gay or being perceived to be gay.

Proponents have found that enacting those protections remains an uphill struggle.

Opponents worry such legislation will force religious businesses and individuals to violate their faith, a debate that played out on the national stage recently in Indiana. Corporate America has largely embraced gay rights, but some business groups continue to raise concerns that creating more protected classes could lead to a deluge of litigation for employers.

And while the U.S. Supreme Court might legalize same-sex marriage this year, its 2014 ruling that a corporation cannot be forced to violate the religious beliefs of its owner created new legal avenues for those seeking to stem the tide of gay rights momentum.

Resistance at the Statehouse has forced Missouri gay rights advocates to turn to local government. More than a dozen cities and counties in Missouri, including Kansas City and Jackson County, have passed ordinances prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Springfield, Missouri’s third-largest city, joined their ranks in October, passing a nondiscrimination law after more than two years of debate.

Supporters didn’t have long to celebrate.

Located in the state’s conservative southwestern Bible Belt, Springfield is home to the headquarters of the Assemblies of God church. So it came as little surprise that evangelical groups worked quickly to garner signatures to place a repeal of the ordinance on the April ballot.

Calvin Morrow, the executive director of Christians Uniting for Political Action, a group that participated in the repeal effort, told The New York Times that such laws “target Christians.”

“The target,” he said, “was painted on the church.”

In addition to trumpeting the idea that the Springfield ordinance infringed on religious freedom, proponents of repeal stoked fears that the law would ultimately result in cross-dressing sexual predators lurking in the women’s restroom.

“Vote for the repeal, because it allows biological males to use women’s restrooms, showers and locker rooms,” Charles Flowers, a Texas-based pastor, said in a video produced by the pro-repeal organization.

The repeal campaign focused on “manipulation and scare tactics,” said Stephanie Perkins, deputy director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group PROMO.

“This is not an attack on religious freedom,” she said. “It has nothing to do with bathroom privacy.”

After six months of campaigning, the ordinance was repealed by a razor thin margin of only 850 votes out of nearly 30,000 ballots.

Krista Moncado has lived in Springfield for 15 years and is a former director of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of the Ozarks. She said the repeal of the ordinance was, “of course, disappointing.” But she said “progress happens in fits and starts. It’s always two steps forward, one step back.”

In 2004, more than 70 percent of voters in the community supported an amendment to the state’s constitution banning same-sex marriage.

“To go from that” Moncado said, “to almost 50 percent voting against discrimination, that’s actually pretty huge.”

Attention will now focus on the General Assembly, she said, and efforts to pass a statewide nondiscrimination ordinance in Missouri. But with less than a month to go before the legislature adjourns for the year, the measure faces long odds.

In Kansas, opponents of gay rights legislation have the momentum. Republican Gov. Sam Brownback gained national attention earlier this year when he issued an executive order to remove discrimination protections for gay, lesbian and transgender state employees.

Kansas legislators are on the verge of enacting new legal protections for faith-based groups on state college campuses who deny membership to students who don’t comply with a group’s religious beliefs and standards of conduct and don’t commit to furthering its religious mission. Critics worry it will allow campus groups to discriminate against LGBT students.

A similar bill has cleared the Missouri House and a Senate committee.

The debate has divided many in the business community.

The vast majority of Fortune 500 companies have in recent years adopted rules against discrimination of gay workers and offer benefits to the same-sex partners of their employees. Overland Park-based Sprint Corp., for example, has offered health insurance and other employee benefits to same-sex couples since 2005.

At the Missouri House hearing Wednesday, the St. Louis Regional Chamber of Commerce, Express Scripts and Monsanto Co. all testified in support of the Missouri nondiscrimination ordinance.

Two influential business groups — Associated Industries of Missouri and the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry — led the opposition.

Jay Atkins, a lobbyist for the Missouri Chamber, noted that his organization has an internal nondiscrimination policy in place, so “to suggest we are here to advocate for discrimination is unfair and untrue.”

But until Missouri legislators change state law to make it more difficult to prove discrimination cases against employers — a bill repeatedly vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon — Atkins said the Chamber won’t support creating new protected classes of any kind.

Moncado, who helped lead the unsuccessful campaign to keep Springfield’s nondiscrimination ordinance in place, said that despite losing, she’s happy the debate took place.

“We had a lot of conversations with folks over the last few months,” she said. “These conversations have allowed people to get past that hurt and fear and come out of the closet and say, ‘I want to fight for the city and community that I love.’”

This story was originally published April 19, 2015 at 7:17 PM with the headline "Heated gay rights debate continues in Missouri and many other states."