Ingham County Commissioner Tina Weatherwax-Grant
Lansing City Councilwoman Kathy Dunbar
State Sen. Gretchen Whitmer
US Senator Debbie Stabenow
and I would be amiss to not mention the Lady Gov herself...
Governor Jennifer Granholm
This post hails from MichLib and my good friend and fellow blogger extraordinaire - Quaker21 - for this post.
If you get a chance, drop a line to Councilwoman Dunbar for her great work, and urge your city councilmembers to stand up for all of Lansing's citizens with a Yes vote on this proposal.
Without further adieu....
Kudos to Kathie Dunbar!On Monday, Oct 30th, the freshman City Council member is proposing a "human rights" ordinance, protecting Lansing residence from discrimination, including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity expression.
“When I was running for office, it was something that I was always interested in doing, because I knew we didn’t have a civil rights ordinance in the city,” said Dunbar, who has been in office for less than a year.“Although we’ve made a ton of strides in recent years to curtail discrimination, it still occurs,” she said.
Dunbar said she hopes the ordinance will move rapidly through the committee process and have the ordinance in place by the end of the year.
Council President Harold Leeman Jr. said he expects the ordinance to pass easily. “Hopefully, everybody will make it a high priority,” Leeman said.
A great step in the right direction for Lansing.
As the Lansing City Pulse points out, Ingham county was one of two in Michigan that voted No on 2004's Proposal 2, the "gay marriage amendment." The other county was Washtenaw, home of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan -- UofM being the first University to offer partnership benefits in 1993.Mad props to Kathie Dunbar for standing behind all of Lansing! Remember: the City of Lansing was one of a very few cities that had a law prohibiting discrimnation toward gays and lesbians, until it was overturned in 1996.
Thankfully, we're making strides forward.
Kudos to Kathie!
Here's the link to the story Quaker was referrencing...thanks Quaker and keep up the GREAT work!
I'll close with a little mantra I wrote in an earlier post, and I'll probably echo time and time again, because I couldn't agree with it more.
The great thing about Liberals - we don't care who you share a bed with, where your ancestors hail from, or how many zeros are on your paycheck, and we really don't care what you call yourself...just as long as what you do, you do it for MI, and not for just me.
~LL
