Support the Resolution.

On July 21, 2009, the El Paso City Council unanimously adopted the following:

RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, the City of El Paso is a city with a rich history for the promotion of tolerance, acceptance, and diversity as our great city set historic precedent in 1962 as the first city in the South to pass an anti-discrimination ordinance that prohibits racial discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, and theaters;

WHEREAS, the City of El Paso, in 2003, adopted a forward-thinking ordinance that expressly prohibits the refusal of accommodation, advantages, facilities, or services on the basis of race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, color, religion, ethnic background, or national origin;

WHEREAS, the City of El Paso fully supports and endorses the 2003 United States Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas that holds that sexual conduct between two consenting adults is part of the liberty that is protected under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution;

WHEREAS, the City of El Paso fully understands that the history of discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry is a regrettable history that in its extreme has led to the suppression of human rights, the unjust delivery of violence, and – in its worst incarnations – murder, torture, and war; and

WHEREAS, the City of El Paso prides itself as a community that is a hospitable, welcoming, and friendly place to live, do business, or visit and prides itself as a community that fully accepts and promotes the prosperity of people of different colors, genders, religious beliefs, national origins, and sexual orientations.

NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Mayor and City Council of El Paso, Texas that El Paso is a leading 21st Century community that respects the legal and social rights and practices of its citizens and visitors. The City of El Paso reaffirms its unyielding commitment to acceptance, tolerance, and diversity. The City of El Paso firmly rejects acts of discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry.

ACT NOW!

Affirm your support of the resolution.  Tell your City Council member that you firmly reject acts of discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry.  Thank your City Council member for reaffirming El Paso's commitment to acceptance, tolerance and diversity.

The resolution was sponsored by District 7 Representative Steve Ortega.  Rep. Ortega stated, "In 40 years, we'll look back on this that this is the right thing to do.  This is the civil rights issue of our time."

While the resolution was adopted unanimously by the El Paso City Council, District 4 Representative Carl L. Robinson has subsequently made comments discouraging any comparisons between the civil rights movement in the 1950's and today.  "It kind of bothers me when we start making these comparisons because there is no comparison.  We're talking about two different eras," Robinson said.

There is no dispute that we're talking about two different eras.  Still, as NAACP Chairman Julian Bond has said, "No parallels between movements for rights is exact.  African-Americans are the only Americans who were enslaved for more than two centuries, and people of color carry the badge of who we are on our faces.  But we are far from the only people suffering discrimination -- sadly, so do many others.  They deserve the law's protection and they deserve civil rights too."

Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States.  Rustin brought Gandhi's protest techniques to the American civil rights movement, and helped Martin Luther King, Jr. become an international symbol of peace and nonviolence. However, Bayard Rustin was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from leadership positions largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era.

Today, we are still struggling with many of the issues Bayard Rustin sought to change in the 1950's and 1960's.  As Coretta Scott King said, "We have a lot of work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination.  I say 'common struggle,' because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere.  Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination."