City expands first half of transgender protections

by Anthony Glassman

Cleveland--The Cleveland City Council gave a unanimous nod to adding gender identity and expression to an ordinance barring discrimination in employment and promotion with employers contracting with the city.

The ordinance passed at the City Council meeting on November 17.

Five years ago, championed by Cleveland?s first out city council member, Joe Santiago, gender identity and expression was added to most of the city?s rights ordinances. City council is now in the process of filling those holes, and this ordinance adds the enumerated category to city contractor requirements, as well as the ethnic intimidation ordinance, which is city-level hate crime legislation.

The other ordinance, which is currently in committee, would add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the nondiscrimination ordinance?s provision for public accommodations. Anti-LGBT groups, activists and media seized on it as meaning that men in dresses would be flocking to women?s restrooms to prey upon the unsuspecting.

?Nothing about the ordinance calls for unbridled access to public restrooms,? Media Matters, a non-profit media watchdog, pointed out. ?The measure - which mirrors measures already adopted in many parts of the country - prohibits businesses from denying access to restrooms or other facilities based on a customer?s ?gender identity or expression.? ?

Media Matters was taking exception to a sensationalist article on Cleveland.com, which headlined their story before a committee meeting, ?Cleveland?s transgender-friendly legislation would open all public restrooms and showers to both sexes.?

Cleveland.com is affiliated with the Plain Dealer, the city?s daily newspaper, which itself has come under fire for being tone-deaf to transgender issues, referring to transgender murder victims using their birth genders, among other things.

Cemia Dove Acoff was killed in January 2013, and a Plain Dealer article when her body was discovered described Acoff using solely her birth name and described her as an ?oddly dressed man.? She was wearing a Betty Boop tank top and a hooded jacket, and had been stripped below the waist. She was found 3 ? months after she was murdered, having been dumped in a drainage pond.

The man accused of having killed her, Andrey Bridges, was convicted in November 2013.