HOUSTON — Outside a polling station near this city’s wealthy River Oaks neighborhood, dozens of campaign signs plastered with the names of candidates line a busy section of West Gray Street. But a few stand out for their lack of names and their stark message in black and red letters: “No Men in Women’s Bathrooms.”
These are strange, divisive times in Houston.
An election battle over the city’s equal rights ordinance has turned into an expensive and bitterly fought culture war, pitting some of Houston’s most powerful pastors and social conservatives against its mayor, who is a lesbian, and her supporters. Opponents have zeroed in on the protections it would give for gender identity, particularly transgender Houstonians who were born male but identify as women.
Voters will decide on Tuesday whether to keep or repeal the ordinance, which bans discrimination in housing, private employment, city contracting and businesses such as restaurants and bars for 15 protected classes, including race, national origin, age and military status. The City Council approved it last year, but enforcement was put on hold pending the outcome this week.
Proponents said 200 other cities in 17 states had passed similar ordinances to give residents local tools, short of federal lawsuits, to fight discrimination. They worry that a defeat at the polls could generate enough controversy to jeopardize Houston’s status as the host city for the Super Bowl in 2017.
Supporters have called the opponents’ tactics and ads fear-mongering for equating being transgender with being a sexual predator. The arguments made by opponents have helped supporters turn a fight over a local measure into a nationally watched referendum on gay and transgender rights.
On Thursday, after the actress Sally Field expressed her support for the ordinance at a news conference downtown, Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. all took the unusual step of weighing in on a local ballot issue by endorsing the ordinance. A White House spokesman said in a statement that the president and vice president were “confident that the citizens of Houston will vote in favor of fairness and equality.”
The tone of the debate has been a shock to Houston and Mayor Annise D. Parker, a Democrat. The city has long cherished its role as a diverse, cosmopolitan place that retains its Southern civility and roots, proud both of its gay culture and night life and its megachurches, which are some of the biggest congregations in the country. Ms. Parker’s sexual orientation had largely been a footnote to her nearly six-year tenure.
That changed when Ms. Parker, who is in her third and final term, helped the ordinance win the Council’s approval in an 11-to-6 vote. A court fight ensued over the validity of the signatures that opponents had gathered to put the issue on the ballot, and city lawyers subpoenaed the sermons of five pastors, galvanizing Christian conservatives against Ms. Parker and the ordinance.
The subpoenas were later withdrawn, but the damage was done, as several religious leaders and Republican lawmakers accused the mayor of pushing a gay agenda on the city before leaving office. Hundreds have been involved in the opposition effort, the mayor’s critics said.
“It’s probably the most number of churches and the most active those churches and those pastors have been on any issue that I’ve seen in 30 years,” said Dave Welch, the executive director of the Houston Area Pastor Council. Mr. Welch was one of those who were subpoenaed and has helped organize opposition to the ordinance.
Opponents argue that the ordinance would allow men who identify as women to enter women’s bathrooms and attack women and young girls, and that business owners who tried to prevent this from happening would be fined.
One of their TV ads shows a man walking into a restroom, hiding in a stall and then startling a girl. The ad — paid for by the Campaign for Houston, an opposition coalition whose spokesman, Jared Woodfill, is a former chairman of the Harris County Republican Party — ends with the man entering the girl’s stall and shutting the door. “Any man at any time could enter a woman’s bathroom simply by claiming to be a woman that day,” the narrator says of what the ad calls the bathroom ordinance.
The ordinance says nothing specifically about men entering women’s bathrooms. Before the ordinance passed, a draft had a section that would have allowed transgender people to use the bathroom that reflected their gender identity. That section was removed.
Ms. Parker called the ad a “fear-mongering piece of trash” and disputed any claim that she was forcing a personal agenda on the city. “I am the mayor of Houston,” she said. “I am not the gay mayor of Houston. They are trying to whip up fear, and they are singling out one protected category out of the 15.”
She said that if voters repealed the ordinance, Houston’s reputation on the national stage would be damaged.
“It’s not an accident that the city of Houston was the first big city in America to elect an openly gay or lesbian mayor,” Ms. Parker said. “It’s because Houston really looks at what you can do rather than who you are. There’s plenty of evidence that if it were to be repealed, that there would be a direct and immediate economic consequence.”
The main coalition backing the measure, Houston Unites, which includes the advocacy group Human Rights Campaign and which has raised nearly $3 million for the fight, said attacks had not been an issue in other cities that passed similar ordinances. In Fort Worth, which voted in 2009 to expand an anti-discrimination ordinance to include transgender people, and in San Antonio, which passed its ordinance in 2013, officials said they had not received any reports of men dressing as women to enter restrooms to cause harm.
Terri T. Burke, the executive director of the Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said one of the issues fueling the opposition was theSupreme Court’s ruling establishing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
“It’s no longer socially acceptable to denigrate gays and lesbians, so they’re going to focus on this transgender issue, and this bathroom fear as really a mask and a charade for what’s really behind this: homophobia,” Ms. Burke said.
The opponents deny that they are motivated by anti-gay sentiment. Mr. Woodfill, a co-chairman of the group that paid for the bathroom ad and that has spent more than $1 million on the campaign, said the dangers were real. The ordinance would, among other things, make it unlawful to discriminate against someone based on their gender identity in “privately owned and operated public accommodations.” Violations are punishable by a fine of up to $500.
“It clearly allows biological males and even registered sex offenders to enter female showers, bathrooms or locker rooms,” Mr. Woodfill said. “We’re not willing to compromise the safety of our wives, our mothers and our daughters on the altar of political correctness.”
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