The Doylestown Borough Council gave its resounding support to the LGBT community this week when it unanimously voted in favor of including sexual orientation and gender identity in the borough’s non-discrimination ordinance.
About 150 people packed into Doylestown Borough Hall Monday night and gave a standing ovation after the commission gave its 9-0 vote, becoming the 17th municipality in the state to approve such a law.
“To get a unanimous vote is really sensational,” said Marlene Pray, one of the lead community activists who worked on the measure. “It sets us in a good direction, and I think only good things are going to come from this.”
The standing-room-only crowd, nearly all of whom were wearing rainbow “Doylestown Pride” stickers, waited about an hour as the commission made its way through other bills before it began discussion on Commissioner Don Berk’s measure, which will ban LGBT discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations and also create a human-relations commission to investigate discrimination complaints.
About a dozen people stood and spoke on the bill, including everyone from a gay high-school student to a grandmother to a mother whose 9-year-old daughter wanted to attend the meeting in support after watching a documentary about LGBT bullying. A few detractors did take the microphone to air concerns about taxpayer expenditures and that the law would allow male pedophiles to enter female restrooms, on which commissioners quickly commented that they’d researched that issue and never found such an occurrence.
Commissioners Joan Doyle and Bill Stevens — the latter of whom joked that as the only Republican on the panel, he should be the commission’s first complainant — agreed that they were concerned about the cost, but said the ordinance was necessary.
Berk said the feedback he’d gotten from borough residents ran about 10-1 in favor of the ordinance, and he applauded the community during the meeting for getting behind the measure.
“I’ve always been proud to be a resident of Doylestown and never more so than this evening,” Berk said. “This ordinance is a statement that we will no longer treat groups of people differently. Discrimination will no longer be tolerated in Doylestown.”
Nancy Reilly, an organizer for Doylestown Pride who has lived in the borough for eight years, said she has faced instances of discrimination but had no other resources until now.
“Even though Doylestown is perceived as progressive and open — and it is and that’s why I live here — there was still room for improvement,” she said. “It’s important that not just the LGBT community, but everyone, have a voice and have someplace to go and report something if it happens. I’ve had things happen to me and there was just nothing in existence for me to go to and say I was treated this way and it was blatantly obvious that it’s because I’m gay.”
Reilly said she was impressed by the overwhelming support the measure has seen from the borough’s heterosexual residents.
“At the first commission meeting on this, I was just blown away by the number of young, heterosexual couples who were there,” she said. “There were people who owned businesses and who had young children with them and who said that they’d no longer live here if we didn’t pass this.”
Berk’s own daughter, Julia, even got involved in the effort, and was handing out Doylestown Pride stickers to guests at Monday night’s meeting.
Although she’s only 17, Julia said she recognized the need for Doylestown to take a stand on LGBT discrimination.
“I think it’s important to show that we are very accepting here in Doylestown,” she said. “Even if they don’t get that many cases, it sends a message to other local communities around us that acceptance of all people is important.”
Stephen Glassman, chair of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, who worked closely with the commission on the crafting of the ordinance, said the vast mainstream media attention the measure garnered was deserved.
“I have worked on every single one of the 16 other jurisdictional ordinances in this commonwealth, and what you’ve done here is unmatched and it’s the model for this kind of legislative effort,” he told those gathered in Borough Hall. “The respect everyone’s shown, the outpouring of support from community members and the ability there was for all to thoughtfully and intelligently, from both parties, look at this with unjaundiced eyes and objectively evaluate the work before you is exceptional. The way you’ve handled this, with full transparency, ought to be looked at throughout the United States as a way to do business and to use the representative democracy that we’re so fortunate to have in this country.”
Commission president Det Ansinn said the body had plans within the next month to pass a resolution to urge the state legislature to move on HB 300, which would include the LGBT community in the statewide nondiscrimination law.
State Rep. Dan Frankel (D-23rd Dist.), the lead sponsor of HB 300, congratulated the Doylestown commissioners Tuesday and said he will continue to press for statewide protections.
“While it heartens me to see that more and more municipal areas in Pennsylvania want to go out of their way to protect their own residents, I recognize that it is the commonwealth’s job to make sure that when someone takes a step outside of Doylestown or Pittsburgh, they don’t lose the basic protections they have while in those municipal boundaries,” he said.
Pray said she hopes Doylestown’s action will spur others to work to eradicate LGBT discrimination throughout the state.
“We know we have a lot of work ahead of us; we heard some of the opposition, and that’s part of why this is needed. People are uneducated and miseducated about the issues, but we’re going to continue to work to change that,” she said. “But it was heartening to see this kind of turnout and support from all different people. We’re very hopeful about what’s to come. Because this is what Doylestown is about.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].