On a personal note, if I may be forgiven a brief reverie, in 1975 I authored
the amendment to the Minneapolis Civil Rights Ordinance that prohibited
discrimination based on sexual preference.
Ed, the 1975 amendment added protection for intersexed,
transgendered, and transsexual citizens. They were not covered by the
original 1974 CRO amendment. I have a copy of it from "Finance and
Commerce" here somewhere and IIRC you were listed as an author.
A bit of history might be helpful here- Wisconsin was the
first jurisdiction to protect gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from
employment discrimination in 1972. About the same time Madison,
Wisconsin passed an amendment to it's CRO that forbid discrimination
based on manner of dress. This was originally intended to stop
employers from requiring things like work boots that weren't
available in women's sizes to keep them from hiring women, but was
later found to protect intersex and transpeople also.
In 1974 Minneapolis passed it's ground breaking CRO amendment
adding GLB folks to the protections of it's CRO. The language of the
Minneapolis ordinance was then taken to the Legislature and
introduced as an amendment to the Minnesota Human Rights Act. Then in
a surprise move Minneapolis republican state representative Arne
Carlson along with a Duluth republican in the senate offered an
amendment to add intersex and transpeople to the bill. This was in
the pre-"moral majority" age when democrats and republicans actually
competed to advance civil rights... unfortunately both the amendment
and the bill were voted down on the house floor.
The intersex and trans activists then took their amendment to
our city council and it was included in a CRO "housekeeping" bill
that included a lot of minor changes to bring Minneapolis into
compliance with new federal civil rights laws. The council passed the
amendment at their last meeting of 1975, and it was signed by mayor
Hofstede just before Charle Stenvig replaced him as mayor.
That Minneapolis Civil Rights ordinance became the model for
similar laws all over America, including the Minnesota Human Rights
Act amendment of 1993.
from Historic Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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