Springfield (Mo.) voters repeal protections for gay, transgender people

[Newsjock]

Source: KYTV

The vote was close but Springfield voters on Tuesday rejected an anti-discrimination ordinance meant to protect gay men, lesbian women, and transgender people. The Springfield City Council added those protections to the city's broader anti-discrimination ordinance last October.

With all the votes tallied, about 51.4 percent of the Springfield voters on Tuesday said they wanted to repeal the City Council's action, while 48.6 percent wanted to retain it. The raw numbers are 15,347 people voted "yes" to repeal the anti-discrimination ordinance and 14,493 people voted "no" to keep it on the books.

For a brief time on Tuesday night, when about 60 percent of the precincts were counted, the "no repeal" votes had a slim lead over the "yes, repeal" votes. As more precincts were counted, however, the "yes" votes went back on top.

Nearly 24 percent of registered voters in Greene County went to the polls on Tuesday. That is the highest turnout in decades for a Greene County election in April. Most years, turnout for those city and school district elections is 15 percent or less. In April 2011, when Springfield voters approved a much debated anti-smoking ordinance, 16 percent of registered voters in Greene County went to the polls.



Read more: http://www.ky3.com/news/local/springfield-voters-repeal-protections-for-gay-transgender-people/21048998_32243396

[Newsjock]

1. Emotions high as LGBT protections repealed in Springfield

Source: Springfield News-Leader

... The mood was predictably much brighter at the "Yes on Question 1" watch party, where the crowd was hopeful from the start. The crowd even expected to briefly take a step back from the lead, based on demographics of which polling places report first.

Cheers rang out from a small crowd as a screen showed the anti-discrimination law would be repealed. "We have just been hoping and praying," said "Yes" spokesman Calvin Morrow. "Momentum really turned in the last weeks."

The expanded nondiscrimination ordinance, which had been on hold during the campaigns, is now officially removed, six months after it was put in place.

City Council voted 6-3 in October to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the city's nondiscrimination ordinance. Opponents, who voiced concern about religious freedom and the potential impact of the ordinance on the use of bathrooms across the city, gathered enough signatures to force council to either repeal the expansion or send it to a vote.

Read more: http://www.news-leader.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/04/07/lgbt-protections-repeal-losing-late-counting/25440407/

[shenmue]

2. Excuse my language

but fuck these people.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. Haters gonna hate.

[underpants]

4. D'oh!

[brooklynite]

5. I have a High School friend who run a megachurch in Springfield...

...I'm afraid to ask how he voted.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

6. Great job, assholes

Gotta protect those bathrooms from what exactly????

[jmowreader]

7. Huge men with beards wearing dresses, of course

And on this I am not kidding, though I wish I were. A couple years ago the hole-in-the-wall I live in passed an antidiscrimination ordinance. The night they debated it, there were so many people in attendance the fire department closed the meeting early for being overcapacity. 95 percent of them were against the ordinance, and one question was, "what happens if my daughter goes into the ladies' room and finds a bearded man wearing a dress in there?" (Only in Idaho do men wearing dresses not shave.)

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

19. I can tell her exactly what to do,

LEAVE! Contact custodial personnel.

[sakabatou]

8. Ugh

[vlakitti]

9. It's getting to the point

where the "flyover states" of the upper midwest are morphing into the "stayaway states" for coastal and urban dwellers in this country. Marx and Engels talked about what they called "rural idiocy" 150 years ago and today Missouri and Indiana are picture-perfect exemplars of the type.

There's really no excuse for this kind of moronic behavior this century.No more.

[truegrit44]

10. Not too surprising considering

Springfield is known as the belt buckle of the bible belt. I should know I live about 70 miles from there. Actually a real nice, clean town.............what a shame! I am so sick of these god fearing, hypocritical, racists!

[KingCharlemagne]

15. I grew up about 70 miles from Springfield but left as soon as I graduated high school. I have not

been back, save for my mother's funeral and a couple Christmas breaks from college. I have no plans to return, nor to spend one ounce of my productive or tax-generating capacities in that state ever again.

I'm thoroughly hetero but the best boss I ever had was a gay man and I shall never forget his grace under pressure and his even temperament.

[roamer65]

11. Tyranny of the majority.

This is a prime example of why the founding fathers made us a republic and not a democracy.

[City Lights]

12. Fuck the haters. nt

[sinkingfeeling]

13. They repealed our ordinance last December. SBC is really big here.

[Aristus]

14. The State of Misery.

Another Godforsaken hellhole flyover state...

[father founding]

16. Yelp, Yelp

The Only thing they need protection from is themselves.

[BigDemVoter]

17. Am adding Springfield, Missouri

to the ever growing list of locations with an overabundance of big assholes.

I can't imagine why I would ever need to go there. . . . I would do whatever it would take to avoid spending a penny within the city limits if I ever did (unwittingly) find myself there.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

18. I'm seriously running out of states to visit. Or even to pass thru on the way to a better state.

Even my own state, Wisconsin, is on my list. But that one's personal, and I'm staying to celebrate the dismantling of Herr Walker's right-wing ghetto.