JAX Beach Issues have an effect on ALL of us in Jacksonville!!

Some of you may remember this issue being voted down at the Duval City Council. Here's an article from that time that may help clarify...http://gofbw.com/news.asp?ID=14060

Message coming from Atlantic Beach

Please join the fight against AtlanticBeach’s Lesbian-Gay (LGBT) Special Preferences Bill 95-14-108.  The law is unjustified, and is an unwarranted burden on business.  It can be defeated with your help.

Please get involved, even of you don’t live in AtlanticBeach.  This is a nationwide movement; after conquering AtlanticBeach, Jacksonville is the next target (again).

What Action Should I Take?

Vigorous citizen action can stop this law.  That means:

• Telephone and email messages should be sent immediately to the Commissioners (contact data is below); and
• Active, energetic attendance at the August 11, 6:30pm, Commission meeting (when the final vote will be taken).  The address is published as 800 Seminole Road.  The 10 meg agenda is here.

Please Send Emails

When addressing your emails, please consider sending repeated emails to Commissioner Mark Beckenbach — he is the ONLY one of the three pro-LGBT Commissioners who may be willing to change his mind, if he receives enough urging.

Mayor Woods and Commissioner Mark are determined to impose this measure regardless of the facts or the cost — they insist there is discrimination, despite there being NO evidence (the Attachment proves the lack of evidence).

When composing your emails feel free to use ideas or text from the “Some Law Defects” section, below.  Our communications should be stern and matter-of-fact, but respectful, with no name-calling.  But, tell them what YOU want done.

Please Attend The August 11 Meeting

Please arrive early for the 6:30pm meeting, and quickly submit a speaker’s card (if one is required).  The Public Hearing will take place BEFORE the vote.  Bring snacks if you miss dinner.

Please note: At the July 14 Commission meeting, Commissioners Hill and Daugherty courageously asked that the LGBT ordinance be put on the ballot for AtlanticBeach voters to decide.  You were denied this opportunity in a 3-2 vote by Mayor Woods and Commissioners Mark and Beckenbach.

Below are Other Information, including email addresses, and Some Law Defects.  And, the Attachment proves that NO justification for this law exists.

Please forward this mail to all others you think will fight this ordinance.

Thanks for your help.  I can be reached at philipwemhoff@gmail.com.

Best Regards,

Philip Wemhoff

Other Information

Commissioner Contact Data

Some Law Defects.  Feel free to use any ideas from this list in your emails or hearing testimony.

• When activists urge far-reaching Special Preference legislation to “prevent widespread discrimination”, commissioners are duty-bound to demand indisputable proof of such discrimination.  But, most Atlantic Beach Commissioners have not demanded that proof — and none exists.  Details are in the attachment: “No Proof of Discrimination”.
• LGBT's will get preference in job openings and will be more difficult to fire, regardless of the cause.  This is not an "equal" rights measure, but a Preferential Treatment power grab.
• Businesses and public buildings may have to be equipped with special dressing, bath and other facilities, even though the gay-lesbian population is minuscule at 1.6% of the total adult population, according to a CDC survey (2014), the most comprehensive to date.  The survey also found that 0.7% identified as bisexual, and 1.1% as ‘‘something else’’ which includes asexuals.
• The recent recession has been crushing on business, and the requirements of this law (which will expand and morph) will hinder the growth of the local economy.
• Some employers will avoid hiring LGBT’s in order to preclude the very real litigation threat, which threat will grow as attorneys devise ways to broaden the law’s application.
• Businesses and non-profits will incur additional lawsuits and burdensome legal expenses in attempts at compliance with indefinable standards, and may expend large sums to alter their facilities to accommodate atypical and constantly shifting modes of gender “expression”.
• Business owners will be required to police and silence the Free Speech of employees and customers, to meet the broad interpretations of the code: “No person . . . shall directly or indirectly discriminate against any individual in . . . [any] other term or condition of employment because of the individual's . . . sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.”
• Employers and private and public administrators must tolerate ANY “act” which the Protected Class alone can link to “gender”.

For the first time by statute, human behavior is protected — behavior which is NOT specified.  The Protected Class may undertake, without consequence, any “acts to communicate gender”, which Protected “acts” are NOT described in advance, so are open-ended.

And, the open-ended, protected “acts” (1) need “not be consistent with socially-prescribed gender roles” (that is, not predictable by an impartial observer), and (2) need not be consistent with the Protected person’s own “gender identity”, which “identity” is alterable day-to-day, and established solely by the Protected person — thus the variable “identity” is unknowable in advance to an objective observer.

• Regarding the observation above, the law fails to require pre-employment disclosure of sexual identity / orientation status.  As a result, the owner or manager will not know in advance whose behavior (and what behavior) is to be protected.  Thus, the law, by design, unjustly predisposes the owner to punishable law violations which are unintended.
• Without objective proof of discrimination, this law dampens the business environment, creating more lawsuits, fines, and attorney fees levied against small businesses and landowners.

And, at a time of budget shortages, the law increases government’s civil and judiciary costs.

• The law destroys more Freedom than it creates.  It will be used as a weapon to punish people of faith for simply living their lives according to their consciences.
• Many LGBT “discrimination” claims are not relevant.  During the 2012 Jacksonville hearings, one woman alleged that her car had been key-scratched, another that her car had been fitted with a bomb; both claiming sexual orientation as the motive.  Such acts, even if true, are offenses prosecuted under criminal statutes, not by the proposed law.  And, the alleged motive was never proven.
• This Special Preference ordinance is part of a national movement, the goal of which is the acquisition of power.  Thus, the ordinance is being advanced in every major U.S. city despite the complete lack of local justification.  Details immediately below, and in the Attachment.
• Special Preferences advocates claim that pro-LGBT laws are “needed to attract talent” to the area.  Not true.  Leading LGBT demographer Gary J Gates notes: “there’s little or no evidence that same-sex couples consider the issue of [LGBT] laws in deciding where to move".  Dr Gates adds:“Their [migration] patterns look like the broader patterns [of everyone else] in the U.S.”  “States reporting the biggest increases in same-sex couples . . . are among the most socially-conservative states in the nation”.
• Power-seeking Protected-Class advocates claim fraudulently that this Preferential Treatment ordinance is needed to restrain widespread, incurable bigotry in Atlantic Beach — a slander against the Community’s citizens, when LGBT activists know that empirical data prove otherwise.  Evidence is given here and in more detail in the attached “No Proof Of Discrimination”.

„    The 2009 JCCI study, the only local research to quantify anti-LGBT events, reveals an incidence rate for anti-LGBT “offenses” (those that would be subject to the law) of ONE “offense” every 20.4 years for each LGBT individual — certainly not sufficient offense-frequency to merit corrective legislation.  Details in the attached “No Proof Of Discrimination”.

„    The 2008 UNF Study found negligible Community intolerance: “The vast majority of respondents (94.7% of the local Community) [favor] equal treatment in the workplace regardless of . . . sexual orientation”.

It is clear that the claim of discrimination is a hoax.

• The heavy hand of government should NOT be asked to cure every perceived social ill — certainly not this one, whose advocates have provided NO supporting proof, other than their biased anecdotes.  And, city commissioners, contrary to their duty, have demanded NO proof.

Full bill here:  NoProofOfDiscrimination2014v2.pdf