Live blogging the vote for 2012-296, human rights ordinance.

[Tacachale]

So Democrat Johnny Gaffney flipflopped after previously voting for the bill. Hmm, I wonder if he was pressured into it?

[tufsu1]

17-2?  Jesus

On the original bill that was entirely expected. On the substitute, I am pretty sure they were expecting it to be the opposite of how it just unfolded. Among the no's were: Lumb, Gulliford, Daniels, Yarborough, Redman, I think Bishop, Brown, Anderson, Boyer and I am not sure who the 10th vote came from.

as I understand it, Gaffney was the turncoat tonight...now I understand that the LGBT lifestyle is very unpopular in African-American churches, but he had previosuly voiced support....so Gaffney now deserves many calls/emails to his office expressing disappointment

[If_I_Loved_you]

Ive generally stayed out of this, but tonight confirmed for me a fundamental truth that has become glaringly obvious over the past year or so of misgovernment.

The institutions that we all own in common have been abandoned by the kind of people and leadership qualified to run them, and it is not going to get any better until we can shove a number of these fools and ideologues out of the way and put in panels of people who really care about this city and the people who live in it.

Tonight was the final straw for me with a few of this misadventurers and assgoblins.  I don't really have such high expectations of city council people---its local politics, I feel.  Not really rocket science, shouldnt really require that much education or even common sense in order to make things basically work.

How much effort does it take, really, to fix potholes, contribute to worthy causes,  decide to build roads, maintain the parks and write cute little affirmations?  After all, you don't need to fly in Stephen Hawking to pronounce that Miss Teen Jacksonville is indeed pretty, or recognize the hard work that electrical line men have to do every day to keep power and lights on.

So it would take a special level of disappointing before I personally get worked up about it.

Tonight managed that for me.

We have a few good councilpeople.

Ray Holt and Stephen Joost seem to have a good head on their shoulders.
Denise Lee and Warren Jones are sensitive to the actual people who are alive and breathing in the areas that they represent.
Reggie Brown is a careful and often passionate representative of ordinary citizens.
Lori Boyer actually verges on brilliant.
Councilmen Robinson and Doyle Carter are sweet and affable and at least aren't out to screw anyone or be a detriment to their city.

But then what about the rest of the dreck?
A former lesbian crackwhore who now thinks she is a prophet of god sent to afflict the sinful.
A closeted gay baptist man boy whose most substantial achievement so far is to feign outrage at naughty pictures he saw in folio magazine.
A functionally illiterate, hateful old crank who is permanently against anything other than the narrow membership spectrum available in his church.
A scorekeeping, cranky misanthrope who only seems to have run for office specifically to settle old political debts
A vacillating insurance selling tool of a neighborhood group, who secretly sponsored and introduced anti business legislation affecting the very business district he himself does business in after being bullied into it by prominent neighborhood residents.
2 intelligent ideologues who are so in pawn to national/federal ideology that they have proven themselves literally unable to govern on the city level.
An elegaic bigot from the beaches
Literally, a blithering hateful idiot from Mandarin.  Tonight he embarrassed the city by suggesting that someone should not be employed by jacksonville because he personally hates the potential employees wife.

which leaves Johnny Gaffney and Richard Clark.

Redman and Yarborough alone have been a running embarrassment to the city nationally through their bizarre, movie style bigotry and ignorance.

Kim Daniels is a hot mess, no matter who you are, or how you look at it.

and we have two more years of these idiots.

Where we should be figuring out how to refocus this city, implement a sustainable economy, fix our broken transit and transportation system, reawaken the creative juices that once powered the city of jacksonville, figure out how we can network and compete with cities higher up on the food chain, preserve our heritage and landscape, and improve the futures of our children, instead we are listening to Kim Daniels speculate about fucking corpses in egypt and whether or not that would be applicable to firing gay people for being gay in Duval County.  Did this kind of nonsense occur to her when she was turning tricks for crack rock?

We are seething along as Robin Lumb explains why he needs to suspend the funding mechanism for transportation in Riverside Avondale (the mobility fee) in order to create jobs that never materialized, and then turn around and vote against new businesses opening in his district because transportation hasnt been properly funded or handled.

We are watching the two representatives of Jacksonville's most LGBT settled district---riverside avondale---vote for discrimination against their own constituents.  Yes, gay Jacksonville, Jim Love and Robin Lumb voted against you, because you are less than them and you apparently do not vote.

Sorry to be so personal about this, but I wanted to make the point.

These people are fools and fanatics, and they have no place getting elected because we are all sitting around letting it happen.

One or two fools on a council isnt always a terrible thing.  They can provide comic relief and often serve to ask the seriously stupid questions that all the rest of us are too embarrassed to ask ourselves. But a majority of them?

If you want to see a better future, we are going to have to start looking for candidates and people willing to run for office that have at least some common sense.  Seriously.  No more fools, fanatics, or freaks.

We have a couple right here on this site. (Mike Field, Ennis Davis, Christina Parrish, Nicole Lopez, Amanda Searle, Bill Killingsworth, Steve Lovett, Jimmy Midyette, Arash Kamiar, and you too, Matt Carlucci----im talking about you) 


Lord please deliver us from this plague of idiots and please forgive us for whatever we did that made us deserve them.

Perhaps we should have all been a little bit nicer to Sam Moussa.

Good post Stephen some of what you said was a bit personal. But now you see the reason Jacksonville Fl. will be the town that just doesn't get it? Is this because of First Baptist Church I'm not sure. But I do like most of what you have said in this posting.

[BigGuy219]

When I moved to Jacksonville three years ago it took me about two weeks to take the temperature of the climate here.

I came on here and told people I felt Jacksonville was a lot of 'bad' things. I threw around words like 'redneck', 'hick', 'overly religious', 'backward', etc.

I was villified. I was ridiculed. It has caused people to disregard my other opinions because of it. It has caused people to attack me personally.

No one should be surprised about this decision. This is the Jacksonville we live in.

It still amazes me how 'surprised' people can be at things like this.

And before anyone starts the, "there goes bigguy running his mouth again," I was not against 296.

[Tacachale]

^Run along, troll. The adults are busy right now.

[Charles Hunter]

Stephen - excellently written.  Tonight was an embarrassment for the City by the Council - and this is a City Council that excels in being an embarrassment.

[Tacachale]

This goes beyond the city council. The mayor is culpable too, as are various other backward interests.

[BigGuy219]

^Run along, troll. The adults are busy right now.

Thank you for proving my point

This goes beyond the city council. The mayor is culpable to, as are various other backward interests.

Glad to see you're on board with at least one of my adjectives though!

[CharleyNovember]

"This town needs an enema!" Seems a most appropriate quote. I was born and raised here. I have moved away but due to financial circumstance I have been drug back to this pit of Hell. This vote by the city council does not surprise me. It is a town of religious zealots in public while being hypocrites in private. Know your history. This town can't pull its head out of its own ass with a chain and a come-along. I was very disappointed with Mayor Alvin Brown. I voted for him and had high hopes for his leadership, but he has done nothing but disappoint me yet again.

[Tacachale]

Brshould very likely pleased with this, as now the bill won't come across his desk so he'd have to make a decision to veto or not veto. He made it clear he didn't want the bill to happen to begin with... And now it won't.

Until the next cycle, that is.

[avonjax]

Don't you find it shocking that Jax is the only major city in Florida without this ordinance in place?

[Jaxson]

This is where I take issue with social conservatism in the South. I know that these well-meaning politicians voted according to their conscience, but I wonder if active discrimination against taxpaying citizens also violates our consciences as well. Have protected minorities abused this ordinance in the past? If not, then this is a non-issue. If there have been frivolous lawsuits filed by currently-protected minorities, have we considered repealing the current human rights ordinance that we already have? Atlanta moved forward significantly in the 1950s by labeling itself as the city that was 'too busy to hate.' A business-friendly environment stands on the foundation of a community that is open to all who want to help build a strong city. I am disappointed mostly because the deck has been stacked against socially progressive issues in our city because being tagged a 'liberal' in any form is the kiss of death for local politicians. I have said all along that we need more balance in our local politics to give a greater voice to all people who have productive solutions to our city's problems. I hope that the councilman from the Beaches follows through on his wishes that our city government take a public relations route to show sexual minorities that they indeed are appreciated members of our community...

[Timkin]

Ive generally stayed out of this, but tonight confirmed for me a fundamental truth that has become glaringly obvious over the past year or so of misgovernment.

The institutions that we all own in common have been abandoned by the kind of people and leadership qualified to run them, and it is not going to get any better until we can shove a number of these fools and ideologues out of the way and put in panels of people who really care about this city and the people who live in it.

Tonight was the final straw for me with a few of this misadventurers and assgoblins.  I don't really have such high expectations of city council people---its local politics, I feel.  Not really rocket science, shouldnt really require that much education or even common sense in order to make things basically work.

How much effort does it take, really, to fix potholes, contribute to worthy causes,  decide to build roads, maintain the parks and write cute little affirmations?  After all, you don't need to fly in Stephen Hawking to pronounce that Miss Teen Jacksonville is indeed pretty, or recognize the hard work that electrical line men have to do every day to keep power and lights on.

So it would take a special level of disappointing before I personally get worked up about it.

Tonight managed that for me.

We have a few good councilpeople.

Ray Holt and Stephen Joost seem to have a good head on their shoulders.
Denise Lee and Warren Jones are sensitive to the actual people who are alive and breathing in the areas that they represent.
Reggie Brown is a careful and often passionate representative of ordinary citizens.
Lori Boyer actually verges on brilliant.
Councilmen Robinson and Doyle Carter are sweet and affable and at least aren't out to screw anyone or be a detriment to their city.

But then what about the rest of the dreck?
A former lesbian crackwhore who now thinks she is a prophet of god sent to afflict the sinful.
A closeted gay baptist man boy whose most substantial achievement so far is to feign outrage at naughty pictures he saw in folio magazine.
A functionally illiterate, hateful old crank who is permanently against anything other than the narrow membership spectrum available in his church.
A scorekeeping, cranky misanthrope who only seems to have run for office specifically to settle old political debts
A vacillating insurance selling tool of a neighborhood group, who secretly sponsored and introduced anti business legislation affecting the very business district he himself does business in after being bullied into it by prominent neighborhood residents.
2 intelligent ideologues who are so in pawn to national/federal ideology that they have proven themselves literally unable to govern on the city level.
An elegaic bigot from the beaches
Literally, a blithering hateful idiot from Mandarin.  Tonight he embarrassed the city by suggesting that someone should not be employed by jacksonville because he personally hates the potential employees wife.

which leaves Johnny Gaffney and Richard Clark.

Redman and Yarborough alone have been a running embarrassment to the city nationally through their bizarre, movie style bigotry and ignorance.

Kim Daniels is a hot mess, no matter who you are, or how you look at it.

and we have two more years of these idiots.

Where we should be figuring out how to refocus this city, implement a sustainable economy, fix our broken transit and transportation system, reawaken the creative juices that once powered the city of jacksonville, figure out how we can network and compete with cities higher up on the food chain, preserve our heritage and landscape, and improve the futures of our children, instead we are listening to Kim Daniels speculate about fucking corpses in egypt and whether or not that would be applicable to firing gay people for being gay in Duval County.  Did this kind of nonsense occur to her when she was turning tricks for crack rock?

We are seething along as Robin Lumb explains why he needs to suspend the funding mechanism for transportation in Riverside Avondale (the mobility fee) in order to create jobs that never materialized, and then turn around and vote against new businesses opening in his district because transportation hasnt been properly funded or handled.

We are watching the two representatives of Jacksonville's most LGBT settled district---riverside avondale---vote for discrimination against their own constituents.  Yes, gay Jacksonville, Jim Love and Robin Lumb voted against you, because you are less than them and you apparently do not vote.

Sorry to be so personal about this, but I wanted to make the point.

These people are fools and fanatics, and they have no place getting elected because we are all sitting around letting it happen.

One or two fools on a council isnt always a terrible thing.  They can provide comic relief and often serve to ask the seriously stupid questions that all the rest of us are too embarrassed to ask ourselves. But a majority of them?

If you want to see a better future, we are going to have to start looking for candidates and people willing to run for office that have at least some common sense.  Seriously.  No more fools, fanatics, or freaks.

We have a couple right here on this site. (Mike Field, Ennis Davis, Christina Parrish, Nicole Lopez, Amanda Searle, Bill Killingsworth, Steve Lovett, Jimmy Midyette, Arash Kamiar, and you too, Matt Carlucci----im talking about you) 


Lord please deliver us from this plague of idiots and please forgive us for whatever we did that made us deserve them.

Perhaps we should have all been a little bit nicer to Sam Moussa.

There is absolutely nothing I can add to this,, except utter embarrassment that I actually VOTED for some of these people. Tonight I deeply regret it.

It is a wake up call for me.   Not to Patronize Stephen ( I don't have to, he is spot on in his assessment of the situation).. 

I will work my ass off during the next election cycle to help see that these individuals do not represent us in Council on the next cycle. 

If the final decision of this bill is not the root of Bigotry , Hatred, and Discrimination, I have no idea, what could be.


"Mayberry"  was a joke.    This is a little more like the mentality of Waldo.   


JUST ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS.

[Timkin]

"This town needs an enema!" Seems a most appropriate quote. I was born and raised here. I have moved away but due to financial circumstance I have been drug back to this pit of Hell. This vote by the city council does not surprise me. It is a town of religious zealots in public while being hypocrites in private. Know your history. This town can't pull its head out of its own ass with a chain and a come-along. I was very disappointed with Mayor Alvin Brown. I voted for him and had high hopes for his leadership, but he has done nothing but disappoint me yet again.

Another DEEP REGRET , I have.

[mtraininjax]

I am a bit hazy on this topic, what does the Federal Anti-discriminatory statute not have in it, that this bill would have had in it? What is the state of Florida's anti-discriminatory language?

If we all have to drink our Obamacare, should the Federal statute trump a local or state statute?