Dayton, Ohio’s Black Female Mayor Rhine McLin supports decision to pass law to protect LGBT community

After a long hard trail Dayton, Ohio has finally passed an anti-discrimination law for the city's LGBT Community.

The City Commission voted 3-1 to add sexual orientation and gender identity to a list of protected groups. The change becomes effective in 30 days, December 14^th, 2007.

Mayor Rhine McLin supported the decision, making her city the 15th Ohio city to protect sexual orientation.  McLin tells the Dayton Daily Newspaper, “I have worked too long and hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concern. Justice is indivisible. Like Martin, I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”

Dayton, Ohio ministers asked for the vote be postponed to allow for more open discussion, but commissioner Nan Whaley and other cohorts said there was time enough.

A LGBT group called the Stonewall Dems, met with each commissioner this year and turned in a draft of the proposed law change last month.

McLin obviously is a LGBT community ally.  If you need proof, she also went on record on March 31^st, 1998 stating, “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”