Montana House Regresses in Equality

[crashhelmet]

The city of Missoula, Montana has an ordinance that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender.

Today, a House Committee moved to pass a bill that would "prohibit local governments from enacting ordinances or other policies like Missoula's that include, as a protected class from discrimination, any groups not included under the Montana Human Rights Act."

A State Democrat attempted to push HB0514 to have sexual orientation and gender included into the MHRA, but it failed to pass the vote. At that point, it was tabled.

The article from the Missoulian is here

I found the Bill itself, here

I'm trying to find more information about why HB0516 is being pushed without having to jump to the homophobia accusations. Sadly, I can't find anything from them that would explain why they're telling the city that they're not allowed to pass any discrimination laws.

Hopefully this fails before it's actually made into a law.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

I'm currently living in Missoula. It's a college and retirement town. Many residents have come from very liberal areas such as Southern California, while most of the rest of the state is very rural and conservative. Consequently, Missoula often passes laws that are at odds with other parts of Montana.

It goes both ways. There are many hardcore animal rights activists in Missoula, and they are always trying to pass laws that restrict hunting rights for the rest of the state, which is really aggravating to a lot of rural people, as hunting is very popular. The Peta and Greenpeace people are constantly demonizing hunters, ranchers, loggers, and miners. Considering that the vast majority of rural Montanans work in one of those industries, it makes a lot of them very angry.

Currently they're fighting over the right to shoot wolves that attack livestock, and everytime Montana tries to regulate it, lawyers for Missoula environmentalist groups file all sorts of federal lawsuits to stall and block any wolf culling bills. The governer recently announced that he wasn't going to put up with it anymore and would allow ranchers to kill wolves that attack their livestock, no matter what the federal courts say.

The conservative Montanans are simply trying to do the same thing back, except with the discrimination laws. There are many extremely conservative people who live in rural Montana because they can't stand the rest of the country, which in their opinion is fast going to hell. A lot of these people see Missoula as a modern day Sodom, which they have to rein in before before it's too late.

Trust me, there are accusations of homophobia flying around, they're just not being trumpeted because Montanans are paying much more attention to the wolf issues at the moment.

I hope the bill doesn't pass either.