A call to action...

From the Community Connections team:

The Topeka City Council Tuesday night passed an amended version of the Homosexual Right Ordinance by a 5-4 vote. The good news is that they removed the parts of the ordinance that required churches, schools and businesses to hire homosexuals and landlords to rent to homosexuals.The bad news is that they extended special rights to homosexuals in all City of Topeka employment. They granted the same "terms, conditions or privileges of employment" which would include MARITAL BENEFITS to all homosexual city employees. (line 562 of the ordinance)

We are asking everyone to organize their congregations, friends, co-workers, etc., to call and email Topeka Mayor James McClinton and ask him to please VETO the homosexual rights ordinance passed by the city council last night. Office 368-3895, home 232-5038 and email jmcclinton@topeka.org If possible these calls need to be made in the next day or two (this week). If you could organize a phone or email tree that would be great.

As Topeka taxpayers, we have the right to decide how our taxes are spent, and we don't want tax dollars to give homosexual city employees marital benefits.

If we can convince Mayor McClinton to VETO this ordinance, it will never take effect. Praise God that 90% of the ordinance was gutted. It is clear that the calls and meetings to and with council members had an impact. Through the calls we picked up Lover Chancler, and caused some changes with Jeff Preisner and Duane Pomeroy. Keep in mind that Mr. Preisner was the one who appointed Tiffany Muller (the lesbian council member) to the council. Mr. Preisner's amendment did basically gut the ordinance leaving only the city employment and benefits issue. It also thankfully removed “gender identity and expression.” Although we can only claim a partial victory, clearly the opposition felt the strong brunt of defeat. They knew they had five, perhaps even six solid votes for the entire ordinance a week ago. Our calls cracked their coalition and forced the gutting of the ordinance.