Blind Prophecy

Well, they can’t get legislation passed, they take money from local causes, and generally work to piss me off, but the Human Rights Campaign does a decent job of issuing reports about what other people are doing (and implying some credit for it). Today, they released “Equality from State to State” for 2008, which looks at the bills introduced in 2008 at state legislative levels.

For Ohio, we scored 2 good bills and 0 bad ones, although neither of the bills passed. Here’s what they wrote:

Ohio House Bill 502/Senate Bill 305 — These bills would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to the state’s existing anti-discrimination laws.
Status: These bills were introduced March 11, 2008. The bills died when the Legislature adjourned Dec. 30, 2008.

Ohio Senate Bill 385 — This bill would have established standards for comprehensive sexual health education and HIV/AIDS prevention education in public schools.
Status: This bill was introduced Nov. 26, 2008, and referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Human Services and Aging. There was no further movement, and the bill died when the Legislature adjourned Dec. 31, 2008.

“There’s just no other way to say this — 2008 was a hard year at the state level,” said Joe Solmonese in the report’s introduction. He later added, “We hope that key victories in Delaware, Nevada, New York and Wisconsin, where fair-minded majorities have won control of both chambers, as well as in Ohio, where there is now a fair-minded majority in the state House of Representatives, will open the door to pro-LGBT legislation in 2009 and beyond.”

Filed under: Ohio, queer rights by Jere Keys