With all the legal setbacks and threats we've seen in the last year
(Colorado & Oregon) it's nice to see some places moving forward:

Boston Sunday Globe; Dec 27, 1992
"As others do battle, St. Louis give quiet nod to gay rights"
J.L. Hazelton, Associated Press
excerpts reprinted without permission

The law bars discrimination in housing, credit, employment, education
and public access on the grounds of physical or mental disability,
race, religion, family status and sexual orientation.

"It clearly is one of the strongest laws of the 130 we have in the
US," says Robert Bray, a spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian
Task Force in Washington.

Laws in many other cities and states are less comprehensive, he said.
Some may protect homosexuals from housing discrimination, for example,
but not job discrimination.
...
The St. Louis board included a clause in its law to prevent it from
being repealed by referendum, said James Wilson, the city's lawyer.

Bray said that was unusual and praised the move.

"Once you have granted civil rights, you can't take them away by
popular vote," he said.  "Women would still be in the kitchen; blacks
would still be on the plantation."

Mary Ross, the alderwoman who introduced the measure, said she was not
trying to be a trailblazer.  She simply wanted to update the city's
civil rights protections.

"I think we covered, hopefully, everybody in this legislation" who
"could possibly be discriminated against in one manner or another, and
that is the intent," she said.  "It is not a gay-rights thing."
...
The law also created a civil rights commission, which has the power to
investigate, fine violators up to $500 and jail them for up to 90 days.
-- 
--------------->Elisabeth Anne Riba * lis@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu<---------------
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