Friday, July 21, 2017

National Episcopal Church urges defeat of Texas "bathroom bill"

From The Texas Tribune- (more links below)

In line with concerns that tourism officials have raised about the bathroom bill’s effect on the convention business, Curry and Jennings wrote that the bathroom bill could also keep the national church from holding its 2018 general convention in Austin. A bathroom bill would keep the church from ensuring that “all Episcopalians and visitors to our convention, including transgender people, are treated with respect, kept safe, and provided appropriate public accommodation consistent with their gender identities.

“Because we are currently scheduled to hold our triennial General Convention — a nine-day event that includes as many as 10,000 people — in Austin in July 2018, we are paying especially close attention to the news emerging from your special session,” Curry and Jennings wrote.

The church first raised the prospect of relocating its convention in February in its first letter to Straus. The church moved its convention out of Texas in 1955 because of the state’s segregation laws.

The divisions sowed by bathroom restrictions today ring similar to Jim Crow discrimination from that time, the church leaders wrote.


More here-

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/07/20/national-episcopal-church-urges-defeat-texas-bathroom-bill/

also here-

http://www.dallasvoice.com/episcopal-church-denounces-bathroom-bill-10239702.html 

and here-

http://kxan.com/2017/07/21/bathroom-bills-targeting-public-buildings-schools-get-hearing-today/

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