Less than 48 hours after the citizens of Houston voted to legalize discrimination by doing away with the city’s non-discrimination ordinance, H-Town is already facing backlash.
First, OutSports reports that the College Football Championships of 2018, 2019 and 2020, all of which Houston had been bidding for, were just awarded to Atlanta, San Francisco and New Orleans — three cities that offer non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people.
Whether or not the decision to exclude Houston was a result of yesterday’s vote is not entirely clear, as the College Football Championships didn’t directly comment on the matter, but many have noted that the timing of the announcement as being “interesting.”
Second, there are “rumblings” that the 2017 Super Bowl, which is scheduled to happen in Houston, may be being moved to a different city.
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“The Super Bowl is slated to come in 2017,” Houston attorney John LaRue, who helped lead the campaign to support HERO, told ABC News. “There are rumblings of plans to ask the NFL to move and go elsewhere in support of LGBT people and other groups [the non-discrimination law] would have protected.”
Sadly, Houston’s openly gay mayor, Annise Parker, doesn’t seem the least bit surprised by any of this. After the election results were announced last night, she told the media: “I fear that this will have stained Houston’s reputation as a tolerant, welcoming, global city. I absolutely fear that there will be a direct economic backlash as a result of this ordinance going into defeat and that’s sad for Houston.”
