Athens-Clarke County Mayor and Commissioners did not place their resolution in support of the LGBTQIA community onto the consent agenda at their agenda setting meeting on Tuesday. The resolution will be voted on at the commission’s regular session meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 3 at 6 p.m.

Although the majority of citizens came in support of a project that would keep the protected bike lanes on Prince Avenue, many citizens used a portion of their three-minute comment time to also voice their support for the LGBTQIA+ community.

“Both of them really just speak to the kind of city that we want to be in Athens, which is a city of safety,” said Athens resident Abby Bennett.

District 7 Commissioner Jesse Houle, who helped draft this resolution, said they relate to the fear that people expressed during their public comments. Houle, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, said they had to delete their social media accounts after receiving harassment and death threats after they posted about the murder of Laken Riley on X.

Several citizens mentioned Riley’s murder in comparison to San Coleman, a transgender woman who was killed under similar circumstances. 

“Both of those murders are horrible and tragic,” said Houle, “but I think the discrepancy of the response is indicative of the seriousness with which this society and this community, our community, takes violence against people who this community, our community, has plenty of members of who will say, ‘These people aren’t human.’”

Although District 2 Commissioner Melissa Link advocated for the LGBTQIA+ resolution to be moved to the consent agenda for the regular session, District 7 Commissioner John Culpepper immediately countered and said that the resolution repeats wording used in the mission statement of the People & Belonging Department.

“Why are we doing the resolution when a resolution is, what we just talked about earlier, it’s just an opinion? It’s not an action,” said Culpepper, “We’ve created this department to handle this. So, is the department just not doing what it needs to be doing?” 

Houle acknowledged this redundancy, but explained it as part of the resolution’s purpose-to verbally reiterate efforts the government is already taking, and suggest new programs, such as required training for law enforcement officers.

Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz mentioned past resolutions that responded to timely problems for minority populations as precedent for this issue: “These things can have tangible impacts, and we are at an inflection point around the LGBTQIA+ community.”

Why I Wrote This Story

The resolution for the LGBTQIA+ community outlines the newsworthiness of this story. This is a concern of many Athens residents, and several different groups were working to increase attendance at this meeting and the regular session voting meeting. I learned about finding the story in live events while writing this story and how to execute follow-up interviews.