Under protest, Howard County OKs LGBT, marital status additions to housing ordinance

In effect, the county was required by HUD to include the language in its fair housing ordinance before three HUD-funded grants worth roughly $300,000 can be acquired by local officials.

Those grants include a $250,000 OCRA Workforce Development grant for which Howard County is lead applicant for the North Central Indiana Regional Planning Council; a Community Development Block Grant for the New London wastewater treatment plant; and a blight elimination grant.

To receive grant funding, HUD requires local governments to revise the definition of family to include families “regardless of the actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status of its members.”

Without the change, the grant funds would be lost, noted county attorney Larry Murrell, who said HUD communicated that “Congress has given HUD broad authority to fulfill its mission to implement responsibilities through rule-making.”

And within that definition are three words – “actual or perceived” – that irked the commissioners enough to pass the measure under protest.

“Our issue isn’t the protection of the people, that’s not our issue,” said Commissioner Paul Wyman. “Our issue is with the language ‘actual or perceived,’ because it pertains to the married people, gay and lesbian community, transgender, across the board.

“[Someone] says, ‘You know what, there might be a tax break come income tax time if I don’t file a jointly-married, I’m going to perceive I’m not married today.’ Well that’s ridiculous. We are a nation of laws.”

In an interview after the meeting, Wyman reiterated many of the points written into the updated ordinance, which says HUD’s language renders “sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status an entirely subjective and fluid determination, permitting one to change his or her ‘self-identity’ from day to day.”

“The reality of the matter is we think that is flawed language,” noted Wyman. “They should have just specifically said, here are the classes we are protecting and left it at that, and we wouldn’t have had an issue. Instead, they add this other language that in my opinion opens the door for all kinds of issue.

“The only thing we are protesting are those two words – actual or perceived. Everything else, no issue.”

In addition, Wyman highlighted two other concerns held by the board of commissioners – the likelihood that similar language will have to be used in future laws unrelated to housing, and the fact neither Indiana law nor federal law includes similar language.

“They’re making us pass laws that they’re not even willing to do at the congressional level or the state level,” said Wyman. “But we have an obligation to these different organizations we have already committed to.

“Their language, the federal level under fair housing, doesn’t even have sexual orientation in it. How ridiculous is that?” he added later, saying the county would “bite the bullet” for congressional and state officials and said it was “mind-boggling” the federal government doesn’t include sexual orientation in its fair housing act.  

As Wyman alluded, however, county officials felt the need for grant dollars outweighed any benefit that would come from denying the amendment, making their decision to unanimously pass the measure rather easy.

“We have an obligation not only to the organizations that we committed to and an obligation to the people in our community,” he said. “We are in the process of receiving $250,000 of workforce development money, and that money will go to families in our community who are out of work or changing jobs and they need this money to support their families.

“I couldn’t imagine saying to those families, ‘Guess what? We know longer have that money, you’r family isn’t going to be trained and now you can’t go to work.’ That would be way more offensive in my mind than helping those families take care of their kids. … It’s the right thing to do.”

During the meeting, Murrell, the county’s legal representative, also questioned the language requirement, saying he felt the commissioners were making the most sensible decision in passing the amendment under protest.

“This is a definition created solely by regulation and issued by an executive,” he said. “The legal problem presented to [the commissioners] is that even though there might be no visible impact in the housing area, by adopting this as an ordinance, as a law, you are pretty much locking yourself in as a county to adopting this particular definition for future discussions.”

Efforts to reach HUD representatives have not yet been successful.