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| Cameron Runyan (hoisting a bottle of champagne) during a 2008 lgbt political event (photo by Jonathan Sharpe/Free Times) |
A consultant hired by the city of Columbia to help create a human rights ordinance and commission resigns after months of complaints by a group of pastors. However that is nothing compared to the story behind the controversy. It involves a councilman elected partly on the strength of the city's lgbt community and the betrayal they felt when he suddenly turned against them.
A controversy about including lgbts in a human rights ordinance in the city of Columbia, SC has led to the resignation of a consultant the city hired to help create the ordinance and a commission. According to an
article in the April 29th edition of
The State newspaper:
Growing tensions over a plan to protect gays from discrimination in
the city of Columbia have led to the resignation of a consultant city
leaders hired to help develop a human-rights ordinance. Christine
Johnson, a lesbian and advocate of gay rights, said she quit because
City Councilman Cameron Runyan had obstructed her efforts to help create
the proposed ordinance. Johnson said in an April 10 resignation
letter that Runyan helped set up meetings with church groups to discuss
ending her city contract. Runyan made misleading statements to church
leaders, as well as misleading comments on a Columbia radio program
concerning the proposed city human-rights ordinance, she said in her
letter to City Manager Teresa Wilson.
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article19918173.html#storylink=cpy
According to the article, the city of Columbia hired Johnson in December 2014 and her consulting was not to last more than six months. However, the fact that she is openly gay led to months of complaints by a group of African-American pastors calling themselves the Christian Coalition. Bishop Eric Davis, a member of the group, told
The State that the Christian Coalition doesn't want lgbts included in ordinance. The group even went so far as to have a February 26 meeting to discuss the "non-renewal" of Johnson's contract.
“Christine Johnson is not only a practicing lesbian, but she’s an
advocate, an LGBT advocate,” Davis said. “So from a Christian
perspective, our question was, ‘Is that built-in bias?’”
Davis
said he believes homosexuality is a sin and said he has broad support
from African-American churches representing 100,000 members.
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article19918173.html#storylink=cpy
Runyan denies that he had anything to do with Johnson's resignation, but the incident is yet another chapter in the quiet but intense war between him and Columbia's lgbt community. However, this story isn't your conventional one about an anti-gay elected official attempting to run roughshod. It reads more like a soap opera with the elements of betrayal being heavy in the mix.
