Mayor Kim Driscoll is pledging to donate money for each and every anti-LGBT phone call her office receives.
Meet Kim Driscoll, Mayor of Salem, MA, since 2006 and the city’s first female Mayor.
The mayor of Salem, Mass., ended Gordon College's contract to operate the city-owned Old Town Hall this week when the school's president, along with 13 other religious leaders, signed a public letter to President Barack Obama asking him to include a religious exemption from a new executive order expected to require all federal contractors and subcontractors to hire LGBT persons, regardless of the organization's religious stance on homosexuality.
Via worldmag.com
I am truly disappointed in the stance you have taken, which plainly discriminates against the rights of LGBT individuals, both on and off campus. These actions fly in the face of the City of Salem's Non-Discrimination Ordinance, which prohibits our municipality from contracting with entities that maintain discriminatory practices. While I respect your rights to embed religious values on a private college campus, religious freedom does not afford you the right to impose those beliefs upon others and cannot be extended into a publicly owned facility or any management contract for a publicly owned facility, like Old Town Hall. Moreover, I hope you realize how hurtful and offensive these "behavioural standards" are to members of the greater Salem LGBT community, some of whom are Gordon alumni, staff and/or students.
Via salem.com
Signing the letter was in keeping with our decades-old conviction that, as an explicitly Christian institution, Gordon should set the conduct expectations for members of our community. Nothing has changed in our position [...] Be assured that nothing has changed in our position regarding admission or employment. We have never barred categories of individuals from our campus and have no intention to do so now. We have always sought to be a place of grace and truth, and that remains the case.
Via gordon.edu