Five of nine Fort Wayne City Council members Tuesday blocked the introduction of a proposed city ordinance that would have prohibited discrimination based on genetic information and protected transgender people from discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations.

Because it was not introduced to council, the measure proposed by Councilwoman Karen Goldner, D-2nd, will not receive further consideration from council members. Goldner was joined by Councilmen John Shoaff, D-at large; Glynn Hines, D-6th; and Tim Pape, D-5th, in voting to introduce the ordinance for council debate. All five Republicans on council voted against introduction: Council President Marty Bender, at large; Councilwoman Liz Brown, at large; Councilman Tom Smith, 1st; Councilman Mitch Harper, 4th; and Councilman Tom Didier, 3rd.

At the close of the meeting, Goldner said she hoped that the ordinance would help Fort Wayne cultivate a tone of tolerance.

“Maybe someday we will,” she said. “But it won't be tonight.”

Not all council members explained their votes for or against introducing the ordinance. Among the comments of those who did:

♦Hines said that when considering a civil rights measure such as this ordinance, people should ask themselves, “What if it was me?” and not take it for granted that they're right. “We're very judgmental,” he said, remarking on e-mails he received on the ordinance. He said e-mailed comments were about equally divided between supporters and opponents of the measure.

♦Didier said more laws are not the answer to discrimination, offering that he had been discriminated against when he was in high school. “I was called gay or a fag or whatever, because I sing,” Didier said.

Didier said that persevering through what he described as discrimination and continuing to sing, dance and perform in theater, despite the reaction of his peers, made him stronger. “I didn't get a law when I was 14 or 15,” he said.

♦“Unfairness and unkindness can have no champion,” said Harper, explaining that although he voted against introducing the ordinance, he thinks it addresses important questions. He noted that Salt Lake City had a long and detailed communitywide examination of questions of discrimination against transgender people. He suggested that would be a better model for Fort Wayne to follow before any legislative action.

♦Pape agreed with Harper that a communitywide examination of gender-identity issues would be helpful, but Pape said a debate over the ordinance would have been a valuable part of that process. He said the ordinance addresses only housing and employment.

Pape suggested that all the e-mail received on the issue be collected and displayed on the city's Web site to illuminate the “lack of understanding” on the subject. “There's a fair amount – a shocking and surprising amount – of bigotry behind this,” Pape said, referring to the attitudes reflected in his e-mails.

About 70 people showed up to hear the council meeting Tuesday, and more than a dozen spoke during a public-comment period after council business was finished. Opponents and supporters of the ordinance expressed strong feelings on the issue, but remained generally civil, with one loud exception.

One man who supported the ordinance relayed what he said a friend had overheard a council member say about the ordinance at a restaurant.

The purported quote included an expletive. The second time the man shouted the vulgarity, Council President Bender admonished him to watch his language. The third time he shouted it, Bender said mildly, “Son, I think you're out of line.”

The one speaker on the measure who took no stand on it was Dr. John Crawford, who had been an at-large council member before he was defeated in the 2007 election.

Crawford, a Republican, voted in 2001 to add sexual orientation to the city's anti-discrimination statute, even though it cannot be enforced except through voluntary arbitration.

Crawford said he couldn't say whether he would support extending this degree of protection to transgender people, but he said City Council should have introduced the ordinance and opened it to debate.