The 1996 anti-gay resolution is history.
The 24-year-old resolution was officially wiped off the books on March 11, following the passage of a measure that retroactively installs a four-year sunset clause on all County Council resolutions, thereby nullifying the 1996 resolution.
The sunset measure passed with 7 votes in favor and 5 opposed.
Voted yes: Lynn Ballard, Rick Roberts, Liz Seman, Dan Tripp, Butch Kirven, Xanthene Norris, Ennis Fant
Voted no: Bob Taylor, Joe Dill, Sid Cates, Willis Meadows, Mike Barnes
“I wasn’t sure how many people would notice we were having a meeting today, but it appears quite a number did,” said County Council Chairman Butch Kirven at the start of the meeting, eliciting a rare moment of laughter from the crowd.
Indeed, Council chambers had already reached full capacity well before the special meeting had even begun, with crowds gathering in the lobby and outside in the County Square parking lot to listen to the proceedings.
The meeting came a little more than a week after County Council failed to pass the exact same sunset resolution at their regular meeting on March 3. That resolution had been widely expected to pass, but Councilmen Bob Taylor and Joe Dill switched their votes at the last minute, after listening to protests from citizens who cited scripture and “traditional family values.”
The final vote at that March 3 meeting was 6 votes in favor and 5 opposed, not enough to reach the 7-vote threshold required by Council rules to pass the resolution. Councilman Ennis Fant, a consistent critic of the 1996 resolution, had been out of town and unable to attend.
Wednesday’s special meeting, then, was in effect a do-over for County Council, now that Fant was back in town. The meeting was scheduled just two days earlier by Kirven to specifically address the 1996 resolution.
In a letter announcing the meeting, Kirven addressed the “immediate consequences” and “potential harm to the general well-being and future economic prospects that are essential and beneficial to the entire population of Greenville.”
It took five votes to proceed through Council rules, a series of formalities allowing the Council to redact their earlier vote, in order to finally get to the vote addressing the matter at hand.
After the sunset clause was passed at the special meeting on March 11, cheers erupted from the audience.
Following the meeting, members of Upstate Pride SC, an LGBT advocacy group that had fought to formally remove the resolution, addressed the gathered crowd in the parking lot.
“We have shown that we are better together,” said Terena Sparks, Upstate Pride SC diversity officer. “Our differences are what make us stronger, what make us better. We did not do this alone. We are not in this work alone.”
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