Omaha gay rights ordinance will have new name when reintroduced by Councilman Gray

Citizens for Equal Protection tweets that the Omaha Employment Nondiscrimination Ordinance has a new name: the Omaha Equal Employment Ordinance. The measure will be reintroduced on January 24th by Councilman Ben Gray, according to CFEP.

The first attempt failed on a 3-3 vote October 26th. From CFEP's web site:

Councilpersons Ben Gray, Pete Festersen and Chris Jerram voted in favor of the ordinance; Jean Stothert, Garry Gernandt and Thomas Mulligan were opposed, while Franklin Thompson abstained. If you are interested in thanking or contacting city council members, their contact information is below:

District #1: Pete Festersen, Pete.Festersen@ci.omaha.ne.us, 402-444-5527

District #2: Ben Gray, Ben.Gray@ci.omaha.ne.us, 402-444-5524

District #3: Chris Jerram, Chris.Jerram@ci.omaha.ne.us, 402-444-5525

District #4: Garry Gernandt, Council President, GGernandt@ci.omaha.ne.us, 402-444-5522

District #5: Jean Stothert, Jean.Stothert@ci.omaha.ne.us, 402-444-5528

District #6: Franklin Thompson, FThompson@ci.omaha.ne.us, 402-444-5523

District #7: Tom Mulligan, Tom.Mulligan@ci.omaha.ne.us, 402-444-5526

Following the vote, the popular gay blog JoeMyGod posted an item about the failure of the measure, which was opposed by the Omaha Chamber of Commerce for "economic" reasons.

One commenter wrote from San Francisco:

Since Omaha gives most corporations located there (like ConAgra) a pass on paying any taxes, it falls on the citizens and the tourists to pay for nearly all city services. LGBT travel professionals should boycott all convention business headed for Omaha. Send it to Council Bluffs, Iowa across the river a half a mile. Council Bluffs has a sexual orientation non-discrimination law plus same sex marriage is legal in Iowa. Omaha in recent years has tried to become a business convention capital in the Midwest and they have spent lots of taxpayer money doing it. Hit them where they will feel it in the wallet. Screw 'em.

What Joe Jervis (the JoeMyGod blogger) wrote himself at the end of his post was this:

If you were planning on any business or personal travel to Omaha, let the Chamber of Commerce know if this news changes your plans.

Jervis included a link to the Chamber of Commerce.

For most of the next day (a Wednesday) the Omaha Chamber of Commerce's web site was down. AKSARBENT called to find out why, and the receptionist told us that Chamber employees arrived at work to find their site "broken."

JoeMyGod gets between 1.5 and 2 million hits per month. AKSARBENT imagines that the Chamber got quite an earful and speculates that they would have got even more but that their server software probably thought that it was under a denial-of-service attack and shut itself down.