Committee on Health and Human Relations Chicago City Council Meeting June 17, 2020
RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, The City Council ofthe City of Chicago has supported and advanced over 200 pieces of legislation pertaining to the health, safety and inclusion of the LGBTQIA+ community within the City of Chicago and beyond; and,
WHEREAS, The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has worked at unprecedented levels to scale-down and completely roll back gains made by the community; and,
WHEREAS, According to the Human Right Campaign, the largest LGBTQIA+ civil rights organization in the nation, has identified at least thirty-three specific attacks on the community at the federal level; and,
WHEREAS, President Trump has shown his aggression towards this community in the workplace by supporting employment discrimination against LGBTQIA+, banned transgender military members, stopped enforcement of workplace discrimination, allowed religious exemptions for termination, removed military members based on HIV status, and created a hostile federal work environment towards self-identifying employees; and,
WHEREAS, President Trump has shown his aggression towards this community's healthcare by undermining and removing protections for LGBTQIA+ under Section 1557 Rule allowing discrimination based on sexual orientation, allowed doctors in religious hospitals to refuse patients based on sexual orientation, and cut $1.3 Billion from PEPFAR AIDS global reduction programs; and,
WHEREAS, President Trump has shown his aggression towards this community's housing issues by allowing emergency shelters to discriminate based on sexual orientation, and permitting the Federal Bureau of Prisons to ignore self-identified gender of inmates; and,
WHEREAS, President Trump has shown his aggression towards this community's families by refusing to fund any agency or grant recipient that maintains nondiscrimination policies based on sexual orientation, has refused issuing State Department visas to same-sex partners of diplomats and other members ofthe international community, and reinterpreted
immigration rules preventing surrogate children of same-sex families from obtaining citizenship; and,
WHEREAS, President Trump has shown his aggression towards acknowledging this community by narrowing the definition of one's sex as solely being male or female, ignoring the 1.4 Million transgender Americans living today, removed all mention of LGBTQ1A+ naming or recognition from all federal websites and locations, sought to remove sexual orientation from the U.S. Census, and specifically refused to acknowledge the community at National AIDS Day events; and,
WHEREAS, The City of Chicago welcomes with open arms its LGBTQIA+ residents, families and children in every aspect of our civilized society; now therefore,
BE IT RESOLVED, That we, the Mayor and Members of the City Council ofthe City of Chicago, gathered here this seventeenth day of June 2020, do hereby call upon all members of the Illinois Congressional Delegation during the annual celebration of Pride Month to denounce the unrelenting attacks of President Donald J. Trump on those residents that identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersexual, asexual or otherwise self-defined as part of the greater community; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That a suitable copy ofthis resolution be presented to the delegation as a commitment of this City Council to stand in strong defense of its people from such discriminatory federal policies.