The city’s non-discrimination ordinance was supposed to help protect against bigotry, and its architects are touting it in their runs for office. But over a year later it has helped no one. It wasn’t meant to.

Above: A pride flag flies from city hall in 2015. File photo by Max Cooper

In April 2021 Asheville city council members unanimously endorsed a new measure, a non-discrimination ordinance that they claimed would help protect those facing blatant bigotry.

“This is an exciting moment,” Mayor Esther Manheimer enthused.

Allison Scott, a director at the Campaign for Southern Equality and one of the ordinance’s architects, and told council it was a necessary and overdue step.

“I’m tired of telling people that what happened to them was legal and that there’s no process for holding others accountable,” Scott said. “It’s something we need.”

Indeed Scott would later make passage of the non-discrimination ordinance one of the central points of her ensuing council campaign. Indeed she’s stayed vague or pointedly refused to take positions about anything else. Her boss at CSE, county commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, would tout Buncombe’s passage of a similar law in her congressional run. It made better headlines than her role funneling millions in tax incentives to an arms dealer.

In a December 2021 CSE press release from Scott bragged that thanks to ordinances like Asheville’s passed around N.C. “one-third of the state – more than 3 million people – live in one of the 16 different jurisdictions with clear, comprehensive protections.”

But the protections weren’t clear or comprehensive. In fact they were non-existent. Just five non-discrimination complaints were filed in the six months after the ordinance’s passage. In every case city hall proceeded to either find no discrimination or reject them on the basis of technicalities. In at least one case they appear not to have bothered to fully read a complaint before rejecting it.

After that people stopped even bothering to file. To date, not a single act of discrimination has been addressed by Asheville’s non-discrimination ordinance. Buncombe county’s has had similarly bleak results, including rejecting a complaint from a trans woman who reported sexual harassment while working for the county.

But this isn’t the case of a flawed but well-intentioned law. This was, instead, the ordinances working as intended.

From the start the real point of the “non-discrimination” ordinances wasn’t to inflict consequences on bigoted businesses and institutions to deter unjust behavior. It was instead meant to grab headlines (“communicate community values”) and act as a fundraising hook for some establishment non-profits (and the politicians using them as a springboard) far removed from the communities they supposedly serve.

The is the story of a city government that will talk endlessly about equity while doing everything they can to destroy it. It is the story of gentry queers willing to indulge bigotry as long as it furthers their careers. It is the story of a sham, a protection written to protect no one.

The lie

One can’t discuss Asheville’s facade of an ordinance without discussing the Campaign for Southern Equality, the non-profit that played a major role in drafting it and other similar laws throughout the state.

Formed in 2011 the organization quickly took a prominent role in the equal marriage fight, including protests, civil disobedience and legal challenges. While never radical, they did some genuinely good work on that issue.

However, some of the seeds of the thoroughly establishment organization they would become were already in place. Its ranks were dotted with well-off queers who dealt in a lot of respectability politics, emphasizing how similar they were with (white) upper-middle class values, especially mainline christianity. When they did civil disobedience actions they almost always gave local officials a heads up and sought their approval.

CSE’s main founder, christian minister Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, has remained in control of the organization for its entire existence. She frequently uses its record to bolster her political career, first to county commissioner then congressional candidate.

When the openly anti-trans HB2 was passed at first it looked like CSE would take some real action to oppose it. They filed legal challenges and helped organize protests. For a moment it even looked like they’d get Asheville’s city council to join Charlotte in adopting a non-discrimination ordinance that specifically included queer and trans people.

Such a step would have been significant at the time, adding momentum to other cities in N.C. defying the state legislature in the face of HB2. But when the move floundered due to bigotry in city hall (from the right-wing city attorney as well as some transphobic council members) CSE notably refused to press the attack. They pulled their punches.

They didn’t have to. Council was in an incredibly vulnerable position on this; opposing the most basic of civil rights measures was a highly unpopular position in left-leaning Asheville. City hall almost certainly would have folded if seriously, publicly, pressed. They weren’t. Apparently trans rights, unlike equal marriage, weren’t worth CSE’s supporters getting arrested.

Importantly, during this time Beach-Ferrara was running for a county commissioner seat.

For a time CSE at least remained publicly opposed to HB2 and actually sought to reverse it. That too changed in 2017 when many Democratic legislators turned coat and helped pass HB142, a “compromise” intended to leave HB2 largely intact but provide enough of an excuse for the NCAA basketball tournament not to ditch North Carolina. It was bad enough queer activists across the state quickly dubbed it “HB 2.0.”

While CSE did put out a perfunctory statement against the bill behind the scenes they started quietly dropping their opposition and pressuring other queer organizations to do the same. Beach-Ferrara was, by then, thoroughly aligned with the Democratic establishment in her county commissioner seat.

Later that year trans activists attending a CSE-run election forum asked Asheville city council candidates point blank if they’d defy HB2 to pass a non-discrimination law with teeth, and prepare to go to court to defend it. Scott, acting as the moderator, intervened to save the candidates from having to actually take a real position.

Seizing the mic, she said she was changing the question to something more “pragmatic,” asserting that the real question was only if city hall would pass a non-discrimination ordinance years later, after HB142 expired. This quickly derailed the activists’ efforts. “She just fucked us over,” some in the room muttered about Scott’s actions.

In early 2018 CSE proposed a “human rights ordinance” behind the scenes and sought support for it from local organizations. But the measure would only have covered city government workers, who already had protection from discrimination due to a previous measure.

The effort floundered because other groups — even fairly establishment ones with their own massive problems — weren’t interested in signing on to a toothless law just to give CSE a headline.

Full disclosure: at the time I was a board member of a local trans organization and privy to some of these discussions. The above description is assembled from multiple conversations with sources throughout the wider community, and at no time have I broken any previous commitment to keeping any conversations off-record. I can say, also without breaking any of those promises, that I witnessed CSE staffers try to intimidate other organizations — unsuccessfully — into adopting their position.

With the start of 2021 HB142 finally ended and CSE launched a statewide campaign to pass non-discrimination ordinances (or update existing ones to prohibit discrimination based on queerness or gender identity). Conveniently it was the lead-up to an election year. Beach-Ferrara declared her congressional run in March and Scott was openly gunning for a spot on city council.

By this point the warning signs about both CSE and its leaders had become alarm bells.. The organization had become thoroughly Gay Inc, a term coined by queer activists to refer to organizations that, whatever their beginnings, end up becoming part of the establishment and replicated many of its oppressions. This was particularly apparent when the organization pointedly stood on the sidelines while demonstrators — including a lot of queer and trans locals — were openly assaulted by the cops during the 2020 anti-racist uprising.

Like a lot of such organizations CSE combines a thoroughly status quo political arm with on-the-ground services, often using the latter to defend the former. By this time staffers were — according to sources familiar with its operations — compelled to sign draconian non-disclosure agreements that forbid them from discussing their jobs or the management of the organization, even after they leave.

While these almost certainly wouldn’t hold up in court, for rank-and-file workers fighting them is a daunting prospect. It’s meant to be.

This Labor Day I publicly asked Beach-Ferrara, over social media, if she would waive the NDAs so CSE workers could honestly discuss their experiences and the actions of the non-profit’s directors. She didn’t answer.

Indeed in 2020 Beach-Ferrara shuttled millions in tax incentives to notorious arms dealer Raytheon, voted to give the sheriff and jail more money and removed pandemic restrictions on hotels at the behest of the hospitality industry, spurring a major local covid outbreak.

Still, occasionally politicians are afraid enough of backlash that they concede something around election time. Certainly real penalties for open bigotry, with even minimally effective enforcement, would occasionally be helpful in a segregated city with notoriously awful working conditions.

But a revealing moment happened when Buncombe County commissioners first took up the non-discrimination ordinance in March 2021. The measure had originally called for $500 penalties. But some commissioners feared this would, heaven forbid, be too hard on bigoted businesses.

While Beach-Ferrara said the point was to “create new protections” she then emphasized that the ordinance wouldn’t actually penalize bigotry.

“This is not intended to be a punitive ordinance that dispenses punishment,” she admitted. “It’s intended to be an ordinance that communicates community values.”

Before its final passage on April 20 she reiterated this, claiming the point was instead “to provide education and resources.” She then gave an extended, emotional speech about how much she loved christian bigots.

“I extend love to you,” she declared, in tears, of those who would put our communities in concentration camps. “People of faith land in very different places on many, many issues. That’s part of the great power of this country.”

These were brief moments, but foretold exactly how ineffective the ordinance, and the Asheville one based on it, would intentionally be.

Indeed by the time the law finally passed it only called for $100 fines (city hall would adopt the same minimal rate). The director of Western Carolina Rescue Ministries, whose shelter openly excludes many trans people and who’d threatened to close if the ordinance passed, told the Mountain Xpress earlier this year that they haven’t had to change a thing.

The devil is always in the details. Especially when you’re dealing with ministers.

The ordinance

Watching local government hearings on such ordinances is, as a genderqueer trans woman, honestly heart-wrenching. It inevitably involves people talking about surviving real, ugly oppression, all for a measure that governments and the non-profit complex then render worthless.

That said it was telling that of the speakers at the Asheville hearing about half were either CSE staffers or had received funds from the organization. The non-profit had no wider coalition in Asheville, and probably didn’t attempt to build one after their refusal to condemn the APD’s violence in 2020 widened a rift that had grown for years.

What emerged from city hall was even worse than the county’s incredibly weak ordinance. As the Blade pointed out in an in-depth analysis at the time, a trans person facing workplace discrimination could actually see their situation worsen if they tried to use its “protections.”

First, someone who’d faced discrimination has to file a complaint with the city’s equity office. At the time the office had basically been gutted. When its positions were finally rehired it was filled by those handpicked by city manager Debra Campbell.

Ironically the previous equity director had resigned, blasting Campbell for a refusal to actually deal with systemic bigotry within city hall.

That office investigates the complaints. But the notoriously conservative city attorney’s office can, at any time, halt the investigation or scrap it entirely.

Even if the equity office says “wow, that was bigoted” and the city attorney stays out of the way they don’t just fine the bigoted business or demand they reverse the behavior. Instead they seek “education, mediation and conciliation.” That’s jargon for pressuring the complainant to drop the issue in exchange for a minor settlement or a hollow apology. Hell, such an agreement could even forbid them from discussing their boss’ discrimination, leaving them in a weaker position than before.

While this is all playing out the person who filed the complaint can face all sorts of pressure and retribution. Even if they make it all the way through that mess, and city staff actually side with them, the bigot can appeal. Just the bigot, not the person they harmed.

That appeal goes to a panel of the city attorney, hr director and the city manager. That means the same lawyer who defends city hall from discrimination lawsuits, the staffer who does management’s dirty work and the official who was so notoriously soft on bigots that her whole equity office quit.

If someone managed to navigate through all that, if by some miracle their complaint wasn’t arbitrarily thrown out, what stunning amount would a bigoted boss lose?

A whopping $100.

Yes, that’s it. Just $100. Less than some parking tickets.

It’s worth noting that it could have been different. It’s not like city hall isn’t capable of inflicting real penalties when they want to (ask anyone who’s ever had an overdue water bill). If council gave a damn they could have passed a non-discrimination ordinance with real penalties and no loopholes. They could have hired some independent investigators and an attorney to help enforce it. They chose not to.

Bargaining chips

So, why were these ordinances so weak? After all the NC is Ready coalition had a pretty strong political hand to play. Local governments in major cities here tend to at least try to pay minimal lip service to civil rights. Publicly voting against a solid non-discrimination ordinance does, bluntly, make for a terrible headline.

But from the start the intention was to boost political careers and get headlines, not to actually protect communities under fire. This meant, according to a source familiar with the campaign’s inner workings, that the campaign prioritized getting unanimous support from local officials even if it meant passing incredibly weak, unenforceable protections.

Indeed Durham city council member Jillian Johnson even alluded to this dynamic at a December 2021 Equality NC event, noting that city’s ordinance ended up stronger because the coalition already knew it already had unanimous support.

Now this approach is strange, if the goal was actually to protect people: once a law’s passed it doesn’t matter whether it did so by a slim majority or with every vote in favor. But it makes perfect sense if one’s goal is to give the appearance that something’s being done without upsetting the political establishment. After all CSE directors didn’t want to anger all the party hacks who hate the idea of their bigoted business facing a fine. They would need that support in their political campaigns.

Of course this also means treating the rights of the very people the ordinances are supposed to protect as expendable, just another bargaining chip on the road to office.

The complaints

This is incredibly clear when one looks at what actually happened after Asheville’s ordinance was passed. A January records request from the Blade revealed that in the six months following its enactment, a total of five complaints were filed by three different people. Every one was buried.

One of those, filed against the Smoky Park Supper Club in late July, was clearly frivolous, a tourist complaining about the restaurant’s pandemic safety precautions only allowing locals in during a covid wave.

But the other complaints describe oppressions that are all too common.

Three of the complaints were filed in Fall 2021 by a single unhoused person. They first claimed that Hope for Tomorrow ministries kicked them out due to their racial identity, breaking a promise to let them stay there for over a year. They then asserted that at two hostels — Sweet Pea’s along with Bon Paul and Sharky’s — they’d met with anti-Black racism and xenophobic remarks. At the latter they also complained that Asheville police, called to evict them when they became vocal about the bigotry, harassed them.

The first was dismissed because Hope for Tomorrow is based in Black Mountain. City government did not record a finding on the last two, but told the Blade that no such records existed well over a year later. They did, however, inform the Mountain Xpress in March that they hadn’t sustained a single complaint.

In the remaining case city staff clearly didn’t bother to fully read the complaint before dismissing it.

A worker at the Airport Road Chili’s claimed that he was repeatedly subjected to violence and threats, including from management, because he was a Black man. When he complained to the company’s h.r. department he was fired. In the ensuing months he asserted that the bigoted behavior continued, including denying him health benefits he was due.

City staff quickly dismissed the complaint because the workplace abuse he alleged took place in March 2021, before the non-discrimination ordinance took effect that July. But his complaint also alleges discrimination taking place after he’d been fired, in September and October, as he tried to get his benefits.

In 2022 no one bothered to file any non-discrimination complaints at all. A follow-up request filed by the Blade this September was returned with a note that no such records existed.

Not your stepping stone

As I write this queer and trans communities face escalating violence against our lives and existence. Many of us honestly don’t know if we’ll live out the next few years, let alone the decade.

There are a lot of reasons for that. But one that deserves more attention is Gay Inc organizations spending decades peddling the idea behind these sham ordinances: that bigotry is not a deliberate abuse of power but simply due to a misunderstanding or a lack of education. That is a dangerous delusion and it has lead to an approach that’s coddled fascists instead of fighting them.

Those running non-profits like CSE are more concerned with boosting their political careers, joining the ranks of the gentry and shutting down any organizing they don’t control than stopping those who want us dead.

This was further illustrated this summer when Youth Outright, with widespread community support, publicly refused to accept city hall’s pride proclamation due to the vindictive arrests of queer and trans locals for mutual aid. Scott swooped in to accept it, to let the government keep up the facade that they give a damn about our lives.

The argument we’re given is that we should be thankful anyway. That a hollow law on paper is better than none, that “representation” by a few gentry queers is progress even if all they do is actively join the ranks of those making our lives hell.

In fact governments treat such measures as checking the box, a way to placate without changing anything. After Asheville city council passed its 2011 equality resolution, officials used that as their excuse for doing nothing for years afterwards.

This isn’t how change happens; it’s how it dies.

Our communities are brave and beautiful. We have survived countless horrors and we are, partly thanks to Gay Inc, readying to face far more.

We are no one’s stepping stones.

Fortunately there is a long and glorious history of queer and trans communities acting not just outside of government but officially-sanctioned “community leaders” and non-profits as well. Bluntly we do not need them. We never have.

Remember that the gay establishment of yesteryear actively tried to shut down the Stonewall riots and the resulting push for wider liberation. They failed. Badly. The fact that Stonewall is a household name and the Mattachine Society — the CSE of its day — isn’t is a reminder that defiance has a power all its own.

Trans people, and everyone else facing discrimination in Asheville, are far better off relying on a public call out, sabotage, a strike or a brick through the window. All serve us better than another scrap of paper.

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Blade editor David Forbes has been a journalist in Asheville for over 15 years. She writes about history, life and, of course, fighting city hall. They live in downtown, where they drink too much tea and scheme for anarchy.

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