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WILKES-BARRE — Tuesday night’s city council work session was the opportunity Tony Brooks longed for to tell his coming out story.
Before the other four council members were nine pages of an anti-discrimination ordinance offering protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The first-term Brooks requested five minutes to put the legalese in a personal narrative.
“The closet and the coming out story is a bond that all LGBT people share in common,” Brooks said, asking that his fellow council members listen so that they could make an informed vote at Thursday night’s public meeting.
“There is outright discrimination in our society and then there is the fear of discrimination; the fear of being fired; the fear of losing your apartment; denied visitation rights in the hospital; the fear of a dishonorable discharge from the military,” Brooks said to a nearly empty council chambers. “Fear is very real. The closet is the embodiment of that fear. I know because, for 10 long years, I lived in the closet, afraid to open the door.”
The ordinance introduced by Councilwoman Beth Gilbert, another newcomer to council like Brooks, aims to quell those fears, she said, and provide LGBT people “equal opportunity in regards to employment, housing, and public accommodations.” It repeals language in an existing ordinance, expands the protected parties and establishes a human relations commissions to hear and address issues of discrimination.
Gilbert said Luzerne County Council is considering a similar ordinance and, even though there is duplication, it provides an “extra blanket of protection” because there is no such legislation on a state level. She told council Chairman Bill Barrett that she is working with state legislators to pass a state law.
Gilbert, a Democrat, found a ready ally in Brooks, a Republican, and together they worked with Dee Culp, of the Rainbow Alliance. Brooks recalled Culp asking him last year how she could get city council to act on a new ordinance. Council shot down the last one introduced in 1994.
Brooks said he told Culp, “Wait till Beth and I win, and you’ll have two votes.”
The vote is long time coming for Brooks, who described his struggle with his sexual orientation in the 1980s and 1990s.
He sought ways to cope. One of them was going to the gym and bulking up his 6-foot-2-inch frame because no one would think “a muscle guy was gay.” He said he joined the military hoping to “drum the gay out of me.” He got engaged to a woman but regretted hurting her with his lies. He retreated farther into the closet after losing a race for a seat on Philadelphia City Council. “I ran for office in the closet, the most stupid thing I did in my entire life,” he confided.
But it was his eventual admission to his mother, Emily, that changed his life. At first, his parents shut him out for more than a year. During that time, his mother went to the Osterhout Library, where her son sits on the board, and read as much as she could about gay people and issues.
“She did an about-face and completely embraced me. My confidence soared,” Brooks said. His mother began her activism for gay issues 25 years ago and led the push for the 1994 failed ordinance. “My mom has literally saved lives,” Brooks boasted.
Brooks said he’s encouraged by some of the progress made to address discrimination and his hope is that there will be more.
In addition to the ordinance, council will have a full agenda at its meeting, including a resolution to approve a $430,702 insurance package with Joyce Insurance Group, of Pittston. The no-bid contract is considered a professional service and cost $265,000 less than the current package, said Ted Wampole, city administrator.