Demonstrators Call Funke on GENDA

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Submitted by AlBrundage on Tue, 2018-11-06 00:07

Funke rally 2018 11 04

A group of about 25 demonstrators gathered Sunday morning, November 4 in front of New York State Senator Richard Funke's office in Fairport. They were there to protest the Senator's remarks made the previous week on WXXI Radio's Evan Dawson Show. The remarks concerned his dismissal of GENDA, the Gender Expression Non Discrimination Act.

This from Wikipedia explains the proposed law:

The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) is a proposed New York law which adds gender identity and Gender expression as a protected class in the state's human rights and hate crimes laws, prohibiting discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations and other areas, and providing enhanced penalties for bias-motivated crimes. It was first introduced in both the Assembly and Senate in 2003[1] and has been passed for the 8th time in the Assembly since 2007, but has never come to a vote on the floor of the State Senate.

full article here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Expression_Non-Discrimination_Act

Funke was a key committee vote in preventing the bill from coming to the floor of the Senate. He claims the Act is unwarranted since a 2015 Executive Order by Governor Andrew Cuomo says essentially the same thing. But as we have seen with President Trump's rescinding of Obama's executive orders, they can be easily undone following changes of administration, unless they are codified into law.

The rally was organized by Funke's Democratic opponent in the upcoming election, Jen Lunsford. He repeated his comments during a debate with her. The protest was not publicized on social media, as it was meant to be a surprise. Two people were seen leaving the office about 15 minutes before the rally started but the Senator did not appear to be one of them.

Video of the debate is available here