Grand Rapids LGBT History – Businesses, Boycotts and Ordinances

It has been several months since the recent Holland City Commission decision to not include sexual orientation into the City’s anti-discrimination ordinance.

One of the first responses to this Holland decision from the LGBT community and their allies was to call for a boycott of Holland businesses. However, this decision quickly turned into a campaign of finding businesses that supported an LGBT inclusive ordinance and promoting them. According to the group Until Love is Equal, this tactic would send a message, “as non-supportive businesses watched customers going into other stores.”

In Grand Rapids, the campaign to get an LGBT-inclusive ordinance passed played out in a different way. The campaign to pass an ordinance began in 1991 after the Community Relations Commission recommended that the ordinance be updated to include “gender orientation” into the language.

The first time the ordinance was brought before the City Commission it was voted done 4 – 3, with lots of people at the first public hearing expressing their opposition to such an ordinance.

The LGBT community at that time did not call for a boycott of Grand Rapids businesses, nor did they seek out businesses, which supported the ordinance change. Instead, some in the local business community put together a list of those who also opposed the ordinance saying it was “contrary to the values of West Michigan.”

However, what is interesting about the businesses that actively opposed to the ordinance in Grand Rapids in 1991 was the fact that many of those in the original list actually were NOT opposed to the ordinance. The list that was provided to the Grand Rapids City Commission came from Mike Beckett, a man who worked for a local insurance agency. He submitted a list of 140 businesses he claimed were opposed to the ordinance, which members of the LGBT community at the time believed influenced the Commission’s decision.

Members of the LGBT community seemed to think that the list was not accurate and began contacting those listed to verify their stance on this issue. During this process they discovered that many of the businesses on the list did not oppose the ordinance and were never approached by Mr. Beckett about such a campaign against inclusion.

Once Mike Beckett was exposed for his deceit he made a formal apology to the Lesbian and Gay Community Network, which published his apology in their August 1991 newsletter. Once the group had verified the real list of businesses that opposed the ordinance they decided to publish that list in the September issue of the Network newsletter. It is worth noting which businesses and individuals were on that list (included here) from 1991, a list that now included just 59 entities.

After the accurate list was published there was no real push from the broader business community to oppose the ordinance, but there were some area families with significant wealth that made their opposition to equality for the LGBT community known by spending lots of money on campaigns to defeat such efforts. That is an issue we will explore in our next article on the Grand Rapids history of the LGBT community.

Included here is a 1991 archival news story on the first ordinance hearing that was defeated.