Business takes up gay pride banner

[kweerwolf]

TAMPA - On Monday night, in a small room down the hall from a church sanctuary draped in rainbow banners, several dozen business people, some gay, some straight, flexed muscles in the growing fight over the Hillsborough County Commission's ban on promoting gay pride.

<snip>

Moral outrage has driven opposition to the commission's 5-1 vote that requires government to "abstain from acknowledging, promoting or participating in gay pride events." But in the wider business community, the outrage is linked to a fear that the region's economy may have been irreparably harmed.

<snip>

Cities that have wrestled with controversies over gay rights laws have learned costly lessons.

For example, Cincinnati leaders passed a charter amendment in 1993 that specifically prohibited the city from passing any antidiscrimination laws based on sexual orientation. But officials later said Cincinnati lost $21-million in convention business immediately after the law went into effect. They repealed it last year.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/06/22/Tampabay/Business_takes_up_gay.shtml