As an openly gay man, Greg Razer – Missouri State Representative, District 25 – has taken the lead to help get MONA through the Missouri House and Senate. This past month, they reached a milestone in the uphill battle.
Razer posted on his Facebook page the evening of May 16 that the Missouri Non-Discrimination Act (MONA) had successfully passed out of committee through the Missouri house after a 20-year fight. This battle has been fought by Razer's predecessor, former State Rep. Jolie Justus, along with allies at PROMO, HRC, the ACLU, and other groups.
Razer wrote: “ For only the second time in the 20-year history of MONA (Missouri Non-Discrimination Act - HB 1360 & 2100) being introduced in the House of Representatives, it has passed out of committee!
“By a vote of 6-0, the General Laws committee voted to pass our MONA bill, which is designed to end discrimination in the Show Me State against our LGBT citizens.
“While there is much work to do moving forward, tonight is a great victory for our cause. There are a few people I need to thank:
“I want to thank Rep Tom Hannegan for also introducing this legislation - making it truly bipartisan.
“I want to thank Chairman Cornejo for his honesty and candor during the past few weeks. And I want to thank all my bipartisan colleagues who voted in favor of MONA tonight.
“I want to thank PROMO and all the people and organizations that helped wrangle these votes.
“I want to think all the people who have been introducing and fighting for this legislation for the past 20 years - including former Senator Jolie Justus, the only person to ever successfully get it passed through the Senate.
“But mostly I thank all of you - constituents, friends, supporters, Missourians. It's an honor to be here and work on your behalf. Thank you all!”
“Now it’s time to take the next step. #moleg"
Although MONA has passed out of committee, Razer said final passage could take several years .
“I’m going to have to offer it as an amendment to another bill that opens up the same chapter of law that MONA does. So you can’t just offer anything to any bill. It has to be germane to the topic of that bill. So there are a couple of pieces of legislation that are moving right now that could be coming back to the house that I could try to put this on. Likely the Republicans are going to try and stop me from doing that, and there are some procedural moves that I can’t stop them from doing.”
“Truthfully, that process is not going to go through this year. The significance of yesterday was that only once before has MONA ever passed out of committee, which is a sad statement, in the House. Jolie got it passed by adding it as an amendment in the Senate. So it has cleared the Senate and passed the General Assembly, but it’s never passed through the House. So what we proved yesterday is that it can get Republican support. The chairman of the committee and another St. Louis Republican both voted in favor of it. It is significant within the building what happened yesterday.”
Razer said that he is building relationships, one by one, with members of the Republican Party. “I’m doing that just by finding things that we have in common. One of my passions outside of MONA is trying to find funding for infrastructure.” He said that one area of common ground and one of his passions is the Missouri Department of Transportation. “MoDOT is woefully underfunded, and we’re nearing a crisis point with our infrastructure in the state and with our bridges in particular.”
“And so working across the aisle with urban, suburban and rural reps coming from a rural area, I can understand the plight of rural roads and bridges.” Razer, 40, grew up in the small town of Cooter, Missouri, and he said that helps work with state representatives outside of Kansas City and St. Louis on everything from infrastructure to sensible gun legislation, agriculture, and a wide variety of legislation. “I’m one second” talking to somebody about MONA, and then I turn around and I’m talking about infrastructure funding.”
“So then they get to know me and I say, ‘Look, you like me, and let me tell you about this MONA bill. I know where you’re from and you probably never had to deal with LGBT issues, but I’m LGBT. We’re talking about me here.’” Razer said that because they work on other issues, it allows him to have conversations about LGBT issues like MONA and discrimination against the LGBTQ community.
One of the issues that many have privately expressed to him is their confusion over the transgender community. “I tell them to stop worrying about using the wrong language. This is just me and you. If you use the wrong language, I’ll tell you so you don’t do it in public, but you’re not going to offend me.”
Razer said he personalizes his conversations by telling his personal experiences with the transgender community when he first started working for PROMO, Missouri’s statewide organization for LGBTQ Equality from 2003 to 2006. He later went to work for Claire McCaskill as a deputy regional director for eight years. He will be running unopposed for a second term this November.
“There are some concerns, and frankly I understand the concerns. There have been conversations about changing the definition of both sexual orientation and gender identity and the way that it’s written right now.” Razer said the definition as written now is a long and rambling statement that is confusing to some conservatives who don’t understand the LGBT community. “So I think we’ve come up with a compromise in the future that we – being me, Rep. Hannegan (the other LGBT legislator) and PROMO – are perfectly fine with.”
Razer said there was a fear that someone wishing to make a claim over being fired could falsely claim they were transgender. He said they are changing the definition of transgender from a very broad perspective to include a more specific definition. “We add the part of transgender to say if you’re truly transgender and can prove it by having medical documentation. So there is a medical process that starts with therapy or hormone therapy, and you can prove that you are transgender so that will take away some of the fears of the business community.
Razer said that they will not reduce the coverage of MONA for it to pass. “I won’t support that. It’s going to be all three: employment, housing and public accommodation.”
Razer said MONA faces a threat from Missouri state Sen. Bob Dixon who is trying to please those in favor of religious freedom bills and that this could be a threat down the road. “The problem is that some of the more right-wing Republicans in the House have caught wind of this, and they may try to hijack MONA with this language that right now is essentially MONA married with SJR39 from a few years ago. That was the awful concept of allowing discrimination. That was a huge ordeal to get that thing stopped.”
“We can’t get this past the finish line without the support of everyone else. This is a Republic; we are all part of this system. We have to involve our community and our allies all across the state, calling their representatives. We are, or we love someone who is, LGBT and this is important to us.”
“I am truly honored that the people of my district have given me this opportunity and put their trust in me. And I’m grateful for the support of our LGBT community that they have continued to show me. I hope that I can do everyone proud.”
Razer encourages people to follow him on Facebook: Greg Razer; Twitter: @gregrazer’ and Instagram: Greg_Razer. He said he has a state representative page, but uses it mainly to promote Town Halls. He also invites people to his Town Halls and everyone is welcome, whether you live in his district or not.
“It baffles me that in 2018 it is this difficult to say, ‘You know, how about we don’t fire someone because they’re gay.’” “That’s essentially what this bill says: ‘You know what, maybe we treat everybody with respect and you get to keep your job.”