Welcome back to the word game that is the Salt Lake City Council's nondiscrimination ordinance. This time, the word is "lifestyle."

No council members like it. But they will live with it — if only to put the matter behind them.

"This is the beat-around-the-bush ordinance," says Councilwoman Deeda Seed, who pushed through the city's original anti-discrimination law last December with a lame-duck council. The members voted 5-2 to approve an ordinance that included "sexual orientation" in a list of classes protected from discrimination.

But Councilman Bryce Jolley and a new council summarily repealed Seed's measure a month later in a 4-3 vote.

After repealing Seed's version, Jolley suggested a more generic draft written by city attorneys. It excluded the class references and prohibited city supervisors from basing employment decisions on anything other than "job-related criteria," including: character, integrity, interpersonal skills, education and training.

Those criteria are in the newest version, hammered out by Jolley and fellow council members Tom Rogan and Roger Thompson. But the trio added this clause defining characteristics that could not be the basis for employment decisions: "The status of having a lifestyle which is irrelevant to successful job performance; and the status of being in or outside of an adult interpersonal relationship or a family relationship."

On Tuesday, council members are expected to adopt the new draft. The ordinance does not affect employee benefits.

Jolley believes the extra wording is unnecessary. "Adding this additional language is not really giving the gay community any more protection than they would already have," he says. "And it may go further than other people would like it to go. But it's a compromise." Rogan and Thompson proudly tout the apparent civility of their negotiations with Jolley.

"Under the circumstances," says Rogan, "given the composition of the council and where everyone started on this issue, we have come up with an ordinance that provides some substantial protections, not just to gays and lesbians. It's broader than that. And we've done it in a way that is sensitive to people who object to the sexual-orientation language."

But while the councilmen hype their bargain, their draft's language is offensive to gays and lesbians who contend their sexuality is not a choice, but inherent. The word "lifestyle" connotes a choice.

"The goal for some of my colleagues clearly was not to say 'sexual orientation,' " Seed says. "They didn't. It's not here. If this weren't so painful, it would be hilarious."

Salt Lake County, the University of Utah, and private companies such as American Express, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Levi Strauss all have policies that prohibit discrimination against employees based on their sexual orientation.

The verbiage the Salt Lake City Council is adding to avoid using those words is just as offensive as the January repeal drive, says Doug Wortham, a gay Rowland Hall-St. Marks teacher. "They've tried so hard not to say the words that they end up making a laughingstock of themselves by producing a ridiculous document."

Jon Davidson, supervising attorney for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund's Los Angeles office, agrees.

"They decided to use a very ambiguous, politically charged word, a word used chiefly by people who are opposed to lesbian-gay rights," Davidson says of the "lifestyle" reference. "It's politically palatable for them, but very unclear."

In fact, Davidson worries the new language could make Salt Lake City's nondiscrimination ordinance more difficult to enforce.

"In their attempts to avoid at all lengths the use of the words 'sexual orientation,' they are ending up with a very unclear ordinance," Davidson says. "The problem with vagueness and ambiguity in ordinances is people don't know when they're protected and the people who have to follow the law don't know what to do."

Still, Davidson acknowledges the current draft is better than nothing.

But Councilwoman Joanne Milner is disappointed the effort to draft a nondiscrimination ordinance has become a document of lowered expectations.

"We're hedging," says Milner. "We are not addressing a lifestyle. We're talking about discrimination."

© Copyright 1998, The Salt Lake Tribune