For five years, DeKalb has been enforcing a law that protects the community from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.

Sycamore has not made any provisions or passed any similar laws.

The law in DeKalb passed in two parts. The first part passed in 1998 with an amendment passed by the city council that added the sexual orientation category to the Human Rights Ordinance.

Community Members Against Discrimination is a human rights activist group that was primarily responsible for getting the change passed.

“The 1998 bill was a big victory, but significantly flawed,” said John Butler, assistant professor, director of forensics at NIU and a member of CMAD.

The problem was the city attorney office had adopted a definition of sexual orientation that did not legally include transgender people, Butler said.

“DeKalb became infamous for that compromise,” Butler said. DeKalb was condemned across the country by the national civil rights movement and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender groups for the flaw in the legislation, he said.

CMAD presented an amendment to the Human Relations Commission in 2000 that redefined the definition of gender as inclusive of gender identity and expression.

Joe Wise, commission chairman for the Human Relations Commission, said the amendment was important and many of the people who went to the hearings regarding the amendment were both for and against it.

The city council voted and the amendment was passed rather quickly, Wise said.

Wise said to his knowledge there have been no official complaints about discrimination based on gender identity or expression since he took office in 1990.

Whether it was necessary to have special protection for those groups is debatable, Wise said. Now that it is a law, it must be enforced.

Similar laws have not been debated in Sycamore.

Sycamore Mayor John Swedberg said such amendments have not been considered because no complaints about discrimination based on sexual orientation have been made.

It has not been brought up because no one has felt the need to do so,” Swedberg said. “I guess it’s because we welcome new people all the time and we don’t have any complaints.”

But Butler said he recalls specific cases of discrimination happening in Sycamore.

It is unlikely a person would report discrimination if there is no law that says they are protected to begin with, Butler said

Swedberg said if an amendment came up in Sycamore, “I will throw my support behind it.”