At 17, Tyler Morrison is proudly out and doing something to ensure equality
for all in Boca Raton, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
He was recently appointed to the city’s Community Relations Board. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Ron Hayes
When Boca Raton Mayor Susan Whelchel invited the public to speak at the Nov. 14 City Council meeting, a 17-year-old boy with a ponytail and a ring in his nose stepped to the microphone.
“Currently in Boca Raton, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) employees have no legal recourse to protect themselves,” Tyler Morrison told the council. “This is unacceptable.”
Morrison was asking his city to amend an ordinance that was passed 29 years before he was born. Dating to 1966, the policy prohibits discrimination based on ethnicity, race, religion and other categories. It hasn’t been changed since, and in January 2011, the council voted to opt-out of a more expansive Palm Beach County ordinance, leaving Boca Raton the only municipality that doesn’t specifically protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered employees.
“Let’s value our diversity,” Morrison said. “Let’s include sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in our city’s anti-discrimination policy and protect everyone equally. It’s simply the right thing to do. Thank you.”
The council responded by unanimously voting Morrison to its Community Relations Board, and Morrison wept.
“I cried at that first meeting because they seemed to take me seriously,” he explained.
Two months later, the ponytail is gone but the nose ring remains. Seated at a table outside Starbucks in CityPlace, Morrison apologizes for being a little late to the interview. He was conducting a 13-member chamber ensemble in Richard Strauss’s “Serenade in E Flat, Opus 7” at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts, where he’s an oboe-playing senior.
“I want to be a symphony conductor,” he says, still flushed from school. “There’s nothing I like better.”
Born in West Boca Hospital, Morrison attended Boca Raton Middle School and lives in the Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club. In person, he shimmers with the sort of idealistic optimism of a very bright young person who’s filled with high-minded ambition and not quite ready to acknowledge that priorities must be set.
In addition to conducting, he wants to revive the bankrupt Florida Philharmonic, attend the University of Illinois next year, and run for the City Council. He’s put a run for mayor on hold, for now.
Morrison is also a young gay man for whom the closet is a place to keep clothes. Reflecting on the decade when Boca Raton passed its employment ordinance, his eyes widen with disbelief.
“In the 1960s,” he says, “the police were raiding gay bars and arresting people who went there!”
His own coming out, he says, was not terribly traumatic.
“I had a girlfriend in seventh grade,” he says, matter-of-factly. “One was enough.”
In eighth grade, he came out.
“I would tell my friends, and word got around. There are always going to be people who aren’t very nice, but I didn’t hang around with those people. My mom said, ‘Be who you are; we’re not going to love you any less.’ ”
Last year, he volunteered for President Obama’s re-election campaign and went door to door soliciting support.
“I really liked doing it,” he recalls, “and so I decided to get involved in local politics.”
Reading the South Florida Gay News, he found articles about Boca Raton’s refusal to include sexual orientation protection in a waste-removal contract with the county, which requires it. A month later, the city acquiesced, the contract was signed, and Morrison had found his local cause.
When Rand Hoch, president of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, heard of Morrison’s appointment to the CRB, he congratulated him on Facebook. Recently, he joined the HRC board.
“Tyler is the reason this is going to happen,” Hoch predicts. “It always helps when you have a local person step up to the plate, and with his knowledge and enthusiasm, it makes a difference. He’s going to keep after them, and Boca Raton will be a better place because of him.”
It hasn’t happened yet, but after Morrison’s comments, the council instructed City Manager Leif Ahnell to gather information on how the issue might be addressed. In addition, the CRB will ask the council to add sexual orientation, gender and gender identity to the areas it considers.
Deputy Mayor Susan Haynie and council member Constance Scott have expressed support for updating the ordinance, but did not respond to a phone message and email requesting comment. Mayor Susan Whelchel declined to comment until she has seen the city manager’s report.
Morrison is pressing on, however.
“I just want people to know there are some who will hinder progress and some who encourage it,” he said. “I’m just doing what I believe in, and I’m lucky enough to be able to express it. It’s not about me, or even gays. Eventually, we shouldn’t even have to extend protections to special classifications.” Ú
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