The Lincoln City Council approved expanding the city’s civil rights protections to gays and transgender people on a 5-0 vote Monday evening.

But two conservative advocacy groups will be organizing a petition drive to stop the proposal from going into effect until there is a city-wide vote on the issue.

The Nebraska Family Council and Family First will be distributing petitions to collect the more than 2,500 signatures of registered city voters needed to get the issue on the ballot, said Al Riskowski, executive director of Nebraska Family Council.

Under a provision of the city charter, the coalition has just 15 days to collect the signatures.

Congratulations to Lincoln’s city council for passing this measure, which says “that decisions about whether you can be hired or not hired, fired or not fired, or denied housing cannot be based on who you live with or who you have a relationship with.”

But what a shame that these two organizations, draping themselves in rhetoric about families, seem now to be openly advocating for discrimination. Of course, they’ll surely say that the matter is just so important that the citizens must be given the opportunity to vote on it.

Because, when it comes to discriminating against gays and lesbians, the members of the city council — who were elected by the citizens to represent the interests of the citizens — clearly need their decision to be double-checked by a ballot initiative, right? I hope the Nebraska Family Council and Family First also intend to put every other issue from the city council’s agenda on the ballot so that Lincoln voters can give their thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Surely they aren’t only going to insist that citizens double-check this anti-discrimination measure. Because that would make it seem like they’re actually in favor of discrimination against certain groups. But that can’t be right …