Badpuppy Gay Today

Friday, 02 May 1997

Those in the 1980's who predicted America would soon enter "the Gay Nineties" were on the mark. As applied to civil rights, the year 1997 easily compares with the mid-1960's in America's rush to either correct or to avoid recognizing the implications of long-standing legal inequities visited on U.S. citizens. From Florida to Washington state and from Massachusetts to Hawaii, lawmakers in The United States are currently grappling--locally-- with gay and lesbian issues in a volume never before equaled. The results, encouraging, infuriating, and, more often than not, mixed, make up a patchwork quilt-of-concerns ranging from the rights of cross-dressers to the recognition or disavowal of same-sex marriages.

Demonstrating even gay Republican clout, as in Oregon, bi-partisan approaches in many areas reflect relatively stable polls in which an overwhelming majority of Americans favor, at a minimum, equal employment opportunities and protections for gay men and lesbians. President Clinton and Vice President Gore recently held an historic White House meeting to map strategy for ENDA (The Employment Non-Discrimination Act) expected to be re-introduced to Congress in spring. Strong bi-partisan support seems assured. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has urged gay men and lesbians in every state to write, phone, fax and E-mail their representatives, urging ENDA's speedy passage.

In Oregon, according to the Log Cabin Republicans, an openly gay GOP legislator has championed a gay rights bill that, in the Oregon House, has passed (April 29). Representative Chuck Carpenter (R), say Log Cabin officials, single-handedly shut down the Oregon House of Representatives two weeks ago in a successful attempt to move a gay rights bill to the floor. This paved the way to a 40-20 vote, demonstrating widespread bi-partisan support.

Oregon's Log Cabin President, Jerry Keene authored the bill and "pushed" among legislators for its passage. House speaker Lynn Lundquist joined Rep. Carpenter and ten other Republicans who announced support for the bill which now moves on to the Oregon Senate. "This historic vote," crows the Log Cabin membership, "proves the value of gays and lesbians being on the inside of the Republican majority."

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, mirroring legislation that already exists in Pittsburgh and San Francisco, the City Council has unanimously amended the city's human rights ordinance, prohibiting discrimination based on gender and gender expression, assuring that women who look "too masculine" or men who appear "too feminine" cannot be legally harassed or discriminated against, according to activist Nanci Nangeroni.

The Democratic Governor of Florida, Lawton Chiles, has, on his desk, a Republican-sponsored bill that refuses legal recognition to same-sex marriages. At the same time, a constitutional challenge to a Florida law banning adoptions by lesbian and gay parents, is being brought to trial by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) May 5 before a state circuit court in Ft. Lauderdale.

Although in 1990, a longtime law prohibiting U.S. entries of foreign-born homosexuals was repealed, a new law, which took effect April 1, now gives illegal immigrants who are gay, fewer ways to halt their own deportations. The new law requires such immigrants to prove that deportation would cause "extreme hardship" to a spouse, child or parent who is a U.S. citizen or a permanent U.S. resident. Since there is presently no place in the U.S. where same-sex spouses can claim legal standing, couples such as 49-year-old Pat Gleason, a social worker in the nation's capital and his 44-year-old companion of eight years, Wan Lee, a Malaysian-born massage therapist, may be forced to leave the country.

Two anti-gay Californian bills have gone down to defeat, one to squelch same-sex marriage and the other, to close bath houses. LIFE Lobby's Laurie McBride rejoiced that "the radical right was so far out--they actually make the case for us....Faced with such open gay-bashing in a committee, it doesn't matter whether the issue is bath houses or marriage, the committee sees why we need protection."

Simultaneously in California, gay candidates have been elected to public office in San Mateo and Redondo Beach. Right wing newspapers, including The Washington Times, are bemoaning growing gay clout across the political spectrum, utilizing awkward and malicious commentaries they hope will stir anti-gay sentiment.

Ratifying agreements made earlier in April, legislators in both houses of Hawaii's legislature are congratulating themselves for officially approving what they call "reciprocal rights for same-sex couples." The ACLU, however, along with Hawaiian gay and lesbian activists, has condemned this official vote, calling it an attempt to sidetrack "a landmark same-gender marriage case." Rights granted by the legislature, starting July 1, allow same-sex couples only a portion of the benefits available to married couples. At the same time Hawaiian lawmakers, shamelessly citing Hawaii's long history of toleration of diversity, are sending a constitutional amendment to voters to ban any official recognition of same-sex marriages.

Another anti-gay video (like "The Gay Agenda") has been produced and is being sold by Jerry Falwell's Ft. Lauderdale-area cohort, The Reverend D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, and is titled "Homosexuality: Your Tax Dollars At Work." It was shown last weekend over 500 "religious" stations nationwide. This video, for which its tax-exempt maker is asking a "donation" of $25 dollars or more, is representative of hate-mongering at its slickest, filled with lies and alarming innuendoes upon which "religious" fundamentalists and evangelicals regularly rely to scare their followers into making substantial financial contributions.

"These nutty-fundamentalists," gay rights pioneer, Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, told GayToday, "are becoming increasingly shrill and strident because they know that they are losing the battle. The tide is with us because we are right and they are wrong; we are moral and they are immoral, as bigotry and hate-mongering always are; and, we are American, while they are un-American and anti-American."