Written by:
Julia Bloch
Photographer:
Jeanette Snyder
In recent years, other tasks have been at the top of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and transsexual "to do" list. At the local, state and national levels we've fought for hate crimes prevention and employment and housing non-discrimination legislation. In 1999, Nevada became the 11th state to ban job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation; Rhode Island became the first state ever to enact legislation allowing people to designate persons other than blood relatives to make funeral arrangements; in Kentucky, four city and county fairness ordinances included language covering discrimination based on gender identity.
But the right wing knows that while more and more Americans support anti-discrimination and hate crimes laws, same-sex marriage still feels deeply threatening to many. They're only too eager to use same-sex marriage as a "wedge issue" to divide voters and roll back our community's gains. Their latest antic -- the Knight Initiative, on the ballot in California in March -- would ban the recognition of same-sex marriage and fan the flames of homophobia in a state otherwise inclined towards tolerance (last fall, Governor Gray Davis signed four landmark pro-gay bills). Locked in a political waltz with the radical right, activists in California and beyond are finding themselves dancing backwards as the opposition once again takes the lead.
It's a bitter pill to swallow. Nowhere is same-sex marriage even legal,but its important benefits and privileges -- equitable property, adoption, inheritance and privacy rights as well as tax advantages -- have already been outlawed in 31 states.
Some activists have been reluctant to jump on the marriage bandwagon because, they argue, the fight for marriage does little to reflect the diversity of our community. African-American lesbian activist Renae Ogletree, executive director of the Chicago Youth Leadership Project, argues that while the right to marry is important, "in some ways marriage is a white GLBT issue. As healthy as the benefits of marriage might be, we deal more with issues related to racism -- [such as] not being able to get housing due to the fact that we're black."
But most people understand intuitively that the Knight Initiative isn't just about marriage. "This is a right-wing Trojan Horse," says Tracey Conaty of the statewide No on Knight campaign about the initiative. "Just look at the record of the people behind the Knight Initiative. It's chilling. It's crystal clear that they intend to use this initiative as a stepping stone to go after GLBT people and other minority communities -- women and the right to choose, people of color, immigrants -- that is their track record. It's critical that others understand that if the Knight Initiative is not defeated, it's a huge gust of wind in the sails of the right wing."
Which is why many people nationwide, gay and straight, will be on the edge of their seats when California voters go to the polls in March. But the question on everyone's mind is: How long can this dance last?
Looking at the Big Picture Ostensibly, the Knight Initiative is the right's reaction to the very real possibility that Vermont and Hawaii will soon legalize same-sex marriage. At the time of this writing, neither of these state Supreme Courts has yet ruled whether to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
But the initiative's language (only 14 words) sounds deceptively simple. The Knight Initiative would give the right powerful leverage to challenge anti-discrimination, domestic partnership and equal rights laws in California. This is exactly what the right wing has achieved in Illinois, Virginia, Idaho and Washington. "The Knight Initiative is clear and present danger," says Conaty, "and if we sleep through it, we'll wake up to find every pro-gay measure signed into law in California in serious jeopardy -- and other minority communities will be in the line of fire of Pete Knight and his ilk."
Anabel Evora of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) says if the Knight Initiative passes, it would open the door to California gays and lesbians being "treated under the law as second-class citizens. It's another form of apartheid."
There is a silver lining to what could otherwise simply be a very nasty chapter in California politics. Like other states, California is using the latest right-wing attack to build a statewide progressive movement that will fight the right's agenda in a broad-based, strategic way and take back the lead in the fight for equality.
Because ballot initiatives similar to Knight passed by strong numbers in Hawaii and Alaska, if the Knight Initiative is defeated or passes by a narrow margin, NGLTF's David Elliot says, "it will send shock waves" through the country; "California paves the way," he asserts. One in eight Americans is a Californian, and California represents one-fifth of the electoral votes one needs to become president.
California activists know the impact their work will have on fights in other states, and that's why they are working to ensure that they take the wind out of the right's sails. "If we kill this thing in California," says Jean Harris, executive director of the statewide LGBT organization Basic Rights Oregon, "it may stop the wave. It will definitely slow it down."
"The tide is turning," says Elliot, noting that NGLTF tracked 541 gay-related bills in state legislatures in 1999. For the first time, pro-gay bills outnumbered hostile legislation, which Elliot says reflects "a checkerboard reality -- not only is favorable and unfavorable legislation advancing at the same time in many different states, but both favorable and unfavorable legislation is advancing in the same state legislatures."
"Keep in mind that this is a marathon, not a sprint," says Elliot. "It's a fight that will go on for the rest of our lives."
Taking Cues from Other States "Sometimes you don't have the luxury of picking your battles," Conaty notes wryly. "But we do have an opportunity here to build the GLBT movement and to educate more folks about discrimination faced by same-sex couples -- and to build alliances that will serve us in pushing a proactive agenda."
No on Knight is shaping itself after LGBT organizations in several states that have successfully used coalition and grassroots organizing to fight the right.
The Hawaii campaign for same-sex marriage began modestly, with just two couples and a volunteer lawyer. The 1993 state Supreme Court decision, which declared that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples violates the U.S. Constitution, "mobilized the community here in Hawaii in a way that we had never been mobilized before," says Hawaii Marriage Project's Tom Ramsey.
Legalization of same-sex marriage had been tried in four states, and "all sorts of astute observers said this case had zero chance of success," Ramsey notes. Remarkably, "the reason we now have domestic partnership rights [in Hawaii] is the threat [the case posed] that we might get something better. We've made domestic partnership the middle ground."
Ramsey places Hawaii's success squarely on grassroots organizing. "I call it the slow, patient, real work of politics," he says. "Media matters, but it doesn't mean anything if there aren't foot soldiers behind it."
The Vermont Freedom to Marry campaign, which formed in 1995, acts primarily as a public education campaign, both to build public support for the court case and to prepare for right-wing fallout after the decision. The Vermont Voices for Equality Project Marriage Resolution, a declaration of support of same-sex marriage, has signed on well over 2,000 individuals and groups from mental health, women's rights, civil rights, and religious communities. Coordinator Dorothy Mammen says her organization decided to focus on the resolution because "we wanted to show that people in all walks of life were supporting, not just all of any one group [such as] tradespeople or educated professionals."
The most coveted statewide gay organizing model is in Oregon, where the anti-gay Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA), the folks who brought you Measures 9 and 13, is trying to put a measure on the state ballot in November that defines marriage as a right held only by opposite-sex couples. Basic Rights Oregon killed nine anti-gay bills in the state legislature in 1999 and thanks its wildly successful Voter File Project, a coalition of LGBT, labor, environmental, people of color, women's rights, and other progressive groups.
On Familiar Terrain Californians remember the Briggs Initiative of 1978, when 58 percent of voters rejected legislation that would have barred gays and lesbians from employment in California's public schools. BRO's Harris was organizing in California then, and says, "We're going to be in the same spot 10 years down the road if we don't learn to be smarter about who our supporters and who our base is. [Knight is] the same damn thing as the Briggs Initiative we need to know our movement's only about 20 years old -- we have to be smart, build alliances and coalitions that care about civil rights."
It does look as if even if the Knight Initiative passes, California's progressive community will be in better shape for it. Even before No on Knight began to conduct outreach, local labor and city councils began to come out against the initiative. Last fall, Latino groups began meeting in Los Angeles to use the movement they built against Proposition 187 to fight the initiative.
Part of recruiting allies means exposing who's behind Knight: the Traditional Values Coalition, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition, who have sponsored and funded almost every anti-public education and anti-labor piece of legislation and initiative in California in the 1990s, and were among the largest contributors to anti-immigrant and anti-affirmative action Propositions 187 and 209. Howard Ahmanson, the initiative's single biggest funder at $310,000, told Common Cause Magazine that "the Bible teaches that there should be the death penalty for homosexuals, sodomites [and] adulterers because it is treason against the family."
If your civil rights are under assault, you have to fight," even if you don't care about the right to marry, says No on Knight campaign manager Mike Marshall.
It's precisely this rhetoric that has enabled even wary moderates like vice president Al Gore to register their opposition to the initiative under the banner statement: "Regardless of your feelings about same-sex marriage, we can all agree that the Knight Initiative is bad for California," Conaty declares. "It's unfair, divisive and intrusive.
"Now's the time to make a difference," she says. Conaty's campaign's effort to build a statewide movement is drawing in more and more voters from all walks of life, who are realizing, she says, "If not now, when?"
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