Baltimore Sun
Sunday, February 22, 1998

GAY RIGHTS NOT STALLED BY MAINE REPEAL
Movement boasts increased momentum but supporters must guard against
passivity

By Steve Sanders
	
	Gays and lesbians everywhere were stung when Maine citizens voted
earlier this month to remove sexual orientation from their state's
anti-discrimination laws.  But although Christian conservatives have
claimed a major victory, for gays the defeat is not necessarily the
setback it might appear.

	The repeal exposed problems with one particular strategy for
winning rights and legal protection -- passing and defending statewide
anti-discrimination laws.  Meanwhile, gays are moving on several other
fronts nationally to win what they see as the ability to be open and
honest about their lives, and to end a status many see as a form of
second-class citizenship.  

	Add to this the rising visibility of gays in the media and culture
-- 32 years after network TV got its first double marital bed, Ellen
Degeneris gave prime time its 22nd gay character and its first gay lead --
and it becomes easier to see why most gay advocates believe, despite
frustrations and indignities, the forces of time and history are on their
side.  

	The Maine vote was hardly a true referendum on civil rights.  With
an overall turnout of only 31 percent, Christian conservatives were able
to tip the vote and repeal by 52-48 percent a law which the legislature --
arguably a more representative body than the older, more rural and
conservative voters who ventured out for the Feb. 10 single-issue
plebiscite -- had enacted last year.  

	A coalition including business leaders and the governor fought
repeal, and pre-balloting polls showed more than 60 percent of Mainers
favored the existing law.  
	
	Yet experience has shown such support is passive:  Most Americans
say gay rights are OK with them, just don't expect them to mount the
ramparts.
	
	The contest in Maine underscored Christian conservatives' powerful
advantage nationwide: grassroots organization.  In community after
community, gays find themselves confronted by the best-organized, most
disciplined and tenacious political machine the nation has ever known.
Every Bible-believing church is a potential ward hall, every sympathetic
pastor a precinct captain.  

	By contrast, while gays have growing clout in Washington and
lively networks on the internet, their grassroots organization is spotty
and ad hoc.  Lack of strong political organizations in each state is, says
Urvashi Vaid of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, "our biggest
structural weakness."  The problem: it's difficult to enlist and mobilize
a social group when most of its members are afraid to publicly identify
themselves.

	Conservative Christians have also been amazingly successful at
muddying the terms of debate over gay rights and, with disconcerting
earnestness, propagating often outrageous misinformation.  Laws to keep
individuals from being singled out for unfair and arbitrary mistreatment
are characterized as "special privileges"; small business owners are told
they'll be forced to hire quotas of people who are demonized as mentally
ill, sexually predatory, and politically subversive.  

	This strategy works for two reasons: 1) it plays on widespread
misconceptions about the legal basis for non-discrimination laws and how
they work, as well as a lack of knowledge about the realities of gay
lives, and 2) gay advocates often haven't done a good job providing
compelling proof of discrimination.  Carolyn Novak, an Ohio State
researcher who has studied anti-gay ballot initiatives in Maine, Colorado
and Oregon, found that "while gay activists...were occasionally able to
use personal narrative to demonstrate discrimination in one-on-one
encounters, stories of routine or institutionalized mistreatment failed to
surface in the media and so were not effectively planted in the minds of
the voting public."  

	This is not to deny many gays and lesbians suffer harassment and
discrimination at the hands of employers, landlords and storekeepers.  But
the discrimination is rarely as brazen as, say, that directed against
blacks in the 1960s.  As painful and humiliating as it may be to be fired
or refused housing because somebody suspects you might be gay, the vast
majority of Americans don't see evidence on their televisions or in their
daily lives.  Moreover, the 10 states and 165 cities or counties that have
gay rights laws on the books have seen relatively few complaints filed
under them.  
	
	(States with such laws include California, Connecticut, Hawaii,
Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island,
Vermont, and Wisconsin, plus the District of Columbia.  In Maryland, laws
protect gays against workplace discrimination in Baltimore, Rockville,
Takoma Park, and in Howard, Montgomery and Prince George's counties,
according to the American Civil Liberties Union.  In the wake of Maine, no
other statewide laws are thought to be in serious jeopardy.)

	For gays, campaigns to outlaw discrimination are often as much
about visibility and public education as they are about meeting an urgent
need to combat bias.  

	The gay community's key article of faith is that as more Americans
are drawn into dialogue about gay issues (and as more come to realize how
many gay friends, family members and co-workers they have), hearts and
minds will open.  In communities that have debated sexual orientation
laws, more than one newspaper has editorialized that the ugly backlash
proved the need not only for legal protections but for greater
understanding.

	This hearts-and-minds strategy seems to be working.  Americans are
not as hostile toward gay rights as some opponents claim, and they have
become less so over time.  

	Alan Yang of Columbia University and Kenneth Sherrill of Hunter
College, who have made extensive studies of public opinion about gays and
their issues, find that while gays remain "the single most systematically
disliked group" in America, overwhelming majorities -- 80 percent or more
-- now believe they "should have equal rights" in job opportunities and
housing, and 60 percent favor laws to protect them from job
discrimination.  And the younger you are, the more likely you're
comfortable with gays and supportive of their concerns. 

	So gays appear to have a winning issue when they appeal to
traditional American values of fairness.  Yet they often find themselves
outorganized, and their message drowned out by hostile and misleading ad
campaigns.  In such a climate, gays seem more likely to succeed when they
can steer the debate to relationships, rather than individual rights, or
when they can pursue legal remedies through the courts rather than
depending on legislatures or the ballot box. 

	Americans are sensitive to forms of unfairness that affect family
relationships or impair couples' ability to conduct their legal,
financial, and intimate affairs as they see fit.  They also support the
notion of equal pay for equal work.  These two values explain why gay
workers have enjoyed enormous success persuading employers to provide
domestic partner benefits.  More than one in 10 companies with at least
200 employees -- and almost a quarter of those with 5,000 or more -- now
offer such benefits, and the list grows every month. 

	Simply put, why should a gay employee in a committed, long-term
relationship be compensated less than a married co-worker whose spouse
automatically gets health insurance, and who is allowed medical or
bereavement leave to discharge urgent family obligations?  Domestic
partner benefits redress real economic discrimination while helping create
a climate where gays feel more comfortable talking about their lives and
relationships.  

	Because they usually involve a business or private organization,
and because the costs have proved negligible, benefits usually can be
extended with minimal fuss -- no political strife, no bitter media
campaigns.  Even when high profile corporations like Disney are involved,
or when cities extend benefits to municipal employees (most strikingly
last year in heavily Catholic Chicago), the controversy eventually blows
over.

	But the gay relationship issue Americans will soon hear even more
about is marriage.

	The supreme courts of Hawaii and Vermont are poised to rule on
whether those states must issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
The Hawaii court is widely expected to rule in favor of the gay plaintiffs
within the next few months.  

	This will set off firestorms almost everywhere.  What happens when
two men or two women from the mainland obtain a perfectly valid marriage,
then return to a home state were schools, employers, and government
agencies -- all of which dispense important subsidies and privileges
reserved for married people -- refuse to recognize their union? 
	
	Despite a stampede in more than half the state legislatures to
pass laws purporting to invalidate the U.S. Constitution's requirement
that states honor each other's laws and judicial rulings, most of these
conflicts will be sorted out in the less fevered atmosphere of the courts
-- almost inevitably culminating at the U.S. Supreme Court -- where
minorities appealing for equal protection under the law and other
Constitutional guarantees tend to fare better than with opportunistic
politicians or indifferent electorates.

	Still, gay leaders gearing up across the country know the marriage
struggle will put the hearts-and-minds strategy to its most dramatic test.
The issue provokes intense emotions.  But it also may force Americans to
confront the legal and economic inequities of gay versus straight
relationships, to differentiate between civil marriage and religious
ceremonies, and to think about what it means to be 50 states but one
country.  Equal marriage is the most audacious, idealistic and legally
intriguing challenge gays have issued to their fellow citizens. 

	
	Steve Sanders studies and teaches about gay and lesbian politics
at Indiana University, and is chairperson of the Bloomington, Indiana,
Human Rights Commission.