First published January 19, 2005, in the Chicago Free Press.
In a vulgar and half-crazed speech delivered at New York's Cooper Union shortly after last November's presidential election, playwright and drama queen Larry Kramer pronounced the gay-rights movement "Dead." Dead. Deceased. Over. Finished.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral: The state of Illinois passed a gay nondiscrimination law. It was as if the corpse suddenly sat up and started waving a cheery hello to the mourners.
On January 10, the Illinois Senate passed the bill by a vote of 30-27. It was the bare minimum necessary for passage, but winning with the minimum votes is a lot better than coming up one vote short of the minimum. In politics, as Eisenhower pointed out, there are no moral victories. You either win or lose.
The next day the Illinois House passed the bill by a vote of 65 to 51, well over the minimum votes necessary, and Governor Blagojevich, as promised, signed it expeditiously on January 21.
One might notice a few things in passing that offer lessons for other states less far along. The law represents the culmination of some 30 years of effort by successive teams of activists starting in 1974 when the Illinois Gay Rights Task Force (then so-named) was formed to work for passage of a nondiscrimination law. The bill's first sponsor was state Rep. Susan Catania, a Republican.
Passage was more or less hopeless during the '70s and '80s. The gay movement was young, desperately underfunded and understaffed. It received little support from a timid and politically passive community. And public opinion was far from taking seriously the idea of equality for gays.
Passage took years of painstaking lobbying in the legislature, public advocacy in the mass media, and a vastly increased number of gay people coming out. Over the years gays were significantly aided by conscientious reporters and supportive columnists in the print media such as Jean Latz Griffin and Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune, and Tom Brune, Howard Wolinsky and Neil Steinberg at the Sun-Times - and unnamed editorial writers at both papers.
But even more, passage required a well-funded and fully staffed political organization created by Equality Illinois, able to help legislators win primaries and elections, able to create political obligations, able to generate multiple thousands of letters, calls and e-mails to legislators. Politics, we are reminded, has little to do with what is right and everything to do with political power.
In the end, the law was passed in the first legislative session in which Democrats controlled both chambers of the legislature and the governorship. Although earlier GOP governors, moderates all, had said they would sign the bill, conservative legislative leaders kept the measure bottled up.
And the bill was approved after the November election, not before, so legislators felt less vulnerable. Three GOP senators and 12 GOP House members joined the majority of Democrats in voting for the bill. Without mentioning any names, it actually helped to have a crazed loony or two on the other side.
But someone might object that one swallow does not make a summer. Well, I hate to sound like Little Mary Sunshine. Gloom and doom always seem so much more profound. And alarm always sells well to people whose egos depend on the feeling that they are significant because they are threatened. But here, more briefly, are other signs of gay progress in January alone.
- The publication of the late C. A. Tripp's long-awaited book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, arguing that Lincoln was predominantly homosexual in orientation, even if it does not convince everyone nevertheless decisively alters the landscape by raising the issue in a thoroughgoing way. Reviewing the book for the New York Times, conservative National Review senior editor Richard Brookhiser seemed to accept the general thrust of Tripp's argument. Consider the impact of the book on high school students doing reports on Lincoln or projects on the Civil War.
- Responding to the urging of New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr., who acted on the basis of stocks held by the city's pension funds, six more Fortune 500 companies indicated that they would include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination codes - United States Steel, Alcoa, AllTel, Harrah's Entertainment, Owens-Illinois and Coventry Healthcare.
- Bishops of the Episcopal Church of America, responding to theologically untutored, fundamentalist Anglicans in third world countries, said they "deeply regret" not, mind you, having consecrated an openly gay bishop, but the fact that their doing so caused "pain" to some people. In other words, "We're sorry if you are upset." Clearly they felt they were in a strong theological and institutional position and, unlike feckless Anglicans in Britain, were unwilling to back down.
- A study panel of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, with an eye to the controversies embroiling Episcopalians, recommended that their church maintain its current policy forbidding same-sex union ceremonies and non-celibate gay clergy, but should "tolerate" (i.e., allow) churches and pastors that practice otherwise. In effect, this gives a green light to speeded up "doctrinal change from below."
This column honors the memory of Al Wardell, valued friend and long-time head of the Illinois Gay and Lesbian Rights Task Force.