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.