Last night the Oak Park Village Council voted 6/1 in favor of granting village employees (n~400) full DP benefits. Oddly, they voted 4/3 not to create a DP Registry for Oak Park Citizens. This may be the first time we've been granted the material benefits but not the symbolic ones - even though the actual benefits accrue to a much smaller popluation than the entire village of 50K. Oak Park has always been a progressive center of diversity, just outside of Chicago. They have an ordinance prohibiting discrimination, and lesbigay youth drop-in center, and recently a regular lesbigay bookstore (with substantiative literature). The council was expected to gut the medical benefits out of the DP, passing sickness/bereavement only, and pass the Registry as well. What they did instead was amend the DP to INCLUDE medical. This occurred after a long evening of intense debate. The hall only held 250 some, and the fire chief counted every person through the door. I sat with the fundies, their applause and sighs ringing heavily at all the the wrong times. It was a very powerful, emotional night, with debates @3min each from 6-11 PM. The fundies were just that, hitting topics like "morality" heavily. Why did they win on the REGISTRY? (this did happen at the last minute) Some of the more articulate, presentable opponents... well, there was one elderly attorney who claimed some of his best clients were lesbigay -- he insisted that the village clerk could not possibly keep up this paperwork, that the village would have to spend more on payroll for that AND to hire an investigator, etc... The board, not lawyerly for the most part, we're scared by that (not realizing it was a bold-faced lie more relevent to the nondiscrimination ordinanance) AND scared by talk of this Registry ostensibly violating state and federal laws. Well, it was a sham. I mean a shame. Misinformation campaigns WORK. So, we need to be armed with all the facts. Daniel Barcus dbarcus@attmail.com