From: RAKNGLTF@aol.com Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1995 09:18:54 -0400 Subject: John D'Emilio Op-Ed 8/3 Gay/Lesbian Press Editors, Following is an opinion article written by Dr. John D'Emilio, an author and historian who is the director of the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, DC. I hope you will consider publishing this piece in your opinion/commentary section. If you have any questions, please contact me [Robin Kane, NGLTF Media Director] at (202) 332-6483, ext. 3311 or rkane@ngltf.org. ******** Where Have All the Homophobes Gone?: State Politics in the Gingrich Era by John D'Emilio The Republican Party's Contract with America--and its younger sibling, the Contract with the American Family--have dominated political reporting for most of the year. Because both have chosen to sidestep head-on discussion of homosexuality, gay issues have slipped from the national media's radar screen. For many gay men, lesbians and bisexuals this must come as a welcome relief, a moment of respite in a hard political season. Who, after all, could enjoy being the target of the kind of rhetoric generated in the last few years--at the Republican convention in Houston, in the Senate hearings on the military's exclusion policies, or in the fight over the NEA? The lull, however, is more apparent than real. Congress is not the only body that legislates. In the fifty states, there was no Contract with America to discipline local right-wing political leaders, but in many of them there is an infrastructure of gay organizations eager to move forward their quest for respect and equality. The result is that state capitals rather than Congress have become the battleground upon which the issue of equal rights for gays is being fought. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute recently released a study of state legislation. Because the survey is the first of its kind, it is impossible to determine whether the action level is greater or less than in recent years. But what can be said with certainty is that legislative debates about the place of gay, lesbian and bisexual citizens in society are extensive. At least 97 gay-related measures moved forward in 33 states. In 30 states, anti-gay measures received serious consideration, while 18 states advanced non-discrimination bills of one sort or another. The news, both good and bad, can tell us much about the political strength of the gay community and of its most outspoken opponents. The brightest spot was Rhode Island, which became the ninth state to enact a statewide civil rights measure banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. The clearest pattern of gay-friendly activity was the tendency, expressed in fifteen states, to include sexual orientation among a list of categories needing protection against discrimination. They tended to cluster around two broad areas of policy-making legislation: health care and hate crimes. In Massachusetts, for instance, several bills which prohibit discrimination in the delivery of various kinds of health services made it through committee. For close observers of gay politics, these results should provide some measure of comfort. The AIDS crisis has propelled activists out of their community and into the center of the health-care field. Their work, and that of the women's and lesbian health care movements, is reaping dividends. In the same way, activists since the early 1980s have fought vigorously to call attention to anti-gay hate violence. At the state and national level, they have worked closely in coalitions with other targeted groups to have hate crimes recognized as a form of violence needing special remedies. Meanwhile, the national climate of divisiveness and intolerance is playing itself out in state politics. Even in states like New York, California and Massachusetts, where the gay community is well organized and has long been visible, anti-gay measures were able to receive a hearing. In other states, right-wing Republicans had an easier time transforming their agenda into policy. In Arizona, where the Radical Right has a working majority of the state Republican party's governing body, the governor signed into law a measure prohibiting school districts from implementing any course of study that "promotes" a homosexual lifestyle or portrays homosexuality as a "positive alternative life-style." And Utah became the first state to impose an explicit ban on recognizing same-gender marriages that may be performed in other states. As these last examples suggest, the right wing is choosing its targets shrewdly. From a proposal in Oregon that would effectively prohibit doctors from performing alternative insemination on unmarried women--including lesbians--to a bill in Vermont that would ban adoption by unmarried couples and second-parent adoption, the Far Right is attempting to construct a barbed-wire fence of law and public policy. Its purpose: to keep lesbians, gay men and bisexuals out of the territory marked "children and family." The strategy speaks both to the history of gay oppression and to the contemporary state of lesbian and gay concerns. In the past, medical, legal, and religious discourse defined homosexuals in opposition to the heterosexual nuclear family. Inflammatory stereotypes defined queers, whether male or female, as predators seeking to invade the sanctum of the home and to steal the young. For previous generations, the price of adopting a gay, lesbian or bisexual identity has often been to live outside the family. When a gay political agenda took shape after Stonewall, basic goals such as sodomy law repeal, civil rights protections, and the removal of the stigma of mental illness took precedence. But now, the gay community across the country is reclaiming family. Lesbians are choosing to have children, gay men are seeking to become foster parents, both men and women are insisting that their intimate partnerships be recognized by law. Lesbian, gay and bisexual parents want their children--and their children's peers--to be taught tolerance in school, while the parents and advocates of gay youth are insisting that the schools respond to the needs of their sexual minority students. In almost every area of public policy that impinges on family and youth, gay voices are being heard. These voices are new, and not yet well organized. And so the Radical Right has rushed into the void, playing upon the emotional flashpoints that run through American culture, and fomenting fear. It is not hard to do. With the crisis of family and community that Americans are living through, gay men, lesbians and bisexuals are easier, simpler targets than a changing labor market with wage structures that compromise family stability, or school systems without the resources to educate. This year's legislative record suggests that battles over family are likely to remain frontline conflicts. It also suggests that the gay community needs to apply to the arena of family the lessons it has learned in its fight for health care and against hate-motivated violence--patient, deliberate, and sustained organization; broad-based education of sympathetic allies; and the careful articulation of an agenda rooted in the real needs of its members. [Author and historian John D'Emilio is director of the Policy Institute at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, DC.]